Kootenai

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Native American nation living in the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada ; the isolate language spoken traditionally by that nation ; the major river flowing through Montana, Idaho and British Columbia that shares its name
2. An indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest region of North America ; the distinct, non-related tongue used by members of that community ; a long waterway in the Rocky Mountain region bearing the same name
3. Members of a northwestern North American tribe ; the unrelated native speech of that group ; the Montana, Idaho and British Columbia river named after the tribe

Etymology: The Kootenai are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest, whose name today is spelled in several ways, including "Kutenai" and "Ktunaxa." The people call themselves "Ktunaxa," a term that means something close to "the people" in their own language, and the English spelling reached North America through the explorers and settlers who recorded it. The name is attached to a river that rises in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia and flows south into Montana and Idaho before turning north again into Canada, a looping course that gives the Kootenay River its unusual shape. Places across the region carry the name as well, including Lake Kootenay in British Columbia and Kootenai County in Idaho, where the spelling used in the word's headword has become standard in American usage. Because the name belongs to a living community, its spellings have shifted over time, and the Ktunaxa Nation now uses its own name in official contexts. The variant spellings of the name are historical records of how outsiders heard and wrote it, not separate words.