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On Puzzling Wavelengths
their terms, concepts, and broad frameworks for thinking about things
that were familiar and important to them. This was evident from their
terminology for birds, fish, moose anatomy, trap parts, and so on; it
was also clear from the ways they oriented their traps and from their
sense of how, where, and when to fish (Gardner 1976 , Christian and
Gardner 1977 ).
Variations in their moose anatomy terms were representative. Recall
that moose was every family’s foremost source of meat, and it was the
creature whose killing was marked by the most-elaborate rituals of re-
spect. Just as everyone ate moose, every adult butchered it. Parties of
male hunters did butchering as a group; so did husbands and wives, if
they felled one while traveling or while working on their trapline.
When I interviewed thirty-two people about moose anatomy with
a picture of a moose skeleton before us, my subjects proved able to
name even the minor bones. In one extended family, during a trial run,
three of the adults systematically divided a moose leg into two named
parts and showed me the boundary; the other three divided it clearly
and elegantly into three named parts. They came to know about this
variation in casual conversation with one another afterward, then
brought me in on their discussion. Their two approaches could not
be reconciled. It was not as if they had provided me with general and
specific versions of the same thing, or with the classification of meat
versus one of bone. They were surprised—and amused as well—to re-
alize that their bush-oriented family was host to two contrasting ways
of conceptualizing a valued part of their precious moose. The spine
of the moose and its main sections were labeled even more variably
across the community. There were three main terms for the spine as
a whole, and diverse, divergent approaches to naming its four recog-
nized parts. Everyone characterized the spine and its lumbar segment
in particular as “connectors,” but there was more than one way to
express this in their tongue. How divergent were they? Starting with
the most prevalent term for the spine as a whole and each of its four
segments, it would seem possible to come up with a “most represen-
tative” set of terms for the spine. Are you surprised to learn that only
one of my thirty-two consultants, an elderly woman, gave me that
precise set of terms?
