Osage

[carolyn quintero]

Hi Bob,
Chiming in on Osage, I can tell you that ni 'water' + ohkaN'ska 'in the
middle'  explains the term popularly glossed as 'children of the middle
waters'.   Osages do not call themselves this, but rather waz^a'z^e.

I've never gotten any solid explanation for waz^a'z^e from speakers.  Minus
the wa-, it's 'name' --the noun-- (z^a'z^e), but that doesn't tell us much.
 And I've never heard any speaker relate it to 'snake'.

Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e
(via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--).

Carolyn
PS  On my email (Compuserve), I cannot tell who has written comments on the
Siouan list, unless they sign as you have below.  Would you have any idea
why this is?  It's disconcerting to try to follow some of the discussions
between anonymous participants never knowing who's commenting.  Does anyone
else have this problem?


Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>>An Osage friend of mine
once
told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally.  I had never heard
this
before.  Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it?

I tend to doubt it.  it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do
with snakes in some way.

>Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or
something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having
difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for  Osage,"

A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw.

>The popular story around these parts is that
'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar
to the word for China?).

Chungguo 'middle kingdom'

That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is
right.  Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't
know if it extendsto the OS language.  Carolyn would probably have better
idea.

Bob


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