Virtues-wolves-coyotes

Michael Mccafferty mmccaffe at indiana.edu
Mon Jul 15 18:52:57 UTC 2002


See:

Stothers, David M. The Michigan Owasco and Iroquois Co-Tradition: Late
Woodland Conflict, Conquest, and Cultural
Realignment in the Western and Lower Great Lakes. Northeast
Anthropology 49 (1995): 5-41.

____. Late Woodland Models for Cultural Development
in Southern Michigan. In John R. Halsey, ed., Retrieving Michigans Buried
Past, the Archaeology of the Great Lakes State, Cranbrook Institute of
Science Bulletin 64. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1999.



On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> In the past couple of decades archaeologists have placed the
> Kickapoo-Sauk-Fox-Mascouten in late prehistory along the southern shores
> of Lake Erie, and then a later move into the eastern and southern
> Michigan soon before the curtain call. This would explain why that
> language did not have an inherent term for 'coyote'.
>
> On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, David Costa wrote:
>
> > True, when I said that business about acquiring words for 'coyote' when
> > being forced into Kansas or Oklahoma, it overlooked the fact that the
> > Illinois already had the 'common wolf/ordinary wolf' word by the late 17th
> > century. And there's also the possibility that the Woodlands groups could
> > have known about coyotes from trips out onto the Plains to hunt bison. But
> > maybe this wasn't all that common, since I'm told Fox and Kickapoo don't
> > have any particular word for 'coyote'. I think I was told that the Kickapoo
> > use the same word as for 'wolf', which would make sense, since their
> > familiarity with the coyote would have come at roughly the same time as the
> > extinction of the wolf over most of the Lower 48. Just a matter of shifting
> > a word from one animal to the similar one that takes its place.
> >
> > David
> >
> > > On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, David Costa wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I can at least add my take on how Algonquian handles this issue. Proto-
> > >> Algonquian was pretty clearly NOT spoken in the geographic range of coyotes,
> > >> since there's no reconstructible Proto-Algonquian word for the animal. (Tho
> > >> there are words for 'wolf' and, especially, 'dog'.) Therefore, as some of
> > >> the daughter languages have later moved into the range of coyotes (usually
> > >> when the speakers were forced to move to Kansas or Oklahoma),
> > >
> > > Illinois speakers would have likely been in contact with the
> > > prairie-dwelling coyote by ca. 1000 A.D. perhaps slightly before, a time
> > > frame generally applicable to any Algonquian language that pushed south
> > > and west into the prairies or had prairie connections such as the
> > > Potawatomi and Mascouten.
> > >
> > > Michael McCafferty
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> Michael McCafferty
> 307 Memorial Hall
> Indiana University
> Bloomington, Indiana
> 47405
> mmccaffe at indiana.edu
>
> "Talking is often a torment for me, and I
> need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
>                                                        C.G. Jung
>
> "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk."
>                                     Rumi
>
>
>
>
>


Michael McCafferty
307 Memorial Hall
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
47405
mmccaffe at indiana.edu

"Talking is often a torment for me, and I
need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
                                                       C.G. Jung

"...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk."
                                    Rumi



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