sky

RLR rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu
Fri Feb 16 16:50:34 UTC 2001


> I suppose the name might be MaNghuska, too.

Don't think so. It was written down by a number of different people and
became a place name in KS and NE, etc. It was never written with a
rounded vowel as far as I know (and I've been looking at these names
lately for Bill Bright's book).  The most common (mis)spelling was
"Mahaska".  The -u of maNghu still has to be coming from a suffix.

The spelling mo"xpi for sky or cloud found in Jimm's dictionary is
listed as being from Prince Maximilian of Wied's word lists in the
1820's. I've written on this and we know his word list came from one
Major John Dougherty who was assigned as an agent of the War Department
to the Otoes at Belleview, NE. He is known to have substituted words
from other Indian languages he had a passing familiarity with when he
couldn't recall the term in the languages he had volunteered information
about. I found a number of clearly Otoe terms among his "Kansa"
contributions.

Bob



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