At our Open House for Homecoming and Family Weekend, we got a question about the origin of the title of the yearbook, Tamanawas. Volume 1 of Tamanawas was published for the 1920-1921 school year. According to the UPS website, Tamanawas is a Salish term that means “the coming of age”. A more complete description can be found in the 1920-1921 Tamanawas, where it says that “Too-man-a-wus is the term used by the aboriginal people of the Northwest for a man or woman who has become, by long work, training and sever tests, following rules laid down by custom, to be an efficient healer of diseases and by the guiding hand of the medicine spirit to give correct diagnosis… Too-man-a-wus was therefore the goal of only the brave, the fearless and worthy ones”. To obtain this definition, the yearbook staff (the juniors of CPS) consulted Mr. Henry Sicade, “a Northwest Indian residing here in [their] midst.”
However, it appears that that meaning may have been misunderstood at times. For example, in the same issue of Tamanawas, the greetings at the beginning of the yearbook mention the “punch and ‘good spirits’ characterized by the ‘Tamanawas’”, and in the February 1920 issue of The Trail, it says: “’Tamanawas’ – Do you know what that symbolizes? It stands for ‘Lively Spirit,’ and C.P.S. annual”.
What many people don’t know is that before it was called Tamanawas, the yearbook was called Klahowya, first published in 1913. We only have the one issue (1912-1913) of the yearbook under that title, but it’s unclear whether a yearbook was actually published between 1913 and 1921. Klahowya is another Native American term, meaning “Please help me” or “I’m miserable” in Chinook”. According to the Children of Fort Langley (an organization dedicated to the history of Fort Langley in British Columbia”, the use of the term Klahowya as a greeting may have been a misunderstanding; native people “begging for goods or food” was so common that white men assumed that it was a standard greeting. (source). This assumption is backed up by the March 1912 issue of The Trail, which mentions the use of Klahowya at All-University Day, saying: “Juniors arose and, solemnly bowing to the guests, gave the good old Indian greeting ‘Klahowya’. The Freshmen could not fully appreciate the meaning of it all”, which indicates that at some point, the phrase had some special meaning to the students of the University of Puget Sound, but that they didn’t understand the origin of the phrase.
Come check out our collection of yearbooks going back to 1913 if you want to learn more!
The Archives & Special Collections is open on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 12:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.
By Julia Masur