The Grand Coteau
As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Stephanie inspired this post as she is one of thee most fascinating women on the planet. I admire her greatly as she is so much more accomplished, strong and full of Grace than I will ever be.
I was looking up due to Tyrant Trudeau the greatest threat to the United States, French swear words. I had asked Stephanie about the gender nature of Sacred Blue and I published her fascinating explanation. I love wordcraft in the nature of words, in the English incorporating the Olde English and the French Norman, along with the base of German and Spanish to provide softer, more concise or more intelligent communication on this blog. You have no idea what this blog is liberating your mind to and it is all based in Inspired assembly of words.
What fascinated me, has to to with American Armegeddon in that region in the central plains which is perfect for a Chinese invasion. I will not revisit the order of battle, but there is a region in this a Continental Divide of river systems and a water shed which feeds this of glacial creation, which was named by the French as the Coteau des Prairie.
I had always been told that coteau meant hills of the prairie. When reading the French cuss words though, coteau is translated as CUT. That makes sense as coteau is incorrectly translated as HILL, when the the correct word is colline.
When one reads the history of the Great American Desert, the Plainsmen in Colonel Richard Irving Dodge and General George Armstrong Custer used a term called DIVIDES for these hill areas which move from the Mississippi and Missouri rivers west at about 20 mile intervals, arising to the greatest divide of all in the Rockies of the Continental Divide.
In these one has the French Coullee which is in English a Glade, a valley of trees surrounded by hills.
Where I'm going with this, is there is another English word which is in use in the American West by the rural people and the word is "breaks". Breaks are these divides or coteau, cuts in the land which stand out.
If one examines the exploration and settlement of North America, the two peoples involved in the French and Americans, were melding their understanding of what they were seeing in these rises in the land. At base, the French knew them as cuts or defiles, again the land had been harmed from it's natural state and divided, and the Americans saw the endless prairies broken or there were breaks in their natural features.
This verbiage of America rests in the French. Their explorers the Voyageurs broke from the Monarchy and Catholicism and fled to the Indian tribes, where their half breeds became the Metis Peoples. The French spilled out to "British possession" and made contact with Indians, as thee Americans began appearing in various forms in Lewis & Clarke and Zebulon Pike. French traders abounded as did the French, and the contact of thee Americans and French, in translation began melding in what they were experiencing.
Prairie is French. The English is meadow. The Great Plains are in French the Great Plaines, this is where the definition arises in the French character of what is America throughout the interior.
Some stick up their ass scholar changed coteau from cut to hills, as they were seeing hills in their civilization, while the explorers were seeing a land without roads and only landmarks and one navigated in this vast grassy ocean by how the land was marked by rivers and breaks as it was all divided up.
I would be fascinated in how the Quebcois changed the English language from the Norman English by incorporating those terms into American English from the 1840's onward as Americans began making contact as in Francis Parkman on the Great Plains, as the French were there as much as the Spanish surrounded by all the Indian tribes.
We hear a great deal of Spanish English due to the association for the Southwest, but there is as great of influence in the Northern Interior for French on American English. Pierre South Dakota is French. The Indians of the region have dominant French names. Landmarks are still defined by their French origins.
I thank Stephanie for this exploration as I would never have thought to look at terms like this, because from the Great Lakes westerward, the Indian names began to be replaced by French terms. Wisconsin sounds more French than Quebec.
The reason there are not canyons in Montana, is because the Spanish did not penetrate that far north Canyons are southwest and become breaks and divides once they hit the French and the Americans. If the French had been in the Southwest, the Grand Canyon would be the Grandiose Coteau.
This is another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
agtG
agtG
