“Cowsbell” is a play on sounds — words that sound similar but are entirely different. Cowsbell doesn’t actually sound the same as Kalispell but when the hearer is trying to make sense out of an unfamiliar word, perception gives the familiar — that action when you hear something and try to make sense of it by what is already known. Ever so often when talking to someone in another region of the United States and they get around to asking where I am, “Kalispell” is taken as “Cowsbell” or worse.
Reminds me how often we misunderstand new information due to our bent to judge against what is already familiar to us. Perception does that. This site is about challenging perception with revelation, trying to get it right, putting away old views and taking a fresh look at Truth.
Oh yes, the picture: Uriah S., age 6, my earliest ancestor in the Colonies was brought on one of the “slave” ships. A street urchin imprisoned in England, then ‘sold’ to a merchant as part of a lot delivered to Southampton to be shipped in the Year 1752 to the Colonies “to further prevent Robbery, Burglary and other Felonies”. No, not an actual picture of him.
Back in the 1960s when I was new to Montana and ranching, my uncles would summer their dry cows and steers 'up back' on Grandpa's acreage. Rolling glens, lots of trees, couple creeks and a few meadows. Cattle would retreat into the deep woods to escape the heat and flies and the only easy way to check on them was to be sure the lead cow was wearing a cowbell. That sound would lead us to them. This was my first 'cowsbell'.
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In the 1970s, I moved to the 'big' city. Kalispell was 10,000 with a county population of 60,000 (today, closer to 33,000 and 120,000).
The original natives were the Qlispé tribe of the Salish nations but when the French and then the English explorers got done 'westernizing' their language, it was closer to Cullyspel to arriving settlers. Folklore has it that Charles Conrad decided it should be spelled with a K and end with another L.
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In the Kutenai tongue the tribe is actually Qlispé.
Before the first white men explored the continent, the natives had been thriving for millennia. While they tended to be nomadic — following the food sources — some of the tribes settled in select regions. The Kalispel tribe had diminished to 375 natives by 1875 and continued to be pushed farther off tribal lands by white settlers filing claims under the Homestead Act. By second half of the Twentieth Century, the Kalispels were clustered in Pend Oreille County, Washington and the Kalispel Reservation had almost doubled in size from the original parcel “given” to the Tribe by the United States in 1914; the original reservation of 7 square miles has added another 4 square miles through purchases from tribal resources and then expanded that with another 5-1/2 square miles in northeast Washington and northern Idaho.
The Kalispel have made strides in reclaiming their heritage.
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My working career has included phone calls with vendors across North America. Often in lulls in conversation, the subject of where we were located would come up. It was not unusual for the vendor to turn my answer of "Kalispell" into "Cowsbell" which was their effort to take the unfamiliar name into something meaningful by their experience.
Over the years, I've become increasingly aware of how often our perception is misshaped by what we thing we know. Hence, the Cowsbell phenomena.
See if you don't find that in your experience.
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