Sac & Fox term

David Costa pankihtamwa at earthlink.net
Thu Nov 20 22:03:30 UTC 2003


The Ojibwes call the Sauks /ozaagii/, but in a vowel-deleting dialect this
would be /zaagii/. The Miamis call them /saakia/ and Meskwakies use
/(a)sa:ki:wa/, but Sauk (and Kickapoo) changed /s/ to /0/ (theta). Hence the
/0a:ki:wa/.

Anyway, this name is discussed in the 'Sauk' chapter of the Handbook (volume
15, page 654).

Dave


> From my Ojibwe class I know 'Anishinaabe' is the term they (Ojibwe or
> Anishinaabe) use for themselves.  'Anishinaabemo' refers to their language.
>
> I called a relative of mine who is from Tama.  His mother is Mesquakie and
> he is a native speaker of that language.  He said they, in Iowa, call
> themselves 'Meskuaaki' which he roughly translated as people of the red
> earth.  (I'm not sure on the spelling of this word, I used the standard
> Ojibwe method of spelling for this word.)
>
> He told me he was pretty sure that the Sac and Fox from Oklahoma refer to
> themselves as Zaagi, which roughly means people of the yellow earth.  Again,
> I'm not entirely sure I have given the best spelling as I have used Ojibwe
> orthographical conventions.
>
>
> Henning Garvin
> Linguistic research
> Ho-Chunk Nation Language Division
>
>
>
>
>>From: "David Costa" <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>
>>Reply-To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>>To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>>Subject: Re: Sac & Fox term
>>Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:55:18 -0800
>>
>>As far as I know, only Ojibwes and Potawatomis use that "Anishnabe" term.
>>The most common name the Sauks use for themselves is /0a:ki:wa/ ('0' =
>>theta, 'th' as in 'thin'), though alternates of /o0a:ki:wa/ and /a0a:ki:wa/
>>are also attested.
>>
>>David
>>
>>
>>> Does anyone know if the term "Anishnabe" is the proper name that the Sac &
>>> Fox use to term themselves and their language?  If this term is Ojibwe,
>>> Potawatomi, or another, what term do the Sac/Sauk call themselves. jgt
>
>
>
>



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