From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Sep 1 08:31:54 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 02:31:54 -0600 Subject: Second Dative In-Reply-To: <00ab01c48f92$6f2a3210$23b5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: No, just a terminological followup on vertitive. I often wonder where some of the Siouanist tersm come from. It's surprising how few originate with Boas & Deloria. Which is probably why it's so readable ... From goodtracks at gbronline.com Mon Sep 13 00:03:28 2004 From: goodtracks at gbronline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:03:28 -0500 Subject: HIDATSA Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Alan H. Hartley To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 9:12 AM Subject: Re: HIDATSA Jimm GoodTracks wrote: Interestingly, I learned that L & C "Bird Woman", Sakakawea [Chagaa'ga + Mia via A.W.Jones' lexicon] is indeed Hidatsa language as is the woman. This is the claim by a number of Hidatsa informants in the 1920s/ 1930s, and further attested to by Bull Eye [Gidabi Isda], her grandson and only living decendent in 1930s. There are several references in the L & C journals to Sacagawea's Shoshone origins (including her recognition of landmarks in the Shoshones' country and her reunion with her brother) and to her capture by Hidatsas. Yes, there are, and they have all been mostly refuted by the people who REALLY knew who she was. L & C had no apparent reason to misrepresent her ethnic origin, and it seems to me very unlikely that they did. It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa, nor by my comments here. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their journals and then forthright, dismiss the history offered by the very people with whom this woman lived. At best, L & C were foreigners who were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that he did not get the correct story. A fast forward to compare with today's world, we who enjoy state of the art communication equipment, attested interpreteurs and expert CIA information -- and it was just with absolute certainty that "confirmed weapons of mass destruction were within Iraq...". Infallibility -- never! In summary, if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., and in fact, the entire United States country has fallen into a habit of misspelling English, and needs to return to the faultlessness of the correct spellings as per the L & C Journals. Sometimes in linguistics, we come upon folk etymology in regards to the origin of various words. Recall the Lists' discussions "washichu" Lakota for whiteman, or "Paduka" the southern Siouan word for Commanchi. I do not believe that these narratives from the accounts of the various Hidatsa elders can be relegated to folk etymology. Some of the younger Native people in the communities have a saying: "If you're white - you're right". Anglo American bias in the writting of history is no longer a secret, however, as it was said in the beginning, there was no intended misrepresentations. Errors and misinformation do occurr...in today's world and in the world 200 years ago. jgt Here's the Sacagawea entry from my Lewis and Clark Lexicon that's to be published this Fall. (I hope the HTML comes through OK.) Sacagawea {s at -cah-gah-wee-@} A teenaged Shoshone Indian (sister of Cameahwait) who had been captured by the Hidatsa in a raid and was living with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau when the expedition arrived. Carrying her infant son Pomp, she accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back and was a valuable interpreter with the Snakes, a guide (in the vicinity of her home), and a gatherer of wild plants. Sacagawea's fate after the expedition is uncertain, but Clark notes her as deceased by the late 1820s, and John Luttig, a fur-trader, says in his journal entry for December 20, 1812, "this Evening the Wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squaw, died of a putrid fever she was a good and the best Women in the fort, aged abt 25 years she left a fine infant girl". The death by what was perhaps typhus or typhoid fever of this unnamed wife of Chabonneau occurred at Fort Manuel on the Missouri, near the border between North and South Dakota. Sâh-câh-gâh, we â, our Indian woman is very sick this evening; Capt. C. blead her. [10 Jun 05 ML 4.276] Sah-cah-gar-we-ah.was one of the female prisoners taken.tho' I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being again restored to her native country [28 Jul 05 ML 5.009] The wife of Shabono our interpetr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions[.] a woman with a party of men is a token of peace [13 Oct 05 WC 5.268] In the expedition journals, Sacagawea is often called simply the Indian woman, the squaw, or Charbonneau's wife, and the captains apparently nicknamed her Janey. See potato. The indian woman.has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country [13 Jul 06 WC 8.180] The form of her name in the following quotation (referring to the present-day Sacagawea River), is an example of the use of m for w in careful speech in the Hidatsa language. (This variation also occurs in Ahwahaway and in Hidatsa a-wah-tee 'river, Missouri River' which Lewis [4.246] writes Amahte.) This characteristic alternation, along with Lewis's translation and his division of the name into two words, as well as the close similarity of the name to the Hidatsa words for 'bird' (tsah-kah-kah) and 'woman' (wee-ah / mee-ah), support the traditional interpretation of Sacagawea's name as Bird Woman in Hidatsa, the language of her captor-adopters, and its pronunciation with a hard g rather than the j sound that later became popular. this stream we called Sâh-câ-gar me-âh or bird woman's River, after our interpreter the Snake woman. [20 May 05 ML 4.171] Ordway writes her name as though he knew that wea meant simply 'woman' and so omitted it. Sahcahgah our Indian woman verry Sick & was bled. [10 Jun 05 JO 9.165] Interestingly, I learned that L & C "Bird Woman", Sakakawea [Chagaa'ga + Mia via A.W.Jones' lexicon] is indeed Hidatsa language as is the woman. This is the claim by a number of Hidatsa informants in the 1920s/ 1930s, and further attested to by Bull Eye [Gidabi Isda], her grandson and only living decendent in 1930s. Her confusion as a Lehmi Shoshone, as per the L&C journal came about as a result of her marriage to T.Charboneau and his trading expeditions to the mountain areas, where Saka'gaMia (as per the pronunciation of the 3Tribes Museum staffer and another speaker--a grandson of Walter YoungBear. Wolf Chief in a statement in the 1920s indicated that the Hidatsa would not have ventured that far because of respect to their enemies. He suggested that perhaps the Crow went to Shoshone land and captured someone, but the L&C accepted history was incorrect. And I bet noone is willing to bet on the present day liklihood of the US Historians rewritting their version of history and the events even though the Hidatsa informants and other early century documentation tends to collaborate the Native version of the accounts. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 13 15:16:12 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 10:16:12 -0500 Subject: HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <004201c49925$45224510$4e640945@JIMM> Message-ID: Jimm GoodTracks wrote: > It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there > is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa, nor by > my comments here. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the > information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their > journals and then forthright, dismiss the history offered by the very > people with whom this woman lived. At best, L & C were foreigners who > were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact > is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did > not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via > a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C > were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information > stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that > he did not get the correct story. A fast forward to compare with > today's world, we who enjoy state of the art communication equipment, > attested interpreteurs and expert CIA information -- and it was just > with absolute certainty that "confirmed weapons of mass destruction > were within Iraq...". Infallibility -- never! I don't claim infallibility for Lewis and Clark, but I do give their accounts credit as first-hand reports of Sacagawea. In fact, it seems "rather ethnocentric" to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas living over a century after the facts on which they report. (Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying that, because of their European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of ethnocentrism.) Following is part of Lewis's entry for 17 Aug. 1805: "Capt. Clark arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved to be the sister of the Chif Cameahwait. the meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who afterwards escaped from the Minnetares [Hidatsas] and rejoined her nation... we called them together and through the medium of Labuish [English to French], Charbono [French to Hidatsa] and Sah-cah-gar-weah [Hidatsa to Shoshone], we communicated to them fully the objects which had brought us into this distant part of the country" That seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't see how even a naive ethnocentrism on Lewis's part could have twisted the facts of Sacagawea's origins so radically. > if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be > taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names > incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., and in > fact, the entire United States country has fallen into a habit of > misspelling English, and needs to return to the faultlessness of the > correct spellings as per the L & C Journals. The journalists, especially Clark, were not as educated in spelling as we are today, and they often spelled as they heard, giving us valuable clues into the pronunciation of English and other languages of the time. Their records are imperfect, but they're among the most important sources we have for the state of the trans-Mississippi lands in the early period of contact between whites and Indians. Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 13 16:20:40 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 10:20:40 -0600 Subject: Policies Message-ID: While we don't have any strict policies on HTML formatting in mail for the list, I thought I ought to point out for those who are used to using such devices that some of us - well, me anyway - do not see the letters here in color or multiple type faces. So, if at all possible, it would be nice if folks would please restrict themselves to more or less straight ASCII mail in the old fashioned way. I particularly advise against using color only to distinguish comments from original material. It's not necessary to use angle bracket indents, but some more explicit device should be used. Spacing and notes like "X says:" maybe. I realize all this is kind of clunky for those of you who have moved into the current millenium. We also don't have any policy on attachments, but bear in mind that attachments may not always make it through the processing of email in this day and age. Anyway, I'd also recommend avoiding approaches that cause the body of your letter to always be placed in an attachment. If you are (also) unable to see HTML-formatting in mail, would you please drop me a line on the side, off-list? I'lll summarize the responses. If I don't hear from anyone along these lines I may have to rescind my first suggestion above and see about revising the way I access the list! Perhaps I'm the only one watching in black & white these days. Folks are always, of course, welcome to discuss this on list as well, if they wish. John E. Koontz http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Mon Sep 13 16:35:52 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:35:52 -0500 Subject: Policies Message-ID: zhiNtheho John, I would prefer to keep things "simple". Black and White and straight-up ASCII is much preferred. Attachments are routinely blocked on my end. Over zealous virus guardian spirits? Malevolent computer wizards? Thanks for keeping this site running, and to all who contribute. I know that I get a lot out of it and my colleagues at UmoNhoN Nation also benefit. wibthahoN Uthixide Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Anthropology/Ethnic Studies Native American Studies University of Nebraska 132 Bessey Hall Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 402-472-3455 FAX 402-472-9642 mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 11:20 AM Subject: Policies From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Mon Sep 13 17:38:44 2004 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:38:44 -0500 Subject: Policies Message-ID: Another vote in favor of "keep it simple". I'm fine with attachments, but NOT with color or other fancy formatting. It either doesn't come through at all or comes through as annoying gibberish at the beginning and end of a (say) boldfaced word. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 13 19:15:30 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:15:30 -0500 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > While we don't have any strict policies on HTML formatting in mail for the > list, I thought I ought to point out for those who are used to using such > devices that some of us - well, me anyway - do not see the letters here in > color or multiple type faces. So, if at all possible, it would be nice if > folks would please restrict themselves to more or less straight ASCII mail > in the old fashioned way. Will do. I erred in sending HTML: I don't usually do it, but have become more accustomed to it in editing (and being edited) via email. (Netscape Mail requires a settings change to switch between plain text and HTML composition, and I usually set it for text.) Apologies to all. Alan From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Sep 13 22:32:55 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 17:32:55 -0500 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I can probably read html text just fine, but I agree with John in prefering old-fashioned ASCII. We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:04:01 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:04:01 -0600 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I got a few responses off-line in addition to those on the list. The consensus seems to be that we would prefer letters to be in straight character text without HTML formatting as much as possible. So, please try to avoid making critical distinctions with color, typeface, typeface modifications (bold, italics), etc. I apologize to those for whom this seems a step (or two) backwards into the dark ages. It seems, however, that not all of us are using spiffy modern interfaces. I think the issue of letters as attachments was less of a concern. I have to admit that pine (the old text in a telnet window mailer that I use) is smart enough to handle these. It can also handle text fotmatted with html - sort of. It simply ignores the html stuff, so carefully colored text comes out in black in white in Courier regular (or whatever text I ask telnet to use). Actually, I use puTTY ssh instead of telnet. Nobody lets you log in with telnet anymore! Aparently I'm not alone in this, though I think the company is mostly among the academic members of the list. Anyone using Web mail or one of the Windows mail clients (Outlook, Eudora, Netscape/Mozilla mail, etc.) is wondering where I got this fossil pine. Actually it's well-maintained and up to date in every respect, except that it works in "terminal windows" with unformatted text. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:09:21 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:09:21 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. cent(?) two mine the Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers use English terms for such things! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:17:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:17:18 -0600 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Koontz John E wrote: > so carefully colored text comes out in black in white in Courier regular > (or whatever text I ask telnet to use). Another little policy, or at least practice, of mine is not to correct typos I notice too late, even if they do make me look like an idiot, unless they are in some critical point, or data, etc. So - honoring my theory in the breach - I wouldn't correct "in black in white." I offer this here as a helpful suggestion to others. Don't worry about little mistakes like this. We all know you wouldn't make these mistakes if you had all the time in the world to do this. (At least I hope people assume this when they read mine. *grin*) From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Tue Sep 14 20:50:45 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 15:50:45 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various ways... "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", "take my two cents", etc. Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the fourth week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I lasted 6 minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The differences in performance and competence are noticeable. wagoNze Uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 2:09 PM Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment > On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. > cent(?) two mine the > > Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think > Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the > coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers > use English terms for such things! > > From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Sep 14 22:00:57 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:00:57 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <002501c49a9c$e4f71430$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: WagoN'oNze U'dhixide wrote: > I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various ways... > "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", "take my two > cents", etc. Aho. "here are my 2 two cents" Dua'tHE we'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE. "I'm giving you my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE wi?i'. "take my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE dhiza' i ga ho! But I really just wanted to say "My two cents"! (I'm not sure about the accent on noNba. That seems to have been changed on me recently, with indications from a speaker that it was conditional on something we haven't defined yet.) > Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha > speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the fourth > week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I lasted 6 > minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The differences in > performance and competence are noticeable. And I would like to extend kudos to U'dhixide in this forum. It is still early in the semester, but we have been muddling along with trying to actually speak the language in class almost all the time, and the results are very promising. I'm really impressed with his new-found ability to keep the class going and even explain what we are doing in Omaha. His hosting of a cookout for the class this past Sunday, in which he and the speakers taught us how to make cowboy bread as a lab-- in Omaha-- was a high point of the semester. At the rate the students are learning, they should be pretty competent speakers before the course is over. Hopefully, Mark and I will be able to keep up with them! U'dhixide, u'udoN s^ka'g^e. Was^koN' ga ho! Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Sep 15 07:01:27 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 01:01:27 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > WagoN'oNze U'dhixide wrote: > > I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various > > ways... "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", > > "take my two cents", etc. I'm not sure what the presentative construction is in Omaha-Ponca. "Here is ..." is right for English. > Aho. > "here are my 2 two cents" Dua'tHE we'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta > tHE. > "I'm giving you my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE wi?i'. > "take my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE dhiza' > i ga ho! > > But I really just wanted to say "My two cents"! That's the customary fragment for the context in English. Sometimes I see "that's just ..." > (I'm not sure about the accent on noNba. That seems to have been > changed on me recently, with indications from a speaker that it was > conditional on something we haven't defined yet.) I notice accent shifting on this in the texts, too. This is an interesting thing in Dhegiha that hasn't been worked out. It might have something to do with phrase structure and how the shifting form is in ocnstruction with other forms. Maybe alternating heavy and light syllables in phrases? It may in that way affect suitably shaped subordinate or modifying elements? It's not just "two" of course. > > Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha > > speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the > > fourth week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I > > lasted 6 minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The > > differences in performance and competence are noticeable. > > And I would like to extend kudos to U'dhixide in this forum. It is still > early in the semester, but we have been muddling along with trying to > actually speak the language in class almost all the time, and the results > are very promising. I'm really impressed with his new-found ability to > keep the class going and even explain what we are doing in Omaha. His > hosting of a cookout for the class this past Sunday, in which he and the > speakers taught us how to make cowboy bread as a lab-- in Omaha-- was a > high point of the semester. At the rate the students are learning, they > should be pretty competent speakers before the course is over. Hopefully, > Mark and I will be able to keep up with them! This is all great news and it sounds like Mark has a good deal to be proud of! Incidentally, I didn't mean any criticism or warning by mentioning the Omaha tendency to use English numbers and denominations and dates, etc. This is often the case in language communities embedded physically and/or culturally in other communities and in itself it wouldn't mean that the language in question was endangered, for example, or inferior. Cross-linguistically numeral systems are often borrowed, or you find situations in which native and borrowed numeral systems exist in parallel, with different domains of use. And we've all been discussing cases that show that Siouan numerals have both been borrowed from other languages and borrowed into other languages in the past. I gather that numerals are rather more prone to this than once was thought. English uses borrowed numerals forms in a number of specialized contexts - primary, secondary, tertiary, ...; unary, binary, trinary, ...; singular, double, triple, ... - and I believe the ordinal form second and the fractional form quarter must be French loans. I think the more common numeral sets in Japanese are of Chinese origin, too. I've heard of cases where speakes of one Algonquian language used numerals from other Algonquian languages with better trading connections. From vstabler at esu1.org Wed Sep 15 18:14:42 2004 From: vstabler at esu1.org (Vida Stabler) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:14:42 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: The word for penny is wethawa zhide. ( M. Cayou 09-15-04, UNPS) VSS Koontz John E wrote: > On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. > cent(?) two mine the > > Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think > Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the > coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers > use English terms for such things! From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 15 20:06:31 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:06:31 -0500 Subject: Fw: [TalkIndianOK] Useful website for language teaching Message-ID: This was forwarded to me by Kathy Shea and may be of interest to those on this list too. Bob ______________________________________ From: "Alice Anderton" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 12:28 PM Subject: [TalkIndianOK] Useful website for language teaching > I want to bring to your attention the website for the > National Capital Language Resource Center, which has a > place to sign up for a monthly newsletter, as well as > information about learning strategies for immersion, > the US's Year of Languages (2005), an MLA map of > languages in the US by county (based on 2000 census > questions, so exaggerates the number of speakers, but > still interesting), etc. Those of you who are > teaching, especially, might find some of these > features useful. The website is: > www.nclrc.org > They can also be reached by telephone and mail: > 2001 Eye St. NW > Washington DC 20006 > 202-973-1086 > NCLRC is a joint project of George Washington > University, Georgetown University, and the Center for > Applied Linguistics. It is primarily aimed at public > school teachers of foreign languages, but has some > stuff that may be useful to native language teachers. > You can also contact them with any language teaching > questions. > > Alice (Anderton) > > ===== > Alice Anderton, Executive Director > Intertribal Wordpath Society > 1506 Barkley St., Norman, OK 73071 > www.ahalenia.com/iws > (405) 447-6103 > Join our listserve: TalkIndianOK-subscribe at yahoogroups.com From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Sep 17 15:59:46 2004 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:59:46 EDT Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: An interesting Crow money term that I have heard is tennise'ete 'ten cents' Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 20:44:59 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 14:44:59 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <84.33f530f6.2e7c63f2@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > An interesting Crow money term that I have heard is > > tennise'ete 'ten cents' There are a number of such forms in Miner's Winnebago Field Lexicon. It's hard to know if they are nonce forms, regular loans, or some sort of code switching. My favorite has always been koinstaac^. Not a money term though it came up this time in that context this time. I suspect use of English coinage terms and counting in OP is something on the order of code-switching, but the forms were always embedded in Omaha speech when I heard them. I imagine this sort of thing works up to loans in the long run, and I could see something like one of the Japanese or Algonquian situations arising (or the English one vis-a-vis French and Classical forms). In Omaha things handled similarly to numbers, money, dates and times were many placenames and English personal names. I don't know if this was everything. Also, because my fluency in Omaha is near nil, I would have missed cases where these things were happening in Omaha. Obviously Omaha has equivalents for everything. These are all things that are the crack between Omaha and English, and might tend to arise mostly in English contexts (like times and dates and money) or be relevant primarily in English ways (like English personal names). So, I'd predict that numbers arising in Omaha ways - how many people, days passed, etc. - would come out in Omaha, but in connection with dates, money, and English-context computations, in English. Sadly I lacked the foresight or skill to look into this at the time! In regard to placenames I noticed mainly that many standard placenames with primarily an Omaha circulation were in English without any known (or readily offered) Omaha equivalent. I think also that a number of towns with standard Omaha versions tended to come up in English form, like Decatur, Walthill, Rosalie, Tecamah, Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux City, etc. Again, I would have missed any Omaha occurrences that weren't specifically directed at me. In regard to personal names I have since realized that a number of French-origin personal names in many cases are naturalized and perceived as Omaha words. That is, they are now Omaha words. This explains, for example, the assertion that Rosalie is the English version of the native Omaha name Thuzathi. I think it also explains Mary Clay (now deceased) being addressed as Me(e)dhi, with a specifically Omaha pronunciation. I thought this was English influence, but now I rather wonder if this wasn't considered to be her Omaha name, or at least one of her Omaha names. This might also explain the difficulty of locating "Omaha" names for many of the LaFlesche family. In many cases their Omaha names might be Omaha versions of the French names that underlie their English names. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Fri Sep 17 21:36:25 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:36:25 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: Aloha all, Exactly! I've always heard the old folks say that those were "half breed names"... not "English names"... with the implications that while they were not Omaha clan names, they were still considered an "Omaha" name. Therefore, my Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler's English name was "Elizabeth". Her Omaha name was "Thizabet"... since patrilineally, she came through the French Saunsoci side and was not deemed eligible to be named into an Omaha clan. Suzini (Suzy) JiniwiN (Jenny) Methe (Mary) are a few others. I need to do a systematic Q and A to find out others. Since some of the names get handed down through families, they becomes associated with particular clans...ebthegoN. I personally promote the notion to any Omaha community member I talk to... that their half-breed name IS THERE OMAHA NAME... not something less-then Omaha (i.e., English/waxe). I think is provides an avenue for building self-esteem for those kids not in clans. uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:44 PM Subject: Re: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment > In regard to personal names I have since realized that a number of French-origin personal names in many cases are naturalized and perceived as Omaha words. That is, they are now Omaha words. This explains, for example, the assertion that Rosalie is the English version of the native Omaha name Thuzathi. I think it also explains Mary Clay (now deceased) being addressed as Me(e)dhi, with a specifically Omaha pronunciation. I thought this was English influence, but now I rather wonder if this wasn't considered to be her Omaha name, or at least one of her Omaha names. > From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Sep 17 21:47:19 2004 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:47:19 EDT Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: What's interesting about tennise'ete is that it is not simply a matter of code-switching; 'ten cents' has been refashioned into a phonologically normal Crow expression: 1) an 'i' is inserted to avoid a weird 'ns' cluster, 2) the 'nt' cluster is simplied to 't', and 3) a final vowel is added to conform to the normal pattern for Crow nouns. The discussion of names reminds me of a story: Unless it is a ceremonial occasion like a sweat lodge or a giveaway, most Crows habitually refer to each other by their English names. However, there are a few individuals who are almost always called by their Crow names. One such individual here in Pryor is Oliver Costa, whose Crow name is Di'akaashe 'does it well, does it thoroughly'. Several years ago at a giveaway the announcer, who was from another district, wanted to call Di'akaashe to come and receive a gift. He said to the man next to him, "What's Di'akaashe's Indian name? The bystanders thought this was hilarious, and the story is still being repeated in the sweat lodge. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 22:41:43 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:41:43 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <27.61f4a96a.2e7cb567@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > What's interesting about tennise'ete is that it is not simply a matter of > code-switching; 'ten cents' has been refashioned into a phonologically normal > Crow expression: ... It's like that with the "French-origin" names in Omaha, the refashioning being often rather unpredictable, but the numbers, etc., are typically not adapted that I recall, though they are presumably in Omaha English, which is a bit different from eastern Nebraska English. Truthfully I don't recall the specific forms of the English used in the examples I noticed. Omaha English is also something I didn't really look at carefully, but I noticed that it was intonationally different and among the elders who were fluent in Omaha it had some treatments of clusters and finals in common with Omaha, e.g., [IglIs^] or maybe it was [Iglis^V] (with I for lax I and V for some undetected voiceless vowel). A different intonational quality was also noticeable in the speech of younger children, though I couldn't say exactly what was different. Presumably the kids weren't fluent in Omaha at all, but they may have been less aware of non-Omaha patterns. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 23:03:58 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:03:58 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <003501c49cfe$61f66360$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Mark-Awakuni Swetland wrote: > Therefore, my Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler's English name was > "Elizabeth". Her Omaha name was "Thizabet"... since patrilineally, she came > through the French Saunsoci side and was not deemed eligible to be named > into an Omaha clan. Wuhu! > Suzini (Suzy) > JiniwiN (Jenny) And notice this has the root used for 'woman' in names added to it. > Methe (Mary) > are a few others. I need to do a systematic Q and A to find out others. > > Since some of the names get handed down through families, they becomes > associated with particular clans...ebthegoN. > > I personally promote the notion to any Omaha community member I talk to... > that their half-breed name IS THERE OMAHA NAME... not something less-then > Omaha (i.e., English/waxe). I think is provides an avenue for building > self-esteem for those kids not in clans. Oops, yeah. I hope I didn't suggest these names were less than good Omaha names, though traceable as comparatively recent (100-250 year old) borrowings. I think that everything points to them being integrated into the system. In a sense they're the clan names of the "children of whitemen," to use a Ponca expression. I'm not sure they haven't spread to other clans, too, however, since I'm not always aware who in the texts (or on the street) belongs to what clan, so it's nearly impossible or me to tell. For what it's worth, virtually all given names in circulation in modern English are borrowings, for various reasons, mainly the combination of Christian and French influence. Many of them are so thoroughly Anglicized that they have unique English forms, which circulate in opposition to more obvious (more recent) borrowed forms, like John vs. Sean vs. Ian vs. Jean, and Ivan and so on. Or Mary vs. Marie and Miriam, etc. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Sep 18 22:14:51 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:14:51 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. (fwd) Message-ID: Greetings all: I don't know if [anyone] remembers the online conversation posted on the "Siouan Languages Mailing List" (copy below) concerning the meaning of the Dhegiha term "Hethushka." I stumbled on it while doing some personal internet research into Ponca Hethushka traditions and origins, as I have been a dancer and follower of the Ponca Hethushka traditions since 1980. I wanted to comment on some information I found that may be of interest, to consider as a related connection between oral tradition, literal translation, and implied meaning to explain "Hethushka." I would like to suggest that since there are some published scholars (Wissler, 1916), (Howard, 1965), (Young, 1981), (Browner, 2002), (Belle, 2004) that attribute the possible origin of the Hethuska traditions to the Pawnee Iruska; and since the Pawnee Iruska has as its oral origin tradition, a story of culture hero Crow Feather who had a vision in which he meets spiritual beings as well as the spirit of a fallen Pawnee warrior who had his scalplock removed in a battle, that provide him certain teachings; and since it is well established that the Pawnee Iruska warriors wore their hair shaved on the sides with a braided scalplock at the nap of the neck, laden with grease and stiffened in an upturned fashion to resemble a "horn," so that the sign language for Pawnee was a hand at the back of the neck going in an upturned arch immitating the scalplock "horn"; and since according to Mr. Garvin, the commonly held interpretation for the term "Heyoska" for a group of songs among the Ho-Chunk is "to untie or remove the horn" (which could be interpreted to mean: to have your scalplock "horn" removed in battle, such as the Pawnee warrior spirit in Crow Feather's vision); and since the translation of "he" in Dhegiha is "horn", might there be a connection? (note: In "The Omaha Tribe", 1911, Page 182, there is a photo (Figure 40), of an Omaha man named "Hethi'kuwinxe", wearing his hair with an upturned scalplock "horn" at the base of his hair roach.) Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders or sub-chiefs at that time.) I know "u" is translated as "in", but I don't know enough to sub-divide the rest of the name. Could there be a similar translation relationship from the "u'shka" in the beginning of this name and the "thushka" segment in "hethu'shka"? Just wondering. Any thoughts...comments? Jonathan Holmes ************************************************************************** Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:46:36 -0600 From: Henning Garvin Subject: Re: Hethuska Thought I'd chime in here. In Hocank, the word "herus^ka" nowadays refers to people who go through the pow-wow circuit. Some say it refers to living a humble, giving way of life, but as far as I know, it is not related to any "war dances" and is often associated mainly with pow-wow. At least at this point and time. Many of the songs we sing at pow-wow have this word, and are actually called "herus^ka songs" I've been told that the word itself means "untying of the horn" and refers to the headgear worn by dancers (roaches, turbans, etc.). Don't know if this helps. Henning Garvin Linguistic research Ho-Chunk Nation Language Division >From: "Tom Leonard" >Reply-To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >To: >Subject: Hethuska >Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:56:41 -0600 > >Thought I'd share parts of a conversation I've been having with John >Koontz. >I'd appreciate any thoughts on the subject. > >I've been studying the "war dance complex" amongst the Dhegiha tribes. > >In Ponca, the word for this is "hethu's^ka". I also have the word being >pronounced "heo's^ka" (hey-o-shka) , hetho's^ka (hey-low-shka) and >hethoo's^ka (hey-thoo-shka). > >Most Poncas today say the word is an ancient term who's meaning is lost but >add "it means 'the war dance' or 'man dance'". However, my dad Joe Rush in >1977 said the word came from "xthe-xthe" (tattoo or >tattooed people) and "s^ka'de" (play or to enjoy). From a tape of him in >1977: "it meant for the enjoyment of those old folks...those old >folks...they had tattoos on them.....they kind of showed their rank". > >Does this make linguistic sense? > >Let's look at "s^ka" in the word first. > >John suggested "It is interesting to see another connection to s^kade, but >I >think that it's not likely that a final s^ka in OP would derived from >s^kade. I suspect that the Osage revised form with this association in it >has maybe influenced your father, though, of course, I don't know if that's >really a plausible assumption." Joe Rush was the head singer for all three >Osage Districts for many years and he certainly had plenty of contact over >there. So, that might have been the case (although he would have never >admitted it). So, I'll give that a "maybe". > >The question regarding s^ka from s^kade (to play) came from a discussion of >the widely held translation of ilon's^ka (the Osage word for the 'war >dance'), that is "playground of the eldest son". LaFlesche (1939) >translated >ilon's^ka as "those who partake of thunder" ("iloN" or igthoN - thunder). >It >is my contention the "playground of the eldest son" translation is a folk >etymology that has become quite engrained. In the 1970's I had several >elderly Osage people tell me, quite adamantly, that ilon's^ka had nothing >to >do with "playing" or "playgrounds" or the "eldest son". Each told me it had >to do with "the old religion"...then they usually started to change the >subject (the old religion being a very taboo topic of conversation). > >Oddly enough, the "old religion" had lots to do with bundle rites that >featured "xthe-xthe" - tattooing. The old priests were given tattooes when >they acheived a certain status (see LaFlesche). I think the last Osage who >had these died in the mid 1970's, but I remember seeing him. > >I've also wondered if "s^ka came from "s^ka'xe" (you make). I have heard >"s^ka'xe" abbreviated to "s^ka". For instance, you often hear "u' doN s^ka" >(you did good). John mentioned: "In OP gaghe can be used as a sort of >causative, but it means something like "act like, perform as." There's not >much tendency to lose final syllables in compounding except in initial >elements, e.g., s^aNttaNga, iNkhesabe, waz^iNttu and so on." Culturally, >s^ka from s^kaxe makes some sense. It also makes some sense in the context >of the anthro. literature in this regard. > >Now here's the rough part. > >Is it conceivable the word ( "hethu's^ka" or "heo's^ka" (hey-o-shka) or >hetho's^ka (hey-low-shka) or hethoo's^ka (hey-thoo-shka)) could have >changed from "xthe-xthe-s^ka" [s^kaxe or s^kade] to "xe-xthe-s^ka" to >"xe-tho-s^ka" to "he-tho-s^ka"...... (I do have some elders saying >"he-tho-s^ka")......or perhaps....... > >"xthe-xthe-s^ka" to "xthe-xthu-s^ka" to "xe-thu-s^ka" to >"he-thu-s^ka"........ > >Are any of these a plausible morph or liguistic change pattern? > >One other question. In Otoe, the war dance is called "ithu's^ka" or >"idu's^ka" (not certain). In Pawnee, I believe it's "iru's^ka". Can anyone >shed any light on etymologies or meanings from those languages? > >Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. > >Wi'btha hai ho! --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 20 16:26:46 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:26:46 -0600 Subject: Oklahoma City Message-ID: It looks like I'll be in Oklahoma City over the weekend of October 2-3, if there are any fellow list members there interested in getting together informally to talk Siouan. I'm chauffering my parents to a social event that doesn't really involve me, so I'll have some free time. From goodtracks at GBRonline.com Fri Sep 24 02:31:50 2004 From: goodtracks at GBRonline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:31:50 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Message-ID: There's no need to duel. My original point has been made, namely, that indigenous oral chroniclers may not expect to be given one iota of credibility for their own accounts of their own history when there is a popular different account by reputed "creditable" non-Native American chroniclers. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan H. Hartley" To: Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 10:16 AM Subject: Re: HIDATSA > Jimm GoodTracks wrote: > > It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there > > is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the > > information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their > > journals and then forthright, yet dismiss the history offered by the very > > people with whom this woman lived. And that does not make for an objective historian. At best, L & C were foreigners who > > were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact > > is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did > > not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via > > a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C > > were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information > > stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that > > he did not get the correct story. > > I don't claim infallibility for Lewis and Clark, but I do give their > accounts credit as first-hand reports of Sacagawea. In fact, it seems > "rather ethnocentric" to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas living a > century after the facts on which they report. It is not a matter of "to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas..." but to acknowledge their existance and give them credence equal to that of the foreign explorers of their county. The account of Bull Eye, the grandson of Sakagawia, was also a first-hand report of his experience with his grandmother and mother. His elderly peers at the time the account was given, also was a collaborated first hand knowledge of the old woman, her daughter and the grandson, Bull Eye. > (Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying that, because of their > European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of ethnocentrism.) No, there was no such implied nor suggested reference. Perhaps it is a personal bias being read in here. > Following is part of Lewis's entry for 17 Aug. 1805: "Capt. Clark > arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved > to be the sister of the Chif Cameahwait. It seems that the "proved" relationship was based on appearences and from the full bank of experiences of the writer's (Clark) own social encounters and knowledge, which did not include the indigenous cultural, social, kinship, etc. lifeways. Appearences can be deceiving. The extended and adoptive Native family can be quite warm and embracing. Furthermore, how is it that Sakagawia's name per se consistantly is in Hidatsa language rather than Shoshoni? It is not a practice to change the name as such. > "...the meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian > woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who > afterwards escaped from the Minnetares [Hidatsas] and rejoined her > nation... we called them together and through the medium of Labuish > [English to French], Charbono [French to Hidatsa] and Sah-cah-gar-weah > [Hidatsa to Shoshone], ..." > > That seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't see how even a > naive ethnocentrism on Lewis's part could have twisted the facts of > Sacagawea's origins so radically. Again, the account has nothing to do with ethnocentrism of anyone. What is amiss here is a present day bias to ennoble Lewis to a pious infallibility rather than a more mundane possiblity that indeed, his understanding of the native people, situation(s), and translations erred on the side of human inaccuracy and/or misinformation. History is filled with such misinformation and misrepresentations -- sometimes quite innocently and other times intentionally. A good historian is a seeker of truth, rather than a supporter of misconceptions. That is what the List accomplishes here with linguistical questions and rational analysis to render out the mysteries of indigenous words, phrases and sentences. > > if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be > > taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names > > incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., > > The journalists, especially Clark, were not as educated in spelling, ...and they often spelled as they heard, giving us valuable > clues into the pronunciation of English and other languages of the time. And those of us who have spent countless hours trying to decipher the spellings of Native words and/ or language texts from such transcriptions appreciate their attempts to record what they thought they heard as well as the fact that they were not linguists by any stretch of the imagination. > Their records are imperfect, but they're among the most important > sources we have for the state of the trans-Mississippi lands in the > early period of contact between whites and Indians. > Alan Indeed their records are imperfect and equally their records are among the most important sources available for the early contact period. And equally so, are the records of the Native peoples who were also undeniable participants on all these occassions. Jimm P.S. As a final closing of this discussion on my part, hear the remarks of a present day Native as she reflects on her own historical roots: To: Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:10:13 -0700 Subject: Re: [iowaysonline] No answers here, just my 2 cents worth Just watched "500 Nations" on the Discovery Channel last night. It was informative but, as usual, the Indians get the shaft. History books do not reflect the truth, we know, and hopefully will be rewritten to say how it really was. I was taught early on how "Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492", and that presidents like George Washington and Andrew Jackson were to be somehow looked up to when they caused great suffering to the Indian way of life. It was heartbreaking to watch and gave me even more reason to hold on to my Indian heritage. Being Ioway to me is being a part of the history and future of our tribe. Keeping alive and passing down what our elders passed on to us. > From ahartley at d.umn.edu Fri Sep 24 03:46:56 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 22:46:56 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <005d01c4a1de$be2c1c30$95650945@JIMM> Message-ID: Jimm GoodTracks wrote: >>(Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying > > that, because of their > >>European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of > > ethnocentrism.) > > No, there was no such implied nor suggested reference. Perhaps it is a > personal bias being read in here. It's certainly not my bias, Jimm: you're the one who put quotation marks around 'American.' > how is it that Sakagawia's name per se consistantly is in > Hidatsa language rather than Shoshoni? It is not a practice to change the > name as such. I believe it was common for a captive/adoptee to be given a new name in the language of her captors/adoptors. (Few Korean adoptees in the U.S. have Korean names.) And Lewis and Clark came to know Sacagawea in a Hidatsa community through Charbonneau who spoke Hidatsa but not Shoshone, so it's understandable that they would have used her Hidatsa name. Perhaps it's a reflection of their primitive ethnography that L&C never learned--or at least didn't record--Sacagawea's Shoshone name. > Again, the account has nothing to do with ethnocentrism of anyone. What is > amiss here is a present day bias to ennoble Lewis to a pious infallibility > rather than a more mundane possiblity that indeed, his understanding of the > native people, situation(s), and translations erred on the side of human > inaccuracy and/or misinformation. History is filled with such > misinformation and misrepresentations -- sometimes quite innocently and > other times intentionally. A good historian is a seeker of truth, rather > than a supporter of misconceptions. I plead innocent of ennobling Lewis (or anyone else). The fact remains that, fallible as they are, the L&C journals are very valuable first-hand records. (Likewise, their natural science leaves a lot to be desired, but it's the best we have from that time in those places.) And I think it's a misconception that oral traditions are somehow inherently superior to written ones: we have little enough to go on, so let's use everything we have. Alan From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Fri Sep 24 21:59:51 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:59:51 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: Howdy, I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is someone on the list who can help. The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help would be greatly appreciated. Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: "war"? "leader" Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: "cook"? Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" Thank you, Jonathan Holmes okibjonathan at yahoo.com --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Sep 25 20:33:00 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 14:33:00 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <20040924215951.35696.qmail@web40006.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the > literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is > someone on the list who can help. Proper spelling is an interesting question. Quite a number of internally consistent, more or less satisfactory orthographies have been used with Omaha-Ponca. The best candidates for "proper spelling" in the context of your efforts are probably the current popular orthographies for Omaha and Ponca, which are similar, but not quite the same, though not in ways that reflect the similar "similar, but not quite the same" situation with respect to Omaha and Ponca speech. The differences are simply slight arbitrary differences in the spelling scheme. I'll try to provide forms in the Omaha version. Neither of these schemes is trictly speaking "official," but the are both in active use within the two tribes, and backed by committee efforts. > The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior > society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with > appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the > Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to > describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal > translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, > substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help > would be greatly appreciated. I'm using capital N and H for raised n (nasalization) and h (aspiration). I haven't written length, which is increasingly clearly a factor, though it's come into the picture to some exten since the orthographies in question were adopted. I've marked accent with ' following the vowel, in lieu of acute. I've put dashes between elements in compounds. Note that single ptchk are pronounced "tense." This means voiceless unaspirated in initial position and after s, sh, etc., and voiceless geminate in medial position otherwise. > Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: > "war"? "leader" nudoN-hoNga 'war (path)' + 'leader' (various English forms like headman, captain, leader, war-leader, war-chief used in various contexts) The accentuation is given in the Dorsey texts (1890, 1891) as nu'doN-hoNga in the vocative and nudoN'-hoNga in reference forms. > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. It could also be a loanword from some other language. The other forms I don't recognize. They seem to be different words entirely. The second one looks like Osage to me. > Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" hi'goN-udha Hi'goN is 'myth; to tell a myth', using 'myth' as the term for 'traditional (animal) story'. The second element is udha' 'teller; to tell' > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. > Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" wanoN'she 'solder, policeman, subordinate officer of a society, or of a hunting expedition or war party'. I think the English term whipman refers to the whip that is (in some cases, anyway) the emblem of office, though there's a distinct parallel with the use of 'leader' and 'whip' in US legislative parlance! > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > "cook"? ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? u'haN 'cook; to cook' si'gre 'track' > Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" siN(iN)'de 'tail' (probably a long iN) > Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" niN(iN)'-adhiN 'water' + 'to have' > Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" xu'ka-hoNga 'singer' + 'leader' The x here is a voiceless velar (actually uvular in articulation) fricative. Also a verb, e.g., in the Dorsey texts e'wexuka 'I sing for them', iN'xuka=i=ga 'sing for me', etc. I don't know the contrast between xu'ka and waaN', both rendered 'to sing' in English. > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Sun Sep 26 17:37:02 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:37:02 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thank you so much...this helps a great deal. Koontz John E wrote: On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the > literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is > someone on the list who can help. Proper spelling is an interesting question. Quite a number of internally consistent, more or less satisfactory orthographies have been used with Omaha-Ponca. The best candidates for "proper spelling" in the context of your efforts are probably the current popular orthographies for Omaha and Ponca, which are similar, but not quite the same, though not in ways that reflect the similar "similar, but not quite the same" situation with respect to Omaha and Ponca speech. The differences are simply slight arbitrary differences in the spelling scheme. I'll try to provide forms in the Omaha version. Neither of these schemes is trictly speaking "official," but the are both in active use within the two tribes, and backed by committee efforts. > The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior > society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with > appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the > Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to > describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal > translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, > substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help > would be greatly appreciated. I'm using capital N and H for raised n (nasalization) and h (aspiration). I haven't written length, which is increasingly clearly a factor, though it's come into the picture to some exten since the orthographies in question were adopted. I've marked accent with ' following the vowel, in lieu of acute. I've put dashes between elements in compounds. Note that single ptchk are pronounced "tense." This means voiceless unaspirated in initial position and after s, sh, etc., and voiceless geminate in medial position otherwise. > Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: > "war"? "leader" nudoN-hoNga 'war (path)' + 'leader' (various English forms like headman, captain, leader, war-leader, war-chief used in various contexts) The accentuation is given in the Dorsey texts (1890, 1891) as nu'doN-hoNga in the vocative and nudoN'-hoNga in reference forms. > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. It could also be a loanword from some other language. The other forms I don't recognize. They seem to be different words entirely. The second one looks like Osage to me. > Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" hi'goN-udha Hi'goN is 'myth; to tell a myth', using 'myth' as the term for 'traditional (animal) story'. The second element is udha' 'teller; to tell' > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. > Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" wanoN'she 'solder, policeman, subordinate officer of a society, or of a hunting expedition or war party'. I think the English term whipman refers to the whip that is (in some cases, anyway) the emblem of office, though there's a distinct parallel with the use of 'leader' and 'whip' in US legislative parlance! > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > "cook"? ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? u'haN 'cook; to cook' si'gre 'track' > Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" siN(iN)'de 'tail' (probably a long iN) > Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" niN(iN)'-adhiN 'water' + 'to have' > Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" xu'ka-hoNga 'singer' + 'leader' The x here is a voiceless velar (actually uvular in articulation) fricative. Also a verb, e.g., in the Dorsey texts e'wexuka 'I sing for them', iN'xuka=i=ga 'sing for me', etc. I don't know the contrast between xu'ka and waaN', both rendered 'to sing' in English. > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 19:16:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:16:18 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <20040926173702.76499.qmail@web40006.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > Thank you so much...this helps a great deal. You're welcome! Of course, the best I can offer is a linguistic assessment. I don't know much about societies per se - certainly not from personal investigation. The Omaha are proud of the Hethushka and its history, and often mention aspects of it in passing, and, of course, there's an extensive literature on age-grading, military, and social societies that a linguist can't help but fall over occasionally. Incidentally, I've learned from Tom Leonard that the standard spelling of Hethushka among the Ponca is Hethuska, though the s is pronounced sh. I'm not actually sure of the usualy Omaha spelling. My version "Hethushka" may well be a scholarly artifact, picked up from old sources and/or derived from Dorsey's spelling heucka. > > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" > > waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or > deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another > word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. By this I just meant that I couldn't find such a form attested in a quick search, but that if various speakers were asked they might be able to think of relevant forms that hadn't made it into the literature. Watsipxa looks like Osage, because of ts and px. In fact, it suggests wahtsipxa or watsipxa - in the usual scholarly orthographies waccipha or wacipha - which looks like an Osage version of the Omaha-Ponca form, especially if the putative Osage form is wacipha and the OP form is actually wajepHa (with aspirate p). The e and i vowels don't match, but there may be some irregularity in the development of one of the forms, or perhaps I'm right about the loanword guess. > > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" > > we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. > This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. In other words, gi'goNze 'to demonstrate to, to teach (someone)'. > > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > > "cook"? > > ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? > u'haN 'cook; to cook' > si'gre 'track' I assume c = s, but if it's ts, then chile (OP would be tHigthe) might be one of the 'suddenly, all at once' auxiliaries. > > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" > > I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or > Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a > root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 20:10:15 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:10:15 -0600 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <415398B0.7030401@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like to plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan Hartley. I think the information in the journals that Sacagawea had been born among the Shoshone, that she was able to speak Shoshone and that she and Cameahwait recognized each other as kin are mutually consistent and decisive. Presumably the story of having been kidnapped is more or less corrrect, too. I hope we won't descend any furhter along the slippery slope to hell via a debate as to whether Native Americans or Euro-Americans per se are better qualified to judge and/or edit the assertions involved. It is certainly acceptable to discuss how and why L&C might have been confused or chosen to misrepresent matters, but the argument should be specific, not based on general propensities of Native Americans or Euro-Americans or on irrelevancies such as who was subsequently wronged by the European invasion. In the face of these evidences of Sacagawea's Shoshone origins, it's equally clear that the only name securely attested for her is Hidatsa, and that she passed up the opportunity to remain with the Shoshone to return to the Hidatsa the long way around. You have to conclude that by her logic she felt she belonged with the Hidatsa or perhaps we could phrase it that she preferred to be there. Given that, you have to assume that her Hidatsa name is a natural consequence of Hidatsa residence, perhaps a translation of her Shoshone name. I don't see any reason to suppose that any of these bits of information are fabricated or inconsistent, though clearly they don't follow modern Euro-American logic. As far as Hidatsa claims that Scagawea was of Hidatsa origin, since the events in question happened 200 years ago, it's easy to understand how modern Hidatsas might have come up with a different analysis of matters, especially given the known circumtance of Sacagawea returning to the Hidatsa. But just as I'm not a primary source for what my ancestors were doing 200 years ago, so I think that in this case the recorded testimony of the expedition, incorporating their understanding of the Hidatsa and Shoshone testimony at the time, has to be given priority over any modern Hidatsa assertions to the contrary. As far as Shoshone names for Sacagawea, if one accepts the accounts offered by some subsequent Shoshone and non-Native American sources that the report of Sacagawea's death a few years after her return was incorrect, and that later in life she return to live with the Shoshone, then I believe the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife"), which is 'Grass Woman' in Shoshone. Admittedly this story seems less likely, though it's possible that the woman in question was a relative who had had a somewhat parallel history, e.g., the other woman kidnapped with Sacagawea, who was her co-wife, also married to Charbono. Other women with similar histories may have existed. Some confusion might naturally arise in such a case, and misrepresentation for personal advantage or even merely for the sake of a good story might figure. One can hardly assume that Sacagawea, having walked halfway across the continent and back, never said a thing about it to her co-wife or anyone else. People probably begged her to tell them about it. Taking this view, of course, involves taking Native American (Shoshone) sources over non-Native American sources! Unfortunately the sources in this case are a bit tenuous. This has been an area of wild speculation for years. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 20:32:24 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:32:24 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: <20040909170021.27132.qmail@web40007.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I wanted to comment on some information I found that may be of interest, > to consider as a related connection between oral tradition, literal > translation, and implied meaning to explain "Hethushka." > (note: In "The Omaha Tribe", 1911, Page 182, there is a photo (Figure > 40), of an Omaha man named "Hethi'kuwinxe", wearing his hair with an > upturned scalplock "horn" at the base of his hair Note that this name (as stated in the context) means he thi- kuwiNghe horn by hand twisted around > Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, > but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, > "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is > "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without > Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, > on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the > Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders > or sub-chiefs at that time.) > I know "u" is translated as "in", but I don't know enough to sub-divide > the rest of the name. Could there be a similar translation relationship > from the "u'shka" in the beginning of this name and the "thushka" > segment in "hethu'shka"? Just wondering. Any thoughts...comments? I'd render this name u- s^kada= z^i (ushkadazhi) in he plays not In the texts 'play' always seems to mean about what it means in English, though I think the name Is^kada=bi is explained as something like 'adroit at sleight of hand' (referred to as 'juggling'), either in Dorsey's work or Fletcher & LaFlesche. I suppose this name could be literally 'not playing around' with Fletcher & LaFlesche's explanation being a development of that, or, rather, an explanation of the sense in which 'not playing around' is meant'. Anyway, though the final -shka of herhushka is associated with shkade in several folk etymologies of hedhushka, I don't think this names helps put those explanations on a sounder footing. From tmleonard at cox.net Sun Sep 26 21:54:16 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:54:16 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: Here's what I have on the linguistic side of the words in question. I have additional (cultural) information from informants in my field notes but that would get lengthy. Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: "war"? "leader" (Ponca) - nudaH or nudoN - war, expedition, endeavor, "effort underway" (Ponca) - hoNga - leader, also "big" (interestingly , not 'toNga') field translations: "war leader","boss", "chief of whatever it was they were doing", "peyote chief", "road man" In Osage, I believe the phrase is: doHda haN (I believe Carolyn Q. or Jimmy Duncan could be of better help here) Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) waje'pa - "town crier", "crier" , "herald" (John, I believe "announcer" is a different word, but I can't think of it at the moment) I don't recognize "watsi'pxa" as being related to the subject. A meaning can be derived in Ponca but I don't think it fits here. "Watsi" means "dance" in Osage, whereas in OP it would be "wachi". "Watsi" in Ponca is sort of a vulgur slang word suggesting a horizontal dance, if you take my meaning. Old Poncas used to crack up to hear Osages say "aNwatsi kombra". Ask Jimmy Duncan some time; my aunt used to punch him everytime he'd say it. My dad would then yell "washpaNgaho! you guys". Then everyone would bust out laughing. Jimmy typically recovered by adding "ay china". But I guess you had to be there. Dance in Ponca is either a form of "wachi" (e.g. aNwachi) or "wachi ga'xe". I've also heard noN'te (e.g. aNon'te anga'ti, we're dancing right here). I wonder if "watsi pxa" was noted as coming from Osage and what was really meant was "watsi pa'xe" (dance, I make) or watsi paxa(!) ?? Might have come from the linguist nightmare: Q. How do you say "you dance"? A. I dance (watsi pa'xe). Not sure; I think we'd need Carolyn or Jimmy to weigh in on that one. Can't make much from "wa'gra". Closest I can think of might be "wa gtha' e" (to give things out), or "wa gthe" (term for a plume). Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) hi'goN - "old story" (example given was: hi'goN pa'haNga de -stories from way back there, a long time ago) (Ponca) udha' from "utha ge" - to tell a story This is a relatively "new" term as applied to the Ponca Hethuska; not a "traditional" position. I believe Abe Conklin started this in the 1980's. One of the old timers I spoke with years ago said: "Never heard of it, that's why they have them singers. They keep the history." (direct quote). Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) we'goNze; also have it as wa'goNze - "to teach" or "to teach us" Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" (Ponca) wanoN'she - cop; policeman; truant officer; sheriff; traffic cop Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: "cook"? (Ponca) u'haN - to cook; or a cook Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" (Ponca) sin'de - tail (Osage) sin' tse -tail Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) ni - water (Ponca) athiN - to have, or he has translation: he has the water or the guy with the water Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" (Ponca) ho'ka - group of singers (you often hear "ho'ka zaNi" - all you singers) (Ponca) hoNga - leader translation - boss of the singers, or "head singer" Prior to the 1950's this "position" was basically unknown. Among the Ponca "head singer" positions started post WWII in the early to mid 1950's as cars became more available and larger inter-tribal gatherings started coming into voque. If I recall correctly (have to look back at my notes) Albert Waters was the first head singer (at the 1952 or 1953 Ponca Powwow). I have this repeatedly from many many sources. Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these at all. Although, as I recall, I believe the Osage have names something akin to these for women singers. I'll have to defer to Carolyn ofr Jimmy Duncan again on this one. In Ponca, women singers are typically adrressed as a relation. If you don't know that relation or you are not related to the individual (or if you are addressing them as a group) you generally refer to them as "sister" or sisters" (wi'doNde, or wi'he, etc. - to wit, the womens singers says "wi'doNde". Again, regarding the history of the Hethuska, among the Ponca at least, women singers weren't/aren't really thought of as a 'traditional' position. Among the Ponca, women didn't start sitting around the drum out in the arena until after WWII. Hope this helps. Tom Leonard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tmleonard at cox.net Sun Sep 26 22:16:05 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:16:05 -0500 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. Message-ID: Thought I might chime in on this one as well. > > Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, > > but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, > > "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is > > "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without > > Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, > > on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the > > Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders > > or sub-chiefs at that time.) "Rush into Battle" was my dad Joe Rush's grandpa (the name was shortened to "Rush"). "U'shkada zhi", however, was his "baby name" or his "nick name" (Poncas were traditionally given two names, a baby or nick name and a "grown-up" name). U'shakada zhi" literally means "doesn't play around" or "doesn't play like others". "Rush into Battle" is a different name all together, but I can't think of how to say it off hand. I definitely have this on tape and can dig it up if would help. As far relating to the word "Hethuska", as you can read in earlier posts, Joe Rush and some others told me the name came from xthe' xthe' shka de (xthe' xthe' - tatooo, and shka de, to do or to make) or xthe xthe ushka (u shka - to do like) "to do like, or to do for the tattooed people". However, despite several Ponca informants reporting that, I don't think we have "linguistic agreement" on the list here for that etymology. "Hethuska" was/is reported as "an ancient term". Over time linguistic etymolgies can get foggy and folky. Culturally and historically, the definitions Ponca elders gave make some sense. On the other hand, I don't know if the linguisitc structure of what was given holds up. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 22:31:33 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:31:33 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <001e01c4a413$5eb26520$fef60d44@tu.ok.cox.net> Message-ID: Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a bit about the Hethushka. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Sep 26 22:36:33 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:36:33 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Koontz John E wrote: > In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like to > plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan Hartley. It's nice to have someone besides Jimm and me plump down (on either side) and chime in (to hash up our metaphors), but might I suggest a rewording like "the view of traditional Euro-American historiography"? We probably all know John's intent with "traditional view," but people of other traditions might rightly espouse other definitions of "traditional." > the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named > Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife") Funny--I come from a land of Finnish immigrants, and "Puhinaivi" is precisely the way "Bowie knife" would be written in "Finglish." Finnish has no [b] or [f], and the only consonants that can end a word are, I think, [n], [s], and [t], so a vowel is often added to loan-words ending in a consonant. Alan From goodtracks at GBRonline.com Mon Sep 27 00:42:23 2004 From: goodtracks at GBRonline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 19:42:23 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: I searched under his name plus Hethushka, but found nada. Is there a more specific link. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Mon Sep 27 03:33:48 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:33:48 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <003601c4a42e$5bf46250$49430945@JIMM> Message-ID: To Jimm, I found the archive list in question at: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?S2=siouan&m=4663&q=ponca To John and Tom, Thanks for your input, I have learned a great deal. To Tom, Your name rings a bell from many years ago. Were you ever in New England in the 70s, say anywhere near Wilkinsonville (i.e. "Head Hill")? Thanks again, Jonathan Holmes Jimm GoodTracks wrote: I searched under his name plus Hethushka, but found nada. Is there a more specific link. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 13:41:30 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:41:30 -0500 Subject: spam enforcers. Message-ID: These university "spam" filters are starting to be a major annoyance. I have zero control over KU's and it's still considering all posts by Randy and many by John to be "spam" in spite of their containing nothing in the way of fonts or formatting that would suggest advertising content. I can't figure it out. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 13:45:54 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:45:54 -0500 Subject: Trivia. Message-ID: AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in optimology!! > > the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named > > Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife") > > Funny--I come from a land of Finnish immigrants, and "Puhinaivi" is > precisely the way "Bowie knife" would be written in "Finglish." Finnish > has no [b] or [f], and the only consonants that can end a word are, I > think, [n], [s], and [t], so a vowel is often added to loan-words ending > in a consonant. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Sep 27 14:01:49 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:01:49 -0500 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: <002801c4a416$6a7c8e00$fef60d44@tu.ok.cox.net> Message-ID: I'd also like to offer an idea here for consideration. Is it possible that the ledh ([dh]) in hedhu's^ka is epenthetic? I know this happens between i- (high front) and other vowels in many old words. The preceding e- is mid front, but might possibly have the same effect. If so, we could translate the term as he us^kaN horn activity assuming that nasalization was lost from the last syllable, as often seems to happen to unaccented syllables in modern Omaha that are properly nasal. An example against this possibility is the pattern of verbs of the we+u'+[root] form, which do not produce epenthetic ledh between we- and u-. Thoughts? Rory From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 27 13:58:08 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:58:08 -0500 Subject: Trivia. In-Reply-To: <01eb01c4a498$50100d30$25b5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: R. Rankin wrote: > AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in optimology!! Really?! From tmleonard at cox.net Mon Sep 27 15:34:56 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:34:56 -0500 Subject: To trill Message-ID: John, Had to think about this one; it's been awhile. In Ponca, to "trill" (or as we say, "lu-lu") the phrase is "hu gthedoN", roughly translated as "hoot like a hawk" (hu from hutoN-to hoot and gthedoN-hawk). Tom Leonard John Koontz wrote: >I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill >ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. >I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. >The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho >in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Mon Sep 27 16:08:43 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:08:43 -0500 Subject: To trill Message-ID: zhiNtheho John, Yes, our UmoNhoN speakers at UNL refer to the "lulu" as hu gthedoN. uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Leonard" To: Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 10:34 AM Subject: To trill > John, > > Had to think about this one; it's been awhile. In Ponca, to "trill" (or as > we say, "lu-lu") > the phrase is "hu gthedoN", roughly translated as "hoot like a hawk" (hu > from hutoN-to hoot and gthedoN-hawk). > > Tom Leonard > > John Koontz wrote: > >I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill > >ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. > >I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. > >The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho > >in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. > From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 16:56:31 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:56:31 -0500 Subject: Trivia. Message-ID: No. :-> -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Alan H. Hartley Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 8:58 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Trivia. R. Rankin wrote: > AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in > optimology!! Really?! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 27 16:58:17 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:58:17 -0600 Subject: To trill In-Reply-To: <003a01c4a4ac$434bd570$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Mark-Awakuni Swetland wrote: > Yes, our UmoNhoN speakers at UNL refer to the "lulu" as hu gthedoN. Well, "Hawk voice" was what I remembered, but I searched repeatedly under woman. women, song, sing, hawk, even lulu, and various combinations without getting LinguistList to cough up the form. Yet I'm sure you (Mark) or Rory mentioned it on the list last spring! It's nice to know my memory isn't totally shot, as it sometimes seems to be, but I'm a bit disappointed in the search engine. Of course, this delightful expression doesn't help a bit with Jonathan's mysterious 'woman singer' form! I suspect what is needed is somebody who knows the Osage iloNska terminology. I think that the interesting thing about the list of terms in question is that it encapsulates the issue of intertribal linguistic borrowing. The Hethushka has probably been one of the channels of this for a long time, and seems to remain an active one. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 27 17:10:19 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:10:19 -0500 Subject: Trivia. In-Reply-To: <6CFE0AAEA0B7E84A9E6292B3A056A68D01233B0A@meadowlark2.home.ku.edu> Message-ID: Rankin, Robert L wrote: > No. :-> >>AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in >>optimology!! > > > Really?! I fervently hoped that was the case. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 19:04:42 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 14:04:42 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Message-ID: I'd have to say that I think it's probably pretty late in the game for us to learn much new about specific events 200 years ago unless the information got written down. That would hold for Wm. Clark's great, great grandson ()if he had one) or any Hidatsa or Shoshone elder. It's not impossible that that some new fact or other might emerge, but I think it's doubtful that something as salient as Sakakawia's identity will be clarified by modern memories. That said, I think it's certainly true that Indian recollections and views of history have often been badly neglected. Nowhere have I found this more true than in the little investigation into the life of Vice-President Charles Curtis that I did when we were looking at the Kaw-Osage inscription on the chair given to him. The biographies of Curtis all say basically that he gave up his Kaw identity. All that makes it into the histories is his place in Whiteman's politics. But we read that he spent 10 of his formative years solely among the Kaw. He simply must have spoken Kaw and participated in his native culture during that period, but none of his biographers has paid any attention to that. His life through his early teens is practically a blank slate because of historians' negligence. History is too important to be left to historians. Bob -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Alan H. Hartley Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:37 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Koontz John E wrote: > In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like > to plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan > Hartley. It's nice to have someone besides Jimm and me plump down (on either side) and chime in (to hash up our metaphors), but might I suggest a rewording like "the view of traditional Euro-American historiography"? From Louis_Garcia at littlehoop.cc Mon Sep 27 21:53:49 2004 From: Louis_Garcia at littlehoop.cc (Louis Garcia) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:53:49 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <6CFE0AAEA0B7E84A9E6292B3A056A68D164E44@meadowlark2.home.ku.edu> Message-ID: Members: There is one possibility for locating a source of Tsagagawias lore. That is the Alfred Bowers Papers. He interviewed tribal members in the 1950's. I understand his son Norman is sitting on the papers. Later, Louie From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Tue Sep 28 02:37:47 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:37:47 -0700 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? Message-ID: Just wondering... In a document of transcribed Ponca Songs, being: Warrior, Sylvester and Lamont Brown. 1967. Ponca Songs Sung and Translated. Recorded by Tyronne H. Stewart, October 1967 at Oklahoma City, OK. Transcribed by Earl C. Fenner and Jon Orens. ...on page 10, is listed a song that the commentary says, "This song, he's calling his friend. He had gone on the war path. At the beginning of the second part, 'pathanike', that we don't know. It's an ancient word which we have never learned as to what it means. But the first two words is 'kotha nuda he tha', it means 'friend had been on the war path.' I was wondering if anyone may want to take a crack at trying to figure out what the old Ponca term pathanike might mean. I'm pretty sure 'pa' means 'head' or 'first'. Jonathan Holmes --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 04:43:25 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:43:25 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > I'd also like to offer an idea here for consideration. > Is it possible that the ledh ([dh]) in hedhu's^ka is > epenthetic? I know this happens between i- (high front) > and other vowels in many old words. The preceding e- > is mid front, but might possibly have the same effect. I'd say this was quite possible phonologically, but I'm not sure it gains us anything. > If so, we could translate the term as > > he us^kaN > horn activity > > assuming that nasalization was lost from the last > syllable, as often seems to happen to unaccented > syllables in modern Omaha that are properly nasal. > > An example against this possibility is the pattern > of verbs of the we+u'+[root] form, which do not > produce epenthetic ledh between we- and u-. > > Thoughts? > > Rory > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 04:41:54 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:41:54 -0600 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? In-Reply-To: <20040928023747.39713.qmail@web40004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > "This song, he's calling his friend. He had gone on the war path. At the > beginning of the second part, 'pathanike', that we don't know. It's an > ancient word which we have never learned as to what it means. But the > first two words is 'kotha nuda he tha', it means 'friend had been on the > war path.' Songs can be very difficult, as I've learned just from a casual examination of the examples in Fletcher & LaFlsche and similar sources. The question of vocables, and of distinguishing simple euphonic interjections and syllable or final vowel repetitions from "sentence final particles" seems quite complex. Plainly Fletcher & LaFlesche, presumably the latter being the one speaking, don't distinguish these things, but then I think that they may not really have distinguished sentence final particles from euphonic interjections in regular speech either. I think some of the complications in songs stem from them being passed readily from one linguistic community to another, with only modest adaptations to the new linguistic context. Thus some songs in Fletcher & LaFlesch struck me as using, e.g., Kaw sentence finals, or something more like that than Omaha-Ponca sentence finals. In some cases, perhaps the final particles might reflect archaic patterns or even dialects/languages no longer extant. Of course, what can be said of particles can be said of other lexical elements, too. The commentator on this song lumps the various possibilities under the headings of "ancient words," but I think we can take this to mean any sort of textual obscurity, whether it refers to some actual archaic usage or simply to the usage of, say, Osage. I don't really know what to make of pathanike, but clutching at straws one possibility might be something more or less equivalent to spoken OP ppa dhaN dhiNge 'lacking the head' or maybe even ppa dhadhiNge, if that could mean 'spoken of as lacking (a) head'. I've seen the dha-insrumental used in the sense of 'spoken of as', e.g., dhaxube 'to praise, to speak of as holy'. The final element could also be dhiNkhe 'the (sitting animate)' or niNkhe, the second person of the same. There might be some more exotic variant of the expression ppahaNga 'first', which seems to be etymologically 'head-lead(ing)' or, equivalently, 'head-ancest(e)r(al)'. I've seen one or more of those, but don't recall them at the moment. Obviously one problem here is not knowing what to make of the transcription, combined for another with the possibility that the phonology of the song text may not be Omaha-Ponca. A third possibility is that the text has been arbitrarily mangled at some point or points by singers not knowing that the second factor applies or trying to make some sense of an otherwise obscure original, what one might call the "donuts make my brown eyes blue" phenomenon. (Or have you ever been caught in the crossfire during an attempt to parse "No, woman, no cry."?) As far as kotha nuda he tha kkudha = 'friend' Not the usual modern word, but kkodha (or hhodha) is 'friend' in Osage, and I've seen iNdakkudha '(my?) friend' in several places in Omaha-Ponca songs. Check the LinguistList archives, because I think we discussed this form extensively during the Kaw Chair Affair. nudaN = 'war, war path; to go to war' As far as he tha, it depends on whether this represents hi dhe or he dha or something else. The possibility he dha would be a reasonable sort of line terminator for a song, somewhere between a sentence terminator and a more "euphonic" string on the order of "Frog he went a courting, o ho, o ho" or "It was the same old song with the melancholy sound Uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh." But hidhe could be 'he was sent'. If it were a text I'd say to give me the rest of the sentence for context, but songs can be pretty oblique! There might not be anymore context than you've mentioned, or it might not be very helpful. From tmleonard at cox.net Tue Sep 28 06:54:53 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:54:53 -0500 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? Message-ID: As John Koontz pointed out, it is very difficult it is to learn a language from/through songs. I tried for years (how I got started in this) and I can safely say it doesn't work well at all. That song is a real good example. In addition, there's lots of paraphrasing going on in that recording (vs. word by word translation). Add vocables, vowel lengthening and abbreviation, song meter, etc., and you can end up in a linguistic mess (imagine trying to learn English from songs on the radio!). The very song you are referring to has been translated by some other Ponca speakers. To be brief, I believe the word was/is Pa'thiNge (pa - head / thiNge -none, translated as "no head" or "headless", also "head takers"). Historically, Pa thiN'ge was the name of one of the original four Hethuska groups on the Ponca reservation. Their dance grounds were located just west of Bois D'Arc, near Giveswater. When I had asked about that song and that particular word (from the very recording you are referring to) a few informants said "they didn't sing that right; there is no such word". On the other hand, to try and parse the word "pa-tha-nike" is difficult. "Ni ke" can roughly be translated as "you are" (e.g. udoN nike, you are good , or "aHta nike" you are the best). Pa can translated as 'head' or 'nose'. But I've never been able to find anything on "pa'tha", or the morpheme "tha" that would make any sense within the phrase. "Pa thiN'ge" makes sense historically and culturally. As to whether "they sang it right" or not or if that's the exact word........that's one of those sacred cow controversies from which I'd prefer to stay clear. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 11:03:39 2004 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:03:39 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" ma = "turkey" "itan" = "big or great" in Ohio Valley Siouan. Any truth to this? Thank you, Michael From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Tue Sep 28 14:17:53 2004 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:17:53 -0700 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: If you'd shown me that name with no hints, I'd have said it looked vaguely Delaware. But I dont know enough about Ohio Valley Siouan to say if that's what it is. Ask Bob or John. > > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? > > Thank you, > Michael > > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 15:21:29 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:21:29 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote: > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? Plausibility might be a better word than truth in a case like this! I suppose I could come up with parallels for the pieces. However, how about toma 'village' + itan 'big'. That seems like a better village name. The -i- is a bit problematic, and where did the h go? It might be safer to think in terms of toma 'village' + hi ??? + tan 'big'. I'd have to check to see if there was evidence for an i-initial in 'big' anywhere in Ohio Valley. I have this vague recollection, but my copies of Dorsey & Swanton, etc., are not handy. From rankin at ku.edu Tue Sep 28 15:53:15 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:53:15 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) No. There is no locative prefix with the shape to- in Siouan. Some people are obsessed with "big turkeys" and also analyze Mosopelea as 'big turkey'. What is it about turkeys? "Tomahitan" is another of those unanalyzable place/tribal names in the early Ohio Valley that could come from a variety of sources. The end, /itaN/, could be OVS for 'big', as it is in Monyton. The beginning could be the *htowaN 'town' term that we've discussed on the list. It is found in Dakotan, Dhegiha and maybe Chiwere-Winnebago, but I can't recall for the latter. It is also found in OVS with the form /taN ~ taNyaN ~ taaN/ in Biloxi (Dorsey and Swanton 1912, p. 271). It is an areal term also found in Muskogean, Choctaw /tamaha ~ tomaha/ 'town' (maybe Chickasaw too?). So from one source or another 'big town' is a possible analysis. The /h/ is troublesome for a Siouan analysis and the /-itan/ is troublesome for a Muskogean one. Unless external corroborating data are found (like someone having written down that it means "big town" or the like) I don't see any way to find a solution. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 6:03 AM Subject: Tomahittan? > > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? > > Thank you, > Michael > > > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 17:18:02 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:18:02 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00b301c4a573$4559ed80$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > No. There is no locative prefix with the shape to- in Siouan. Some > people are obsessed with "big turkeys" and also analyze Mosopelea as > 'big turkey'. What is it about turkeys? In regard to a locative to- I was thinking of Dhegiha *to 'hither' (or something like that) - part of the du/s^u/gu series in Omaha-Ponca, for example. This occurs with articles, postpositions, and verbs as a leading element. It's usually more of a nigh demonstrative rather than a locative, but Wes Jones has shown that demonstratives tend to occur as locatives in Siouan contexts. This is definitely streching matters. I wonder if the anonymous etymologizer might have been thinking of *o- 'in(to)' as a verbal prefix. Neither *to- nor *o- really fits the syntax of the form. I'd expect *ma- to be outside of *o-, and any *to functioning as a locative to be final. A given language might well do surprising things with its morphology, but in guess-work like this I'd rather not assume surprising morphology. I tend to tolerate surprising conclusions better than surprising assumptions! If the form has a very reasonable Algonquian etymology there's really very little reason to prefer the Siouan one over it. If it has neither then it would be wiser withhold judgement. I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? From rankin at ku.edu Tue Sep 28 18:19:20 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:19:20 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: > I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? is standard Tutelo and OVS for 'big'. I think Ofo aspirates it. B. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 18:44:56 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:44:56 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00e701c4a587$ad87e970$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? > > is standard Tutelo and OVS for 'big'. I think Ofo aspirates it. That helps with toma-h-ittan. In the case of Monyton, I assume then that we hypothesize moni-it(h)on. From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 21:52:24 2004 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:52:24 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00b301c4a573$4559ed80$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) David Sorg. Hmmm.... No. I avoid correspondence, in general. :-) Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. Michael From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 23:31:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:31:18 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote: > Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the > spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. Yes, mostly ghosts. From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 29 00:48:27 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 19:48:27 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: I heard from Sorg about a week ago and he proposed exactly the same etymology as your correspondent. Must be something in the water. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 4:52 PM Subject: Re: Tomahittan? > > > On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > > You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) > > David Sorg. Hmmm.... No. > I avoid correspondence, in general. :-) > > Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the > spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. > > Michael > > > > From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 29 18:37:54 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:37:54 -0500 Subject: Tomahitan? Message-ID: Yeah, I figured this had to be some sort of group of amateur linguists or historians all corresponding about the same things. Right now none of the various Tomahitan theories can be confirmed, but Sorg liked my Toma = 'town' idea. Sorg had also heard from some guy at the Smithsonian Press that the Handbook of North American Indians series had been canceled. I checked this with Ives and he says there is no truth to the rumor. The Southeast volume is shipping in mid-October and the series is continuing. I take it that the rumor started because the Smithsonian Institution Press is apparently being merged with the GPO and will no longer have an independent existence. So if you hear Handbook rumors, they're false. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: "R. Rankin" Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 6:05 AM Subject: Re: Tomahittan? > Turns out you're right on. > > :) > > Sorg had asked the question through an intermediary. > > On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > > I heard from Sorg about a week ago and he proposed exactly the same etymology as > > your correspondent. Must be something in the water. > > > > Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Sep 29 19:56:53 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:56:53 -0500 Subject: Tomahitan? In-Reply-To: <01cb01c4a653$706c7930$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: R. Rankin wrote: > Sorg had also heard from some guy at the Smithsonian Press that the > Handbook of North American Indians series had been canceled. I checked this > with Ives and he says there is no truth to the rumor. The Southeast volume is > shipping in mid-October and the series is continuing. I just ordered the Southeast volume (#14) for $72.00 from http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ It's the last of the areal volumes in the wonderful series. Alan From poulsente at hotmail.com Wed Sep 29 20:46:38 2004 From: poulsente at hotmail.com (tom poulsen) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:46:38 -0600 Subject: Tomahitan? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From poulsente at hotmail.com Wed Sep 29 20:46:49 2004 From: poulsente at hotmail.com (tom poulsen) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:46:49 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Sep 1 08:31:54 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 02:31:54 -0600 Subject: Second Dative In-Reply-To: <00ab01c48f92$6f2a3210$23b5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: No, just a terminological followup on vertitive. I often wonder where some of the Siouanist tersm come from. It's surprising how few originate with Boas & Deloria. Which is probably why it's so readable ... From goodtracks at gbronline.com Mon Sep 13 00:03:28 2004 From: goodtracks at gbronline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:03:28 -0500 Subject: HIDATSA Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Alan H. Hartley To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 9:12 AM Subject: Re: HIDATSA Jimm GoodTracks wrote: Interestingly, I learned that L & C "Bird Woman", Sakakawea [Chagaa'ga + Mia via A.W.Jones' lexicon] is indeed Hidatsa language as is the woman. This is the claim by a number of Hidatsa informants in the 1920s/ 1930s, and further attested to by Bull Eye [Gidabi Isda], her grandson and only living decendent in 1930s. There are several references in the L & C journals to Sacagawea's Shoshone origins (including her recognition of landmarks in the Shoshones' country and her reunion with her brother) and to her capture by Hidatsas. Yes, there are, and they have all been mostly refuted by the people who REALLY knew who she was. L & C had no apparent reason to misrepresent her ethnic origin, and it seems to me very unlikely that they did. It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa, nor by my comments here. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their journals and then forthright, dismiss the history offered by the very people with whom this woman lived. At best, L & C were foreigners who were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that he did not get the correct story. A fast forward to compare with today's world, we who enjoy state of the art communication equipment, attested interpreteurs and expert CIA information -- and it was just with absolute certainty that "confirmed weapons of mass destruction were within Iraq...". Infallibility -- never! In summary, if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., and in fact, the entire United States country has fallen into a habit of misspelling English, and needs to return to the faultlessness of the correct spellings as per the L & C Journals. Sometimes in linguistics, we come upon folk etymology in regards to the origin of various words. Recall the Lists' discussions "washichu" Lakota for whiteman, or "Paduka" the southern Siouan word for Commanchi. I do not believe that these narratives from the accounts of the various Hidatsa elders can be relegated to folk etymology. Some of the younger Native people in the communities have a saying: "If you're white - you're right". Anglo American bias in the writting of history is no longer a secret, however, as it was said in the beginning, there was no intended misrepresentations. Errors and misinformation do occurr...in today's world and in the world 200 years ago. jgt Here's the Sacagawea entry from my Lewis and Clark Lexicon that's to be published this Fall. (I hope the HTML comes through OK.) Sacagawea {s at -cah-gah-wee-@} A teenaged Shoshone Indian (sister of Cameahwait) who had been captured by the Hidatsa in a raid and was living with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau when the expedition arrived. Carrying her infant son Pomp, she accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back and was a valuable interpreter with the Snakes, a guide (in the vicinity of her home), and a gatherer of wild plants. Sacagawea's fate after the expedition is uncertain, but Clark notes her as deceased by the late 1820s, and John Luttig, a fur-trader, says in his journal entry for December 20, 1812, "this Evening the Wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squaw, died of a putrid fever she was a good and the best Women in the fort, aged abt 25 years she left a fine infant girl". The death by what was perhaps typhus or typhoid fever of this unnamed wife of Chabonneau occurred at Fort Manuel on the Missouri, near the border between North and South Dakota. S?h-c?h-g?h, we ?, our Indian woman is very sick this evening; Capt. C. blead her. [10 Jun 05 ML 4.276] Sah-cah-gar-we-ah.was one of the female prisoners taken.tho' I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being again restored to her native country [28 Jul 05 ML 5.009] The wife of Shabono our interpetr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions[.] a woman with a party of men is a token of peace [13 Oct 05 WC 5.268] In the expedition journals, Sacagawea is often called simply the Indian woman, the squaw, or Charbonneau's wife, and the captains apparently nicknamed her Janey. See potato. The indian woman.has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country [13 Jul 06 WC 8.180] The form of her name in the following quotation (referring to the present-day Sacagawea River), is an example of the use of m for w in careful speech in the Hidatsa language. (This variation also occurs in Ahwahaway and in Hidatsa a-wah-tee 'river, Missouri River' which Lewis [4.246] writes Amahte.) This characteristic alternation, along with Lewis's translation and his division of the name into two words, as well as the close similarity of the name to the Hidatsa words for 'bird' (tsah-kah-kah) and 'woman' (wee-ah / mee-ah), support the traditional interpretation of Sacagawea's name as Bird Woman in Hidatsa, the language of her captor-adopters, and its pronunciation with a hard g rather than the j sound that later became popular. this stream we called S?h-c?-gar me-?h or bird woman's River, after our interpreter the Snake woman. [20 May 05 ML 4.171] Ordway writes her name as though he knew that wea meant simply 'woman' and so omitted it. Sahcahgah our Indian woman verry Sick & was bled. [10 Jun 05 JO 9.165] Interestingly, I learned that L & C "Bird Woman", Sakakawea [Chagaa'ga + Mia via A.W.Jones' lexicon] is indeed Hidatsa language as is the woman. This is the claim by a number of Hidatsa informants in the 1920s/ 1930s, and further attested to by Bull Eye [Gidabi Isda], her grandson and only living decendent in 1930s. Her confusion as a Lehmi Shoshone, as per the L&C journal came about as a result of her marriage to T.Charboneau and his trading expeditions to the mountain areas, where Saka'gaMia (as per the pronunciation of the 3Tribes Museum staffer and another speaker--a grandson of Walter YoungBear. Wolf Chief in a statement in the 1920s indicated that the Hidatsa would not have ventured that far because of respect to their enemies. He suggested that perhaps the Crow went to Shoshone land and captured someone, but the L&C accepted history was incorrect. And I bet noone is willing to bet on the present day liklihood of the US Historians rewritting their version of history and the events even though the Hidatsa informants and other early century documentation tends to collaborate the Native version of the accounts. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 13 15:16:12 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 10:16:12 -0500 Subject: HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <004201c49925$45224510$4e640945@JIMM> Message-ID: Jimm GoodTracks wrote: > It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there > is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa, nor by > my comments here. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the > information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their > journals and then forthright, dismiss the history offered by the very > people with whom this woman lived. At best, L & C were foreigners who > were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact > is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did > not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via > a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C > were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information > stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that > he did not get the correct story. A fast forward to compare with > today's world, we who enjoy state of the art communication equipment, > attested interpreteurs and expert CIA information -- and it was just > with absolute certainty that "confirmed weapons of mass destruction > were within Iraq...". Infallibility -- never! I don't claim infallibility for Lewis and Clark, but I do give their accounts credit as first-hand reports of Sacagawea. In fact, it seems "rather ethnocentric" to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas living over a century after the facts on which they report. (Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying that, because of their European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of ethnocentrism.) Following is part of Lewis's entry for 17 Aug. 1805: "Capt. Clark arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved to be the sister of the Chif Cameahwait. the meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who afterwards escaped from the Minnetares [Hidatsas] and rejoined her nation... we called them together and through the medium of Labuish [English to French], Charbono [French to Hidatsa] and Sah-cah-gar-weah [Hidatsa to Shoshone], we communicated to them fully the objects which had brought us into this distant part of the country" That seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't see how even a naive ethnocentrism on Lewis's part could have twisted the facts of Sacagawea's origins so radically. > if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be > taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names > incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., and in > fact, the entire United States country has fallen into a habit of > misspelling English, and needs to return to the faultlessness of the > correct spellings as per the L & C Journals. The journalists, especially Clark, were not as educated in spelling as we are today, and they often spelled as they heard, giving us valuable clues into the pronunciation of English and other languages of the time. Their records are imperfect, but they're among the most important sources we have for the state of the trans-Mississippi lands in the early period of contact between whites and Indians. Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 13 16:20:40 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 10:20:40 -0600 Subject: Policies Message-ID: While we don't have any strict policies on HTML formatting in mail for the list, I thought I ought to point out for those who are used to using such devices that some of us - well, me anyway - do not see the letters here in color or multiple type faces. So, if at all possible, it would be nice if folks would please restrict themselves to more or less straight ASCII mail in the old fashioned way. I particularly advise against using color only to distinguish comments from original material. It's not necessary to use angle bracket indents, but some more explicit device should be used. Spacing and notes like "X says:" maybe. I realize all this is kind of clunky for those of you who have moved into the current millenium. We also don't have any policy on attachments, but bear in mind that attachments may not always make it through the processing of email in this day and age. Anyway, I'd also recommend avoiding approaches that cause the body of your letter to always be placed in an attachment. If you are (also) unable to see HTML-formatting in mail, would you please drop me a line on the side, off-list? I'lll summarize the responses. If I don't hear from anyone along these lines I may have to rescind my first suggestion above and see about revising the way I access the list! Perhaps I'm the only one watching in black & white these days. Folks are always, of course, welcome to discuss this on list as well, if they wish. John E. Koontz http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Mon Sep 13 16:35:52 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:35:52 -0500 Subject: Policies Message-ID: zhiNtheho John, I would prefer to keep things "simple". Black and White and straight-up ASCII is much preferred. Attachments are routinely blocked on my end. Over zealous virus guardian spirits? Malevolent computer wizards? Thanks for keeping this site running, and to all who contribute. I know that I get a lot out of it and my colleagues at UmoNhoN Nation also benefit. wibthahoN Uthixide Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Anthropology/Ethnic Studies Native American Studies University of Nebraska 132 Bessey Hall Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 402-472-3455 FAX 402-472-9642 mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 11:20 AM Subject: Policies From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Mon Sep 13 17:38:44 2004 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:38:44 -0500 Subject: Policies Message-ID: Another vote in favor of "keep it simple". I'm fine with attachments, but NOT with color or other fancy formatting. It either doesn't come through at all or comes through as annoying gibberish at the beginning and end of a (say) boldfaced word. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 13 19:15:30 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:15:30 -0500 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > While we don't have any strict policies on HTML formatting in mail for the > list, I thought I ought to point out for those who are used to using such > devices that some of us - well, me anyway - do not see the letters here in > color or multiple type faces. So, if at all possible, it would be nice if > folks would please restrict themselves to more or less straight ASCII mail > in the old fashioned way. Will do. I erred in sending HTML: I don't usually do it, but have become more accustomed to it in editing (and being edited) via email. (Netscape Mail requires a settings change to switch between plain text and HTML composition, and I usually set it for text.) Apologies to all. Alan From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Sep 13 22:32:55 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 17:32:55 -0500 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I can probably read html text just fine, but I agree with John in prefering old-fashioned ASCII. We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:04:01 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:04:01 -0600 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I got a few responses off-line in addition to those on the list. The consensus seems to be that we would prefer letters to be in straight character text without HTML formatting as much as possible. So, please try to avoid making critical distinctions with color, typeface, typeface modifications (bold, italics), etc. I apologize to those for whom this seems a step (or two) backwards into the dark ages. It seems, however, that not all of us are using spiffy modern interfaces. I think the issue of letters as attachments was less of a concern. I have to admit that pine (the old text in a telnet window mailer that I use) is smart enough to handle these. It can also handle text fotmatted with html - sort of. It simply ignores the html stuff, so carefully colored text comes out in black in white in Courier regular (or whatever text I ask telnet to use). Actually, I use puTTY ssh instead of telnet. Nobody lets you log in with telnet anymore! Aparently I'm not alone in this, though I think the company is mostly among the academic members of the list. Anyone using Web mail or one of the Windows mail clients (Outlook, Eudora, Netscape/Mozilla mail, etc.) is wondering where I got this fossil pine. Actually it's well-maintained and up to date in every respect, except that it works in "terminal windows" with unformatted text. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:09:21 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:09:21 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. cent(?) two mine the Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers use English terms for such things! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 14 19:17:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:17:18 -0600 Subject: Policies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Koontz John E wrote: > so carefully colored text comes out in black in white in Courier regular > (or whatever text I ask telnet to use). Another little policy, or at least practice, of mine is not to correct typos I notice too late, even if they do make me look like an idiot, unless they are in some critical point, or data, etc. So - honoring my theory in the breach - I wouldn't correct "in black in white." I offer this here as a helpful suggestion to others. Don't worry about little mistakes like this. We all know you wouldn't make these mistakes if you had all the time in the world to do this. (At least I hope people assume this when they read mine. *grin*) From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Tue Sep 14 20:50:45 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 15:50:45 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various ways... "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", "take my two cents", etc. Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the fourth week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I lasted 6 minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The differences in performance and competence are noticeable. wagoNze Uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 2:09 PM Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment > On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. > cent(?) two mine the > > Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think > Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the > coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers > use English terms for such things! > > From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Sep 14 22:00:57 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:00:57 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <002501c49a9c$e4f71430$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: WagoN'oNze U'dhixide wrote: > I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various ways... > "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", "take my two > cents", etc. Aho. "here are my 2 two cents" Dua'tHE we'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE. "I'm giving you my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE wi?i'. "take my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE dhiza' i ga ho! But I really just wanted to say "My two cents"! (I'm not sure about the accent on noNba. That seems to have been changed on me recently, with indications from a speaker that it was conditional on something we haven't defined yet.) > Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha > speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the fourth > week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I lasted 6 > minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The differences in > performance and competence are noticeable. And I would like to extend kudos to U'dhixide in this forum. It is still early in the semester, but we have been muddling along with trying to actually speak the language in class almost all the time, and the results are very promising. I'm really impressed with his new-found ability to keep the class going and even explain what we are doing in Omaha. His hosting of a cookout for the class this past Sunday, in which he and the speakers taught us how to make cowboy bread as a lab-- in Omaha-- was a high point of the semester. At the rate the students are learning, they should be pretty competent speakers before the course is over. Hopefully, Mark and I will be able to keep up with them! U'dhixide, u'udoN s^ka'g^e. Was^koN' ga ho! Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Sep 15 07:01:27 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 01:01:27 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > WagoN'oNze U'dhixide wrote: > > I will encourage wagaxthoN Rory to enhance his statement in various > > ways... "here are my 2 two cents", "I'm giving you my two cents", > > "take my two cents", etc. I'm not sure what the presentative construction is in Omaha-Ponca. "Here is ..." is right for English. > Aho. > "here are my 2 two cents" Dua'tHE we'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta > tHE. > "I'm giving you my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE wi?i'. > "take my two cents" We'dhawaz^ide noNba' wiwi'tta tHE dhiza' > i ga ho! > > But I really just wanted to say "My two cents"! That's the customary fragment for the context in English. Sometimes I see "that's just ..." > (I'm not sure about the accent on noNba. That seems to have been > changed on me recently, with indications from a speaker that it was > conditional on something we haven't defined yet.) I notice accent shifting on this in the texts, too. This is an interesting thing in Dhegiha that hasn't been worked out. It might have something to do with phrase structure and how the shifting form is in ocnstruction with other forms. Maybe alternating heavy and light syllables in phrases? It may in that way affect suitably shaped subordinate or modifying elements? It's not just "two" of course. > > Around here we are trying to reverse the situation that native Omaha > > speakers tend to use the English terms for such things. We are in the > > fourth week of Omaha I, using the immersion approach. The first day I > > lasted 6 minutes. We are now averaging 40 minutes daily. The > > differences in performance and competence are noticeable. > > And I would like to extend kudos to U'dhixide in this forum. It is still > early in the semester, but we have been muddling along with trying to > actually speak the language in class almost all the time, and the results > are very promising. I'm really impressed with his new-found ability to > keep the class going and even explain what we are doing in Omaha. His > hosting of a cookout for the class this past Sunday, in which he and the > speakers taught us how to make cowboy bread as a lab-- in Omaha-- was a > high point of the semester. At the rate the students are learning, they > should be pretty competent speakers before the course is over. Hopefully, > Mark and I will be able to keep up with them! This is all great news and it sounds like Mark has a good deal to be proud of! Incidentally, I didn't mean any criticism or warning by mentioning the Omaha tendency to use English numbers and denominations and dates, etc. This is often the case in language communities embedded physically and/or culturally in other communities and in itself it wouldn't mean that the language in question was endangered, for example, or inferior. Cross-linguistically numeral systems are often borrowed, or you find situations in which native and borrowed numeral systems exist in parallel, with different domains of use. And we've all been discussing cases that show that Siouan numerals have both been borrowed from other languages and borrowed into other languages in the past. I gather that numerals are rather more prone to this than once was thought. English uses borrowed numerals forms in a number of specialized contexts - primary, secondary, tertiary, ...; unary, binary, trinary, ...; singular, double, triple, ... - and I believe the ordinal form second and the fractional form quarter must be French loans. I think the more common numeral sets in Japanese are of Chinese origin, too. I've heard of cases where speakes of one Algonquian language used numerals from other Algonquian languages with better trading connections. From vstabler at esu1.org Wed Sep 15 18:14:42 2004 From: vstabler at esu1.org (Vida Stabler) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:14:42 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: The word for penny is wethawa zhide. ( M. Cayou 09-15-04, UNPS) VSS Koontz John E wrote: > On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > > We'dhawaz^ide noN'ba wiwi'tta tHe. > cent(?) two mine the > > Partly a guess on my part, but a safe one, knowing Rory, because I think > Rory must be one of the few people alive who knows the words for the > coinage, given his research topic. I think all the native Omaha speakers > use English terms for such things! From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 15 20:06:31 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:06:31 -0500 Subject: Fw: [TalkIndianOK] Useful website for language teaching Message-ID: This was forwarded to me by Kathy Shea and may be of interest to those on this list too. Bob ______________________________________ From: "Alice Anderton" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 12:28 PM Subject: [TalkIndianOK] Useful website for language teaching > I want to bring to your attention the website for the > National Capital Language Resource Center, which has a > place to sign up for a monthly newsletter, as well as > information about learning strategies for immersion, > the US's Year of Languages (2005), an MLA map of > languages in the US by county (based on 2000 census > questions, so exaggerates the number of speakers, but > still interesting), etc. Those of you who are > teaching, especially, might find some of these > features useful. The website is: > www.nclrc.org > They can also be reached by telephone and mail: > 2001 Eye St. NW > Washington DC 20006 > 202-973-1086 > NCLRC is a joint project of George Washington > University, Georgetown University, and the Center for > Applied Linguistics. It is primarily aimed at public > school teachers of foreign languages, but has some > stuff that may be useful to native language teachers. > You can also contact them with any language teaching > questions. > > Alice (Anderton) > > ===== > Alice Anderton, Executive Director > Intertribal Wordpath Society > 1506 Barkley St., Norman, OK 73071 > www.ahalenia.com/iws > (405) 447-6103 > Join our listserve: TalkIndianOK-subscribe at yahoogroups.com From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Sep 17 15:59:46 2004 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:59:46 EDT Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: An interesting Crow money term that I have heard is tennise'ete 'ten cents' Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 20:44:59 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 14:44:59 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <84.33f530f6.2e7c63f2@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > An interesting Crow money term that I have heard is > > tennise'ete 'ten cents' There are a number of such forms in Miner's Winnebago Field Lexicon. It's hard to know if they are nonce forms, regular loans, or some sort of code switching. My favorite has always been koinstaac^. Not a money term though it came up this time in that context this time. I suspect use of English coinage terms and counting in OP is something on the order of code-switching, but the forms were always embedded in Omaha speech when I heard them. I imagine this sort of thing works up to loans in the long run, and I could see something like one of the Japanese or Algonquian situations arising (or the English one vis-a-vis French and Classical forms). In Omaha things handled similarly to numbers, money, dates and times were many placenames and English personal names. I don't know if this was everything. Also, because my fluency in Omaha is near nil, I would have missed cases where these things were happening in Omaha. Obviously Omaha has equivalents for everything. These are all things that are the crack between Omaha and English, and might tend to arise mostly in English contexts (like times and dates and money) or be relevant primarily in English ways (like English personal names). So, I'd predict that numbers arising in Omaha ways - how many people, days passed, etc. - would come out in Omaha, but in connection with dates, money, and English-context computations, in English. Sadly I lacked the foresight or skill to look into this at the time! In regard to placenames I noticed mainly that many standard placenames with primarily an Omaha circulation were in English without any known (or readily offered) Omaha equivalent. I think also that a number of towns with standard Omaha versions tended to come up in English form, like Decatur, Walthill, Rosalie, Tecamah, Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux City, etc. Again, I would have missed any Omaha occurrences that weren't specifically directed at me. In regard to personal names I have since realized that a number of French-origin personal names in many cases are naturalized and perceived as Omaha words. That is, they are now Omaha words. This explains, for example, the assertion that Rosalie is the English version of the native Omaha name Thuzathi. I think it also explains Mary Clay (now deceased) being addressed as Me(e)dhi, with a specifically Omaha pronunciation. I thought this was English influence, but now I rather wonder if this wasn't considered to be her Omaha name, or at least one of her Omaha names. This might also explain the difficulty of locating "Omaha" names for many of the LaFlesche family. In many cases their Omaha names might be Omaha versions of the French names that underlie their English names. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Fri Sep 17 21:36:25 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:36:25 -0500 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: Aloha all, Exactly! I've always heard the old folks say that those were "half breed names"... not "English names"... with the implications that while they were not Omaha clan names, they were still considered an "Omaha" name. Therefore, my Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler's English name was "Elizabeth". Her Omaha name was "Thizabet"... since patrilineally, she came through the French Saunsoci side and was not deemed eligible to be named into an Omaha clan. Suzini (Suzy) JiniwiN (Jenny) Methe (Mary) are a few others. I need to do a systematic Q and A to find out others. Since some of the names get handed down through families, they becomes associated with particular clans...ebthegoN. I personally promote the notion to any Omaha community member I talk to... that their half-breed name IS THERE OMAHA NAME... not something less-then Omaha (i.e., English/waxe). I think is provides an avenue for building self-esteem for those kids not in clans. uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:44 PM Subject: Re: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment > In regard to personal names I have since realized that a number of French-origin personal names in many cases are naturalized and perceived as Omaha words. That is, they are now Omaha words. This explains, for example, the assertion that Rosalie is the English version of the native Omaha name Thuzathi. I think it also explains Mary Clay (now deceased) being addressed as Me(e)dhi, with a specifically Omaha pronunciation. I thought this was English influence, but now I rather wonder if this wasn't considered to be her Omaha name, or at least one of her Omaha names. > From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Sep 17 21:47:19 2004 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:47:19 EDT Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment Message-ID: What's interesting about tennise'ete is that it is not simply a matter of code-switching; 'ten cents' has been refashioned into a phonologically normal Crow expression: 1) an 'i' is inserted to avoid a weird 'ns' cluster, 2) the 'nt' cluster is simplied to 't', and 3) a final vowel is added to conform to the normal pattern for Crow nouns. The discussion of names reminds me of a story: Unless it is a ceremonial occasion like a sweat lodge or a giveaway, most Crows habitually refer to each other by their English names. However, there are a few individuals who are almost always called by their Crow names. One such individual here in Pryor is Oliver Costa, whose Crow name is Di'akaashe 'does it well, does it thoroughly'. Several years ago at a giveaway the announcer, who was from another district, wanted to call Di'akaashe to come and receive a gift. He said to the man next to him, "What's Di'akaashe's Indian name? The bystanders thought this was hilarious, and the story is still being repeated in the sweat lodge. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 22:41:43 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:41:43 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <27.61f4a96a.2e7cb567@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > What's interesting about tennise'ete is that it is not simply a matter of > code-switching; 'ten cents' has been refashioned into a phonologically normal > Crow expression: ... It's like that with the "French-origin" names in Omaha, the refashioning being often rather unpredictable, but the numbers, etc., are typically not adapted that I recall, though they are presumably in Omaha English, which is a bit different from eastern Nebraska English. Truthfully I don't recall the specific forms of the English used in the examples I noticed. Omaha English is also something I didn't really look at carefully, but I noticed that it was intonationally different and among the elders who were fluent in Omaha it had some treatments of clusters and finals in common with Omaha, e.g., [IglIs^] or maybe it was [Iglis^V] (with I for lax I and V for some undetected voiceless vowel). A different intonational quality was also noticeable in the speech of younger children, though I couldn't say exactly what was different. Presumably the kids weren't fluent in Omaha at all, but they may have been less aware of non-Omaha patterns. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Sep 17 23:03:58 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:03:58 -0600 Subject: Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment In-Reply-To: <003501c49cfe$61f66360$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Mark-Awakuni Swetland wrote: > Therefore, my Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler's English name was > "Elizabeth". Her Omaha name was "Thizabet"... since patrilineally, she came > through the French Saunsoci side and was not deemed eligible to be named > into an Omaha clan. Wuhu! > Suzini (Suzy) > JiniwiN (Jenny) And notice this has the root used for 'woman' in names added to it. > Methe (Mary) > are a few others. I need to do a systematic Q and A to find out others. > > Since some of the names get handed down through families, they becomes > associated with particular clans...ebthegoN. > > I personally promote the notion to any Omaha community member I talk to... > that their half-breed name IS THERE OMAHA NAME... not something less-then > Omaha (i.e., English/waxe). I think is provides an avenue for building > self-esteem for those kids not in clans. Oops, yeah. I hope I didn't suggest these names were less than good Omaha names, though traceable as comparatively recent (100-250 year old) borrowings. I think that everything points to them being integrated into the system. In a sense they're the clan names of the "children of whitemen," to use a Ponca expression. I'm not sure they haven't spread to other clans, too, however, since I'm not always aware who in the texts (or on the street) belongs to what clan, so it's nearly impossible or me to tell. For what it's worth, virtually all given names in circulation in modern English are borrowings, for various reasons, mainly the combination of Christian and French influence. Many of them are so thoroughly Anglicized that they have unique English forms, which circulate in opposition to more obvious (more recent) borrowed forms, like John vs. Sean vs. Ian vs. Jean, and Ivan and so on. Or Mary vs. Marie and Miriam, etc. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Sep 18 22:14:51 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:14:51 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. (fwd) Message-ID: Greetings all: I don't know if [anyone] remembers the online conversation posted on the "Siouan Languages Mailing List" (copy below) concerning the meaning of the Dhegiha term "Hethushka." I stumbled on it while doing some personal internet research into Ponca Hethushka traditions and origins, as I have been a dancer and follower of the Ponca Hethushka traditions since 1980. I wanted to comment on some information I found that may be of interest, to consider as a related connection between oral tradition, literal translation, and implied meaning to explain "Hethushka." I would like to suggest that since there are some published scholars (Wissler, 1916), (Howard, 1965), (Young, 1981), (Browner, 2002), (Belle, 2004) that attribute the possible origin of the Hethuska traditions to the Pawnee Iruska; and since the Pawnee Iruska has as its oral origin tradition, a story of culture hero Crow Feather who had a vision in which he meets spiritual beings as well as the spirit of a fallen Pawnee warrior who had his scalplock removed in a battle, that provide him certain teachings; and since it is well established that the Pawnee Iruska warriors wore their hair shaved on the sides with a braided scalplock at the nap of the neck, laden with grease and stiffened in an upturned fashion to resemble a "horn," so that the sign language for Pawnee was a hand at the back of the neck going in an upturned arch immitating the scalplock "horn"; and since according to Mr. Garvin, the commonly held interpretation for the term "Heyoska" for a group of songs among the Ho-Chunk is "to untie or remove the horn" (which could be interpreted to mean: to have your scalplock "horn" removed in battle, such as the Pawnee warrior spirit in Crow Feather's vision); and since the translation of "he" in Dhegiha is "horn", might there be a connection? (note: In "The Omaha Tribe", 1911, Page 182, there is a photo (Figure 40), of an Omaha man named "Hethi'kuwinxe", wearing his hair with an upturned scalplock "horn" at the base of his hair roach.) Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders or sub-chiefs at that time.) I know "u" is translated as "in", but I don't know enough to sub-divide the rest of the name. Could there be a similar translation relationship from the "u'shka" in the beginning of this name and the "thushka" segment in "hethu'shka"? Just wondering. Any thoughts...comments? Jonathan Holmes ************************************************************************** Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:46:36 -0600 From: Henning Garvin Subject: Re: Hethuska Thought I'd chime in here. In Hocank, the word "herus^ka" nowadays refers to people who go through the pow-wow circuit. Some say it refers to living a humble, giving way of life, but as far as I know, it is not related to any "war dances" and is often associated mainly with pow-wow. At least at this point and time. Many of the songs we sing at pow-wow have this word, and are actually called "herus^ka songs" I've been told that the word itself means "untying of the horn" and refers to the headgear worn by dancers (roaches, turbans, etc.). Don't know if this helps. Henning Garvin Linguistic research Ho-Chunk Nation Language Division >From: "Tom Leonard" >Reply-To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >To: >Subject: Hethuska >Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:56:41 -0600 > >Thought I'd share parts of a conversation I've been having with John >Koontz. >I'd appreciate any thoughts on the subject. > >I've been studying the "war dance complex" amongst the Dhegiha tribes. > >In Ponca, the word for this is "hethu's^ka". I also have the word being >pronounced "heo's^ka" (hey-o-shka) , hetho's^ka (hey-low-shka) and >hethoo's^ka (hey-thoo-shka). > >Most Poncas today say the word is an ancient term who's meaning is lost but >add "it means 'the war dance' or 'man dance'". However, my dad Joe Rush in >1977 said the word came from "xthe-xthe" (tattoo or >tattooed people) and "s^ka'de" (play or to enjoy). From a tape of him in >1977: "it meant for the enjoyment of those old folks...those old >folks...they had tattoos on them.....they kind of showed their rank". > >Does this make linguistic sense? > >Let's look at "s^ka" in the word first. > >John suggested "It is interesting to see another connection to s^kade, but >I >think that it's not likely that a final s^ka in OP would derived from >s^kade. I suspect that the Osage revised form with this association in it >has maybe influenced your father, though, of course, I don't know if that's >really a plausible assumption." Joe Rush was the head singer for all three >Osage Districts for many years and he certainly had plenty of contact over >there. So, that might have been the case (although he would have never >admitted it). So, I'll give that a "maybe". > >The question regarding s^ka from s^kade (to play) came from a discussion of >the widely held translation of ilon's^ka (the Osage word for the 'war >dance'), that is "playground of the eldest son". LaFlesche (1939) >translated >ilon's^ka as "those who partake of thunder" ("iloN" or igthoN - thunder). >It >is my contention the "playground of the eldest son" translation is a folk >etymology that has become quite engrained. In the 1970's I had several >elderly Osage people tell me, quite adamantly, that ilon's^ka had nothing >to >do with "playing" or "playgrounds" or the "eldest son". Each told me it had >to do with "the old religion"...then they usually started to change the >subject (the old religion being a very taboo topic of conversation). > >Oddly enough, the "old religion" had lots to do with bundle rites that >featured "xthe-xthe" - tattooing. The old priests were given tattooes when >they acheived a certain status (see LaFlesche). I think the last Osage who >had these died in the mid 1970's, but I remember seeing him. > >I've also wondered if "s^ka came from "s^ka'xe" (you make). I have heard >"s^ka'xe" abbreviated to "s^ka". For instance, you often hear "u' doN s^ka" >(you did good). John mentioned: "In OP gaghe can be used as a sort of >causative, but it means something like "act like, perform as." There's not >much tendency to lose final syllables in compounding except in initial >elements, e.g., s^aNttaNga, iNkhesabe, waz^iNttu and so on." Culturally, >s^ka from s^kaxe makes some sense. It also makes some sense in the context >of the anthro. literature in this regard. > >Now here's the rough part. > >Is it conceivable the word ( "hethu's^ka" or "heo's^ka" (hey-o-shka) or >hetho's^ka (hey-low-shka) or hethoo's^ka (hey-thoo-shka)) could have >changed from "xthe-xthe-s^ka" [s^kaxe or s^kade] to "xe-xthe-s^ka" to >"xe-tho-s^ka" to "he-tho-s^ka"...... (I do have some elders saying >"he-tho-s^ka")......or perhaps....... > >"xthe-xthe-s^ka" to "xthe-xthu-s^ka" to "xe-thu-s^ka" to >"he-thu-s^ka"........ > >Are any of these a plausible morph or liguistic change pattern? > >One other question. In Otoe, the war dance is called "ithu's^ka" or >"idu's^ka" (not certain). In Pawnee, I believe it's "iru's^ka". Can anyone >shed any light on etymologies or meanings from those languages? > >Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. > >Wi'btha hai ho! --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 20 16:26:46 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:26:46 -0600 Subject: Oklahoma City Message-ID: It looks like I'll be in Oklahoma City over the weekend of October 2-3, if there are any fellow list members there interested in getting together informally to talk Siouan. I'm chauffering my parents to a social event that doesn't really involve me, so I'll have some free time. From goodtracks at GBRonline.com Fri Sep 24 02:31:50 2004 From: goodtracks at GBRonline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:31:50 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Message-ID: There's no need to duel. My original point has been made, namely, that indigenous oral chroniclers may not expect to be given one iota of credibility for their own accounts of their own history when there is a popular different account by reputed "creditable" non-Native American chroniclers. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan H. Hartley" To: Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 10:16 AM Subject: Re: HIDATSA > Jimm GoodTracks wrote: > > It is agreed that L & C had no reason to misrepresent her, and there > > is no suggestion of such on the part of the early day Hidatsa. However, it is rather ethnocentric to accept the > > information on Bird Woman as understood and written by L & C in their > > journals and then forthright, yet dismiss the history offered by the very > > people with whom this woman lived. And that does not make for an objective historian. At best, L & C were foreigners who > > were traveling through the land of then indigenous country. The fact > > is that they spent only several months in Hidatsa country; they did > > not understand the various cultures with whom, they communicated via > > a minimum of three languages of not so great interpreteurs. L & C > > were two (2) people -- "Americans" -- and as such, their information > > stands against a community of indigenous people who say simply that > > he did not get the correct story. > > I don't claim infallibility for Lewis and Clark, but I do give their > accounts credit as first-hand reports of Sacagawea. In fact, it seems > "rather ethnocentric" to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas living a > century after the facts on which they report. It is not a matter of "to prefer the accounts of Hidatsas..." but to acknowledge their existance and give them credence equal to that of the foreign explorers of their county. The account of Bull Eye, the grandson of Sakagawia, was also a first-hand report of his experience with his grandmother and mother. His elderly peers at the time the account was given, also was a collaborated first hand knowledge of the old woman, her daughter and the grandson, Bull Eye. > (Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying that, because of their > European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of ethnocentrism.) No, there was no such implied nor suggested reference. Perhaps it is a personal bias being read in here. > Following is part of Lewis's entry for 17 Aug. 1805: "Capt. Clark > arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved > to be the sister of the Chif Cameahwait. It seems that the "proved" relationship was based on appearences and from the full bank of experiences of the writer's (Clark) own social encounters and knowledge, which did not include the indigenous cultural, social, kinship, etc. lifeways. Appearences can be deceiving. The extended and adoptive Native family can be quite warm and embracing. Furthermore, how is it that Sakagawia's name per se consistantly is in Hidatsa language rather than Shoshoni? It is not a practice to change the name as such. > "...the meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian > woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who > afterwards escaped from the Minnetares [Hidatsas] and rejoined her > nation... we called them together and through the medium of Labuish > [English to French], Charbono [French to Hidatsa] and Sah-cah-gar-weah > [Hidatsa to Shoshone], ..." > > That seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't see how even a > naive ethnocentrism on Lewis's part could have twisted the facts of > Sacagawea's origins so radically. Again, the account has nothing to do with ethnocentrism of anyone. What is amiss here is a present day bias to ennoble Lewis to a pious infallibility rather than a more mundane possiblity that indeed, his understanding of the native people, situation(s), and translations erred on the side of human inaccuracy and/or misinformation. History is filled with such misinformation and misrepresentations -- sometimes quite innocently and other times intentionally. A good historian is a seeker of truth, rather than a supporter of misconceptions. That is what the List accomplishes here with linguistical questions and rational analysis to render out the mysteries of indigenous words, phrases and sentences. > > if indeed, L & C's Journals are completely creditable, and are to be > > taken as is, then the French have been spelling their names > > incorrectly, to wit, "Shabono" [in lieu of Charbonneau], etc., > > The journalists, especially Clark, were not as educated in spelling, ...and they often spelled as they heard, giving us valuable > clues into the pronunciation of English and other languages of the time. And those of us who have spent countless hours trying to decipher the spellings of Native words and/ or language texts from such transcriptions appreciate their attempts to record what they thought they heard as well as the fact that they were not linguists by any stretch of the imagination. > Their records are imperfect, but they're among the most important > sources we have for the state of the trans-Mississippi lands in the > early period of contact between whites and Indians. > Alan Indeed their records are imperfect and equally their records are among the most important sources available for the early contact period. And equally so, are the records of the Native peoples who were also undeniable participants on all these occassions. Jimm P.S. As a final closing of this discussion on my part, hear the remarks of a present day Native as she reflects on her own historical roots: To: Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:10:13 -0700 Subject: Re: [iowaysonline] No answers here, just my 2 cents worth Just watched "500 Nations" on the Discovery Channel last night. It was informative but, as usual, the Indians get the shaft. History books do not reflect the truth, we know, and hopefully will be rewritten to say how it really was. I was taught early on how "Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492", and that presidents like George Washington and Andrew Jackson were to be somehow looked up to when they caused great suffering to the Indian way of life. It was heartbreaking to watch and gave me even more reason to hold on to my Indian heritage. Being Ioway to me is being a part of the history and future of our tribe. Keeping alive and passing down what our elders passed on to us. > From ahartley at d.umn.edu Fri Sep 24 03:46:56 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 22:46:56 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <005d01c4a1de$be2c1c30$95650945@JIMM> Message-ID: Jimm GoodTracks wrote: >>(Your reference to two native Virginians as ""Americans"" -- implying > > that, because of their > >>European ancestry, they didn't really qualify -- also smacks of > > ethnocentrism.) > > No, there was no such implied nor suggested reference. Perhaps it is a > personal bias being read in here. It's certainly not my bias, Jimm: you're the one who put quotation marks around 'American.' > how is it that Sakagawia's name per se consistantly is in > Hidatsa language rather than Shoshoni? It is not a practice to change the > name as such. I believe it was common for a captive/adoptee to be given a new name in the language of her captors/adoptors. (Few Korean adoptees in the U.S. have Korean names.) And Lewis and Clark came to know Sacagawea in a Hidatsa community through Charbonneau who spoke Hidatsa but not Shoshone, so it's understandable that they would have used her Hidatsa name. Perhaps it's a reflection of their primitive ethnography that L&C never learned--or at least didn't record--Sacagawea's Shoshone name. > Again, the account has nothing to do with ethnocentrism of anyone. What is > amiss here is a present day bias to ennoble Lewis to a pious infallibility > rather than a more mundane possiblity that indeed, his understanding of the > native people, situation(s), and translations erred on the side of human > inaccuracy and/or misinformation. History is filled with such > misinformation and misrepresentations -- sometimes quite innocently and > other times intentionally. A good historian is a seeker of truth, rather > than a supporter of misconceptions. I plead innocent of ennobling Lewis (or anyone else). The fact remains that, fallible as they are, the L&C journals are very valuable first-hand records. (Likewise, their natural science leaves a lot to be desired, but it's the best we have from that time in those places.) And I think it's a misconception that oral traditions are somehow inherently superior to written ones: we have little enough to go on, so let's use everything we have. Alan From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Fri Sep 24 21:59:51 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:59:51 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: Howdy, I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is someone on the list who can help. The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help would be greatly appreciated. Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: "war"? "leader" Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: "cook"? Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" Thank you, Jonathan Holmes okibjonathan at yahoo.com --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Sep 25 20:33:00 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 14:33:00 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <20040924215951.35696.qmail@web40006.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the > literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is > someone on the list who can help. Proper spelling is an interesting question. Quite a number of internally consistent, more or less satisfactory orthographies have been used with Omaha-Ponca. The best candidates for "proper spelling" in the context of your efforts are probably the current popular orthographies for Omaha and Ponca, which are similar, but not quite the same, though not in ways that reflect the similar "similar, but not quite the same" situation with respect to Omaha and Ponca speech. The differences are simply slight arbitrary differences in the spelling scheme. I'll try to provide forms in the Omaha version. Neither of these schemes is trictly speaking "official," but the are both in active use within the two tribes, and backed by committee efforts. > The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior > society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with > appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the > Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to > describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal > translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, > substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help > would be greatly appreciated. I'm using capital N and H for raised n (nasalization) and h (aspiration). I haven't written length, which is increasingly clearly a factor, though it's come into the picture to some exten since the orthographies in question were adopted. I've marked accent with ' following the vowel, in lieu of acute. I've put dashes between elements in compounds. Note that single ptchk are pronounced "tense." This means voiceless unaspirated in initial position and after s, sh, etc., and voiceless geminate in medial position otherwise. > Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: > "war"? "leader" nudoN-hoNga 'war (path)' + 'leader' (various English forms like headman, captain, leader, war-leader, war-chief used in various contexts) The accentuation is given in the Dorsey texts (1890, 1891) as nu'doN-hoNga in the vocative and nudoN'-hoNga in reference forms. > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. It could also be a loanword from some other language. The other forms I don't recognize. They seem to be different words entirely. The second one looks like Osage to me. > Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" hi'goN-udha Hi'goN is 'myth; to tell a myth', using 'myth' as the term for 'traditional (animal) story'. The second element is udha' 'teller; to tell' > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. > Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" wanoN'she 'solder, policeman, subordinate officer of a society, or of a hunting expedition or war party'. I think the English term whipman refers to the whip that is (in some cases, anyway) the emblem of office, though there's a distinct parallel with the use of 'leader' and 'whip' in US legislative parlance! > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > "cook"? ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? u'haN 'cook; to cook' si'gre 'track' > Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" siN(iN)'de 'tail' (probably a long iN) > Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" niN(iN)'-adhiN 'water' + 'to have' > Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" xu'ka-hoNga 'singer' + 'leader' The x here is a voiceless velar (actually uvular in articulation) fricative. Also a verb, e.g., in the Dorsey texts e'wexuka 'I sing for them', iN'xuka=i=ga 'sing for me', etc. I don't know the contrast between xu'ka and waaN', both rendered 'to sing' in English. > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Sun Sep 26 17:37:02 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:37:02 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thank you so much...this helps a great deal. Koontz John E wrote: On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I am having some difficulty in determining the proper spelling and the > literal translation for a number of Omaha-Ponca words. Perhaps there is > someone on the list who can help. Proper spelling is an interesting question. Quite a number of internally consistent, more or less satisfactory orthographies have been used with Omaha-Ponca. The best candidates for "proper spelling" in the context of your efforts are probably the current popular orthographies for Omaha and Ponca, which are similar, but not quite the same, though not in ways that reflect the similar "similar, but not quite the same" situation with respect to Omaha and Ponca speech. The differences are simply slight arbitrary differences in the spelling scheme. I'll try to provide forms in the Omaha version. Neither of these schemes is trictly speaking "official," but the are both in active use within the two tribes, and backed by committee efforts. > The project I am working on involves the Omaha-Ponca Hethushka warrior > society, in which there are men who hold various officer positions with > appropriate titles. I have the titles in English first, followed by the > Dhegiha word used with an assumed phonetic spelling I have heard used to > describe the title, and in some cases, what the known literal > translation of the Dhegiha term is. If anyone knows corrections, > substitutions, additions or deletions to what I have listed, your help > would be greatly appreciated. I'm using capital N and H for raised n (nasalization) and h (aspiration). I haven't written length, which is increasingly clearly a factor, though it's come into the picture to some exten since the orthographies in question were adopted. I've marked accent with ' following the vowel, in lieu of acute. I've put dashes between elements in compounds. Note that single ptchk are pronounced "tense." This means voiceless unaspirated in initial position and after s, sh, etc., and voiceless geminate in medial position otherwise. > Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: > "war"? "leader" nudoN-hoNga 'war (path)' + 'leader' (various English forms like headman, captain, leader, war-leader, war-chief used in various contexts) The accentuation is given in the Dorsey texts (1890, 1891) as nu'doN-hoNga in the vocative and nudoN'-hoNga in reference forms. > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. It could also be a loanword from some other language. The other forms I don't recognize. They seem to be different words entirely. The second one looks like Osage to me. > Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" hi'goN-udha Hi'goN is 'myth; to tell a myth', using 'myth' as the term for 'traditional (animal) story'. The second element is udha' 'teller; to tell' > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. > Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" wanoN'she 'solder, policeman, subordinate officer of a society, or of a hunting expedition or war party'. I think the English term whipman refers to the whip that is (in some cases, anyway) the emblem of office, though there's a distinct parallel with the use of 'leader' and 'whip' in US legislative parlance! > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > "cook"? ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? u'haN 'cook; to cook' si'gre 'track' > Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" siN(iN)'de 'tail' (probably a long iN) > Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" niN(iN)'-adhiN 'water' + 'to have' > Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" xu'ka-hoNga 'singer' + 'leader' The x here is a voiceless velar (actually uvular in articulation) fricative. Also a verb, e.g., in the Dorsey texts e'wexuka 'I sing for them', iN'xuka=i=ga 'sing for me', etc. I don't know the contrast between xu'ka and waaN', both rendered 'to sing' in English. > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 19:16:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:16:18 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <20040926173702.76499.qmail@web40006.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > Thank you so much...this helps a great deal. You're welcome! Of course, the best I can offer is a linguistic assessment. I don't know much about societies per se - certainly not from personal investigation. The Omaha are proud of the Hethushka and its history, and often mention aspects of it in passing, and, of course, there's an extensive literature on age-grading, military, and social societies that a linguist can't help but fall over occasionally. Incidentally, I've learned from Tom Leonard that the standard spelling of Hethushka among the Ponca is Hethuska, though the s is pronounced sh. I'm not actually sure of the usualy Omaha spelling. My version "Hethushka" may well be a scholarly artifact, picked up from old sources and/or derived from Dorsey's spelling heucka. > > Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" > > waje'pa 'crier, herald, announcer' It's a wa-derivative of a root jeppa or > deppa that means what it means. I don't know of that root in another > word, but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur. By this I just meant that I couldn't find such a form attested in a quick search, but that if various speakers were asked they might be able to think of relevant forms that hadn't made it into the literature. Watsipxa looks like Osage, because of ts and px. In fact, it suggests wahtsipxa or watsipxa - in the usual scholarly orthographies waccipha or wacipha - which looks like an Osage version of the Omaha-Ponca form, especially if the putative Osage form is wacipha and the OP form is actually wajepHa (with aspirate p). The e and i vowels don't match, but there may be some irregularity in the development of one of the forms, or perhaps I'm right about the loanword guess. > > Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" > > we'goNze 'advisor, to advise' from goN'ze 'to demonstrate, to teach'. > This seems to be a wa-derivative of a dative form gi'goNze. In other words, gi'goNze 'to demonstrate to, to teach (someone)'. > > Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: > > "cook"? > > ushna (or ushnoN?) ??? > u'haN 'cook; to cook' > si'gre 'track' I assume c = s, but if it's ts, then chile (OP would be tHigthe) might be one of the 'suddenly, all at once' auxiliaries. > > Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" > > I don't recognize these forms. l for gdh or xdh usually suggests Osage or > Kaw sources, as does ths if it means ts. It looks like there might be a > root -xdhaze (Os. -(x)laze) involved. I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 20:10:15 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:10:15 -0600 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <415398B0.7030401@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like to plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan Hartley. I think the information in the journals that Sacagawea had been born among the Shoshone, that she was able to speak Shoshone and that she and Cameahwait recognized each other as kin are mutually consistent and decisive. Presumably the story of having been kidnapped is more or less corrrect, too. I hope we won't descend any furhter along the slippery slope to hell via a debate as to whether Native Americans or Euro-Americans per se are better qualified to judge and/or edit the assertions involved. It is certainly acceptable to discuss how and why L&C might have been confused or chosen to misrepresent matters, but the argument should be specific, not based on general propensities of Native Americans or Euro-Americans or on irrelevancies such as who was subsequently wronged by the European invasion. In the face of these evidences of Sacagawea's Shoshone origins, it's equally clear that the only name securely attested for her is Hidatsa, and that she passed up the opportunity to remain with the Shoshone to return to the Hidatsa the long way around. You have to conclude that by her logic she felt she belonged with the Hidatsa or perhaps we could phrase it that she preferred to be there. Given that, you have to assume that her Hidatsa name is a natural consequence of Hidatsa residence, perhaps a translation of her Shoshone name. I don't see any reason to suppose that any of these bits of information are fabricated or inconsistent, though clearly they don't follow modern Euro-American logic. As far as Hidatsa claims that Scagawea was of Hidatsa origin, since the events in question happened 200 years ago, it's easy to understand how modern Hidatsas might have come up with a different analysis of matters, especially given the known circumtance of Sacagawea returning to the Hidatsa. But just as I'm not a primary source for what my ancestors were doing 200 years ago, so I think that in this case the recorded testimony of the expedition, incorporating their understanding of the Hidatsa and Shoshone testimony at the time, has to be given priority over any modern Hidatsa assertions to the contrary. As far as Shoshone names for Sacagawea, if one accepts the accounts offered by some subsequent Shoshone and non-Native American sources that the report of Sacagawea's death a few years after her return was incorrect, and that later in life she return to live with the Shoshone, then I believe the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife"), which is 'Grass Woman' in Shoshone. Admittedly this story seems less likely, though it's possible that the woman in question was a relative who had had a somewhat parallel history, e.g., the other woman kidnapped with Sacagawea, who was her co-wife, also married to Charbono. Other women with similar histories may have existed. Some confusion might naturally arise in such a case, and misrepresentation for personal advantage or even merely for the sake of a good story might figure. One can hardly assume that Sacagawea, having walked halfway across the continent and back, never said a thing about it to her co-wife or anyone else. People probably begged her to tell them about it. Taking this view, of course, involves taking Native American (Shoshone) sources over non-Native American sources! Unfortunately the sources in this case are a bit tenuous. This has been an area of wild speculation for years. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 20:32:24 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:32:24 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: <20040909170021.27132.qmail@web40007.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > I wanted to comment on some information I found that may be of interest, > to consider as a related connection between oral tradition, literal > translation, and implied meaning to explain "Hethushka." > (note: In "The Omaha Tribe", 1911, Page 182, there is a photo (Figure > 40), of an Omaha man named "Hethi'kuwinxe", wearing his hair with an > upturned scalplock "horn" at the base of his hair Note that this name (as stated in the context) means he thi- kuwiNghe horn by hand twisted around > Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, > but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, > "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is > "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without > Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, > on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the > Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders > or sub-chiefs at that time.) > I know "u" is translated as "in", but I don't know enough to sub-divide > the rest of the name. Could there be a similar translation relationship > from the "u'shka" in the beginning of this name and the "thushka" > segment in "hethu'shka"? Just wondering. Any thoughts...comments? I'd render this name u- s^kada= z^i (ushkadazhi) in he plays not In the texts 'play' always seems to mean about what it means in English, though I think the name Is^kada=bi is explained as something like 'adroit at sleight of hand' (referred to as 'juggling'), either in Dorsey's work or Fletcher & LaFlesche. I suppose this name could be literally 'not playing around' with Fletcher & LaFlesche's explanation being a development of that, or, rather, an explanation of the sense in which 'not playing around' is meant'. Anyway, though the final -shka of herhushka is associated with shkade in several folk etymologies of hedhushka, I don't think this names helps put those explanations on a sounder footing. From tmleonard at cox.net Sun Sep 26 21:54:16 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:54:16 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: Here's what I have on the linguistic side of the words in question. I have additional (cultural) information from informants in my field notes but that would get lengthy. Headman - nuda'honga or nudon'honga or noda'honga - literally means: "war"? "leader" (Ponca) - nudaH or nudoN - war, expedition, endeavor, "effort underway" (Ponca) - hoNga - leader, also "big" (interestingly , not 'toNga') field translations: "war leader","boss", "chief of whatever it was they were doing", "peyote chief", "road man" In Osage, I believe the phrase is: doHda haN (I believe Carolyn Q. or Jimmy Duncan could be of better help here) Camp Crier - wajey'pa or watsi'pxa or wa'gra ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) waje'pa - "town crier", "crier" , "herald" (John, I believe "announcer" is a different word, but I can't think of it at the moment) I don't recognize "watsi'pxa" as being related to the subject. A meaning can be derived in Ponca but I don't think it fits here. "Watsi" means "dance" in Osage, whereas in OP it would be "wachi". "Watsi" in Ponca is sort of a vulgur slang word suggesting a horizontal dance, if you take my meaning. Old Poncas used to crack up to hear Osages say "aNwatsi kombra". Ask Jimmy Duncan some time; my aunt used to punch him everytime he'd say it. My dad would then yell "washpaNgaho! you guys". Then everyone would bust out laughing. Jimmy typically recovered by adding "ay china". But I guess you had to be there. Dance in Ponca is either a form of "wachi" (e.g. aNwachi) or "wachi ga'xe". I've also heard noN'te (e.g. aNon'te anga'ti, we're dancing right here). I wonder if "watsi pxa" was noted as coming from Osage and what was really meant was "watsi pa'xe" (dance, I make) or watsi paxa(!) ?? Might have come from the linguist nightmare: Q. How do you say "you dance"? A. I dance (watsi pa'xe). Not sure; I think we'd need Carolyn or Jimmy to weigh in on that one. Can't make much from "wa'gra". Closest I can think of might be "wa gtha' e" (to give things out), or "wa gthe" (term for a plume). Historian - hegon'ootha ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) hi'goN - "old story" (example given was: hi'goN pa'haNga de -stories from way back there, a long time ago) (Ponca) udha' from "utha ge" - to tell a story This is a relatively "new" term as applied to the Ponca Hethuska; not a "traditional" position. I believe Abe Conklin started this in the 1980's. One of the old timers I spoke with years ago said: "Never heard of it, that's why they have them singers. They keep the history." (direct quote). Advisor - waygon'say ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) we'goNze; also have it as wa'goNze - "to teach" or "to teach us" Whipman - wanon'she or wana'cis - literally means: "?" (Ponca) wanoN'she - cop; policeman; truant officer; sheriff; traffic cop Cook - ooth'na or uh'hon or u'hon or ohan'cigre ? - literally means: "cook"? (Ponca) u'haN - to cook; or a cook Tail Dancer - sin'de or cin'de - literally means: "tail" "?" (Ponca) sin'de - tail (Osage) sin' tse -tail Water Carrier - ne'athin ? - literally means: "?" (Ponca) ni - water (Ponca) athiN - to have, or he has translation: he has the water or the guy with the water Head Singer - hun'kahonga ? - literally means: "circle"? "leader" (Ponca) ho'ka - group of singers (you often hear "ho'ka zaNi" - all you singers) (Ponca) hoNga - leader translation - boss of the singers, or "head singer" Prior to the 1950's this "position" was basically unknown. Among the Ponca "head singer" positions started post WWII in the early to mid 1950's as cars became more available and larger inter-tribal gatherings started coming into voque. If I recall correctly (have to look back at my notes) Albert Waters was the first head singer (at the 1952 or 1953 Ponca Powwow). I have this repeatedly from many many sources. Lady Singer - uthsa'ze or hola'ze - literally means: "?" I don't recognize these at all. Although, as I recall, I believe the Osage have names something akin to these for women singers. I'll have to defer to Carolyn ofr Jimmy Duncan again on this one. In Ponca, women singers are typically adrressed as a relation. If you don't know that relation or you are not related to the individual (or if you are addressing them as a group) you generally refer to them as "sister" or sisters" (wi'doNde, or wi'he, etc. - to wit, the womens singers says "wi'doNde". Again, regarding the history of the Hethuska, among the Ponca at least, women singers weren't/aren't really thought of as a 'traditional' position. Among the Ponca, women didn't start sitting around the drum out in the arena until after WWII. Hope this helps. Tom Leonard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tmleonard at cox.net Sun Sep 26 22:16:05 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:16:05 -0500 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. Message-ID: Thought I might chime in on this one as well. > > Lastly, I do not profess to know that much about the Dhegiha dialect, > > but I found the name of an Omaha person on page 174, of the same book, > > "The Omaha Tribe" by Fletcher & LaFlesche, 1911. The name is > > "U'shkadazhi", translated as "Dauntless or Rushing Into Battle Without > > Hesitation". (note: According to the Oklahoma State Historical Society, > > on 20 October 1880, when Agent A.R. Satterwhite filed a report for the > > Ponca Agency, "Rush Into Battle" was listed as one of the Ponca leaders > > or sub-chiefs at that time.) "Rush into Battle" was my dad Joe Rush's grandpa (the name was shortened to "Rush"). "U'shkada zhi", however, was his "baby name" or his "nick name" (Poncas were traditionally given two names, a baby or nick name and a "grown-up" name). U'shakada zhi" literally means "doesn't play around" or "doesn't play like others". "Rush into Battle" is a different name all together, but I can't think of how to say it off hand. I definitely have this on tape and can dig it up if would help. As far relating to the word "Hethuska", as you can read in earlier posts, Joe Rush and some others told me the name came from xthe' xthe' shka de (xthe' xthe' - tatooo, and shka de, to do or to make) or xthe xthe ushka (u shka - to do like) "to do like, or to do for the tattooed people". However, despite several Ponca informants reporting that, I don't think we have "linguistic agreement" on the list here for that etymology. "Hethuska" was/is reported as "an ancient term". Over time linguistic etymolgies can get foggy and folky. Culturally and historically, the definitions Ponca elders gave make some sense. On the other hand, I don't know if the linguisitc structure of what was given holds up. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Sep 26 22:31:33 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:31:33 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <001e01c4a413$5eb26520$fef60d44@tu.ok.cox.net> Message-ID: Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a bit about the Hethushka. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Sep 26 22:36:33 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:36:33 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Koontz John E wrote: > In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like to > plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan Hartley. It's nice to have someone besides Jimm and me plump down (on either side) and chime in (to hash up our metaphors), but might I suggest a rewording like "the view of traditional Euro-American historiography"? We probably all know John's intent with "traditional view," but people of other traditions might rightly espouse other definitions of "traditional." > the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named > Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife") Funny--I come from a land of Finnish immigrants, and "Puhinaivi" is precisely the way "Bowie knife" would be written in "Finglish." Finnish has no [b] or [f], and the only consonants that can end a word are, I think, [n], [s], and [t], so a vowel is often added to loan-words ending in a consonant. Alan From goodtracks at GBRonline.com Mon Sep 27 00:42:23 2004 From: goodtracks at GBRonline.com (Jimm GoodTracks) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 19:42:23 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words Message-ID: I searched under his name plus Hethushka, but found nada. Is there a more specific link. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Mon Sep 27 03:33:48 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:33:48 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca words In-Reply-To: <003601c4a42e$5bf46250$49430945@JIMM> Message-ID: To Jimm, I found the archive list in question at: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?S2=siouan&m=4663&q=ponca To John and Tom, Thanks for your input, I have learned a great deal. To Tom, Your name rings a bell from many years ago. Were you ever in New England in the 70s, say anywhere near Wilkinsonville (i.e. "Head Hill")? Thanks again, Jonathan Holmes Jimm GoodTracks wrote: I searched under his name plus Hethushka, but found nada. Is there a more specific link. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 13:41:30 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:41:30 -0500 Subject: spam enforcers. Message-ID: These university "spam" filters are starting to be a major annoyance. I have zero control over KU's and it's still considering all posts by Randy and many by John to be "spam" in spite of their containing nothing in the way of fonts or formatting that would suggest advertising content. I can't figure it out. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "Siouan List" Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca words > Please note that a long reply from Tom Leonard on Jonathan Holmes' query > got classified as spam by the U of Colorado. You can pick it up in the > list archives at http://www.linguistlist.org if you missed it with the > help of a local spam filter. It helps that unlike me Tom actually knows a > bit about the Hethushka. > From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 13:45:54 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:45:54 -0500 Subject: Trivia. Message-ID: AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in optimology!! > > the woman who claimed to have been Sacagawea was named > > Puhinaivi (a/k/a "Bowie Knife") > > Funny--I come from a land of Finnish immigrants, and "Puhinaivi" is > precisely the way "Bowie knife" would be written in "Finglish." Finnish > has no [b] or [f], and the only consonants that can end a word are, I > think, [n], [s], and [t], so a vowel is often added to loan-words ending > in a consonant. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Sep 27 14:01:49 2004 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:01:49 -0500 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: <002801c4a416$6a7c8e00$fef60d44@tu.ok.cox.net> Message-ID: I'd also like to offer an idea here for consideration. Is it possible that the ledh ([dh]) in hedhu's^ka is epenthetic? I know this happens between i- (high front) and other vowels in many old words. The preceding e- is mid front, but might possibly have the same effect. If so, we could translate the term as he us^kaN horn activity assuming that nasalization was lost from the last syllable, as often seems to happen to unaccented syllables in modern Omaha that are properly nasal. An example against this possibility is the pattern of verbs of the we+u'+[root] form, which do not produce epenthetic ledh between we- and u-. Thoughts? Rory From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 27 13:58:08 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:58:08 -0500 Subject: Trivia. In-Reply-To: <01eb01c4a498$50100d30$25b5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: R. Rankin wrote: > AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in optimology!! Really?! From tmleonard at cox.net Mon Sep 27 15:34:56 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:34:56 -0500 Subject: To trill Message-ID: John, Had to think about this one; it's been awhile. In Ponca, to "trill" (or as we say, "lu-lu") the phrase is "hu gthedoN", roughly translated as "hoot like a hawk" (hu from hutoN-to hoot and gthedoN-hawk). Tom Leonard John Koontz wrote: >I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill >ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. >I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. >The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho >in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Mon Sep 27 16:08:43 2004 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark-Awakuni Swetland) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:08:43 -0500 Subject: To trill Message-ID: zhiNtheho John, Yes, our UmoNhoN speakers at UNL refer to the "lulu" as hu gthedoN. uthixide ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Leonard" To: Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 10:34 AM Subject: To trill > John, > > Had to think about this one; it's been awhile. In Ponca, to "trill" (or as > we say, "lu-lu") > the phrase is "hu gthedoN", roughly translated as "hoot like a hawk" (hu > from hutoN-to hoot and gthedoN-hawk). > > Tom Leonard > > John Koontz wrote: > >I tried unsuccessfully to locate the Omaha expression for the shrill > >ululation that women make, but I couldn't find it by searching the list. > >I though the folks at the U of Nebraksa might have turned it up recently. > >The intitial syllable ho- might represent hu 'voice'. This would be ho > >in Osage and other Dhegiha languages. > From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 16:56:31 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:56:31 -0500 Subject: Trivia. Message-ID: No. :-> -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Alan H. Hartley Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 8:58 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Trivia. R. Rankin wrote: > AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in > optimology!! Really?! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Sep 27 16:58:17 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:58:17 -0600 Subject: To trill In-Reply-To: <003a01c4a4ac$434bd570$eb315d81@unl.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Mark-Awakuni Swetland wrote: > Yes, our UmoNhoN speakers at UNL refer to the "lulu" as hu gthedoN. Well, "Hawk voice" was what I remembered, but I searched repeatedly under woman. women, song, sing, hawk, even lulu, and various combinations without getting LinguistList to cough up the form. Yet I'm sure you (Mark) or Rory mentioned it on the list last spring! It's nice to know my memory isn't totally shot, as it sometimes seems to be, but I'm a bit disappointed in the search engine. Of course, this delightful expression doesn't help a bit with Jonathan's mysterious 'woman singer' form! I suspect what is needed is somebody who knows the Osage iloNska terminology. I think that the interesting thing about the list of terms in question is that it encapsulates the issue of intertribal linguistic borrowing. The Hethushka has probably been one of the channels of this for a long time, and seems to remain an active one. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Sep 27 17:10:19 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:10:19 -0500 Subject: Trivia. In-Reply-To: <6CFE0AAEA0B7E84A9E6292B3A056A68D01233B0A@meadowlark2.home.ku.edu> Message-ID: Rankin, Robert L wrote: > No. :-> >>AaaaHA! A universal phonological naturalness constraint in >>optimology!! > > > Really?! I fervently hoped that was the case. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Sep 27 19:04:42 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 14:04:42 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Message-ID: I'd have to say that I think it's probably pretty late in the game for us to learn much new about specific events 200 years ago unless the information got written down. That would hold for Wm. Clark's great, great grandson ()if he had one) or any Hidatsa or Shoshone elder. It's not impossible that that some new fact or other might emerge, but I think it's doubtful that something as salient as Sakakawia's identity will be clarified by modern memories. That said, I think it's certainly true that Indian recollections and views of history have often been badly neglected. Nowhere have I found this more true than in the little investigation into the life of Vice-President Charles Curtis that I did when we were looking at the Kaw-Osage inscription on the chair given to him. The biographies of Curtis all say basically that he gave up his Kaw identity. All that makes it into the histories is his place in Whiteman's politics. But we read that he spent 10 of his formative years solely among the Kaw. He simply must have spoken Kaw and participated in his native culture during that period, but none of his biographers has paid any attention to that. His life through his early teens is practically a blank slate because of historians' negligence. History is too important to be left to historians. Bob -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Alan H. Hartley Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 5:37 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA Koontz John E wrote: > In regard to the the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea discussion I'd like > to plump down on the side of the traditional view espoused by Alan > Hartley. It's nice to have someone besides Jimm and me plump down (on either side) and chime in (to hash up our metaphors), but might I suggest a rewording like "the view of traditional Euro-American historiography"? From Louis_Garcia at littlehoop.cc Mon Sep 27 21:53:49 2004 From: Louis_Garcia at littlehoop.cc (Louis Garcia) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:53:49 -0500 Subject: HISTORY OF THE HIDATSA In-Reply-To: <6CFE0AAEA0B7E84A9E6292B3A056A68D164E44@meadowlark2.home.ku.edu> Message-ID: Members: There is one possibility for locating a source of Tsagagawias lore. That is the Alfred Bowers Papers. He interviewed tribal members in the 1950's. I understand his son Norman is sitting on the papers. Later, Louie From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Tue Sep 28 02:37:47 2004 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:37:47 -0700 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? Message-ID: Just wondering... In a document of transcribed Ponca Songs, being: Warrior, Sylvester and Lamont Brown. 1967. Ponca Songs Sung and Translated. Recorded by Tyronne H. Stewart, October 1967 at Oklahoma City, OK. Transcribed by Earl C. Fenner and Jon Orens. ...on page 10, is listed a song that the commentary says, "This song, he's calling his friend. He had gone on the war path. At the beginning of the second part, 'pathanike', that we don't know. It's an ancient word which we have never learned as to what it means. But the first two words is 'kotha nuda he tha', it means 'friend had been on the war path.' I was wondering if anyone may want to take a crack at trying to figure out what the old Ponca term pathanike might mean. I'm pretty sure 'pa' means 'head' or 'first'. Jonathan Holmes --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 04:43:25 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:43:25 -0600 Subject: Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Rory M Larson wrote: > I'd also like to offer an idea here for consideration. > Is it possible that the ledh ([dh]) in hedhu's^ka is > epenthetic? I know this happens between i- (high front) > and other vowels in many old words. The preceding e- > is mid front, but might possibly have the same effect. I'd say this was quite possible phonologically, but I'm not sure it gains us anything. > If so, we could translate the term as > > he us^kaN > horn activity > > assuming that nasalization was lost from the last > syllable, as often seems to happen to unaccented > syllables in modern Omaha that are properly nasal. > > An example against this possibility is the pattern > of verbs of the we+u'+[root] form, which do not > produce epenthetic ledh between we- and u-. > > Thoughts? > > Rory > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 04:41:54 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:41:54 -0600 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? In-Reply-To: <20040928023747.39713.qmail@web40004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Jonathan Holmes wrote: > "This song, he's calling his friend. He had gone on the war path. At the > beginning of the second part, 'pathanike', that we don't know. It's an > ancient word which we have never learned as to what it means. But the > first two words is 'kotha nuda he tha', it means 'friend had been on the > war path.' Songs can be very difficult, as I've learned just from a casual examination of the examples in Fletcher & LaFlsche and similar sources. The question of vocables, and of distinguishing simple euphonic interjections and syllable or final vowel repetitions from "sentence final particles" seems quite complex. Plainly Fletcher & LaFlesche, presumably the latter being the one speaking, don't distinguish these things, but then I think that they may not really have distinguished sentence final particles from euphonic interjections in regular speech either. I think some of the complications in songs stem from them being passed readily from one linguistic community to another, with only modest adaptations to the new linguistic context. Thus some songs in Fletcher & LaFlesch struck me as using, e.g., Kaw sentence finals, or something more like that than Omaha-Ponca sentence finals. In some cases, perhaps the final particles might reflect archaic patterns or even dialects/languages no longer extant. Of course, what can be said of particles can be said of other lexical elements, too. The commentator on this song lumps the various possibilities under the headings of "ancient words," but I think we can take this to mean any sort of textual obscurity, whether it refers to some actual archaic usage or simply to the usage of, say, Osage. I don't really know what to make of pathanike, but clutching at straws one possibility might be something more or less equivalent to spoken OP ppa dhaN dhiNge 'lacking the head' or maybe even ppa dhadhiNge, if that could mean 'spoken of as lacking (a) head'. I've seen the dha-insrumental used in the sense of 'spoken of as', e.g., dhaxube 'to praise, to speak of as holy'. The final element could also be dhiNkhe 'the (sitting animate)' or niNkhe, the second person of the same. There might be some more exotic variant of the expression ppahaNga 'first', which seems to be etymologically 'head-lead(ing)' or, equivalently, 'head-ancest(e)r(al)'. I've seen one or more of those, but don't recall them at the moment. Obviously one problem here is not knowing what to make of the transcription, combined for another with the possibility that the phonology of the song text may not be Omaha-Ponca. A third possibility is that the text has been arbitrarily mangled at some point or points by singers not knowing that the second factor applies or trying to make some sense of an otherwise obscure original, what one might call the "donuts make my brown eyes blue" phenomenon. (Or have you ever been caught in the crossfire during an attempt to parse "No, woman, no cry."?) As far as kotha nuda he tha kkudha = 'friend' Not the usual modern word, but kkodha (or hhodha) is 'friend' in Osage, and I've seen iNdakkudha '(my?) friend' in several places in Omaha-Ponca songs. Check the LinguistList archives, because I think we discussed this form extensively during the Kaw Chair Affair. nudaN = 'war, war path; to go to war' As far as he tha, it depends on whether this represents hi dhe or he dha or something else. The possibility he dha would be a reasonable sort of line terminator for a song, somewhere between a sentence terminator and a more "euphonic" string on the order of "Frog he went a courting, o ho, o ho" or "It was the same old song with the melancholy sound Uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh." But hidhe could be 'he was sent'. If it were a text I'd say to give me the rest of the sentence for context, but songs can be pretty oblique! There might not be anymore context than you've mentioned, or it might not be very helpful. From tmleonard at cox.net Tue Sep 28 06:54:53 2004 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:54:53 -0500 Subject: Ponca - pathanike? Message-ID: As John Koontz pointed out, it is very difficult it is to learn a language from/through songs. I tried for years (how I got started in this) and I can safely say it doesn't work well at all. That song is a real good example. In addition, there's lots of paraphrasing going on in that recording (vs. word by word translation). Add vocables, vowel lengthening and abbreviation, song meter, etc., and you can end up in a linguistic mess (imagine trying to learn English from songs on the radio!). The very song you are referring to has been translated by some other Ponca speakers. To be brief, I believe the word was/is Pa'thiNge (pa - head / thiNge -none, translated as "no head" or "headless", also "head takers"). Historically, Pa thiN'ge was the name of one of the original four Hethuska groups on the Ponca reservation. Their dance grounds were located just west of Bois D'Arc, near Giveswater. When I had asked about that song and that particular word (from the very recording you are referring to) a few informants said "they didn't sing that right; there is no such word". On the other hand, to try and parse the word "pa-tha-nike" is difficult. "Ni ke" can roughly be translated as "you are" (e.g. udoN nike, you are good , or "aHta nike" you are the best). Pa can translated as 'head' or 'nose'. But I've never been able to find anything on "pa'tha", or the morpheme "tha" that would make any sense within the phrase. "Pa thiN'ge" makes sense historically and culturally. As to whether "they sang it right" or not or if that's the exact word........that's one of those sacred cow controversies from which I'd prefer to stay clear. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 11:03:39 2004 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:03:39 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" ma = "turkey" "itan" = "big or great" in Ohio Valley Siouan. Any truth to this? Thank you, Michael From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Tue Sep 28 14:17:53 2004 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:17:53 -0700 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: If you'd shown me that name with no hints, I'd have said it looked vaguely Delaware. But I dont know enough about Ohio Valley Siouan to say if that's what it is. Ask Bob or John. > > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? > > Thank you, > Michael > > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 15:21:29 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:21:29 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote: > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? Plausibility might be a better word than truth in a case like this! I suppose I could come up with parallels for the pieces. However, how about toma 'village' + itan 'big'. That seems like a better village name. The -i- is a bit problematic, and where did the h go? It might be safer to think in terms of toma 'village' + hi ??? + tan 'big'. I'd have to check to see if there was evidence for an i-initial in 'big' anywhere in Ohio Valley. I have this vague recollection, but my copies of Dorsey & Swanton, etc., are not handy. From rankin at ku.edu Tue Sep 28 15:53:15 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:53:15 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) No. There is no locative prefix with the shape to- in Siouan. Some people are obsessed with "big turkeys" and also analyze Mosopelea as 'big turkey'. What is it about turkeys? "Tomahitan" is another of those unanalyzable place/tribal names in the early Ohio Valley that could come from a variety of sources. The end, /itaN/, could be OVS for 'big', as it is in Monyton. The beginning could be the *htowaN 'town' term that we've discussed on the list. It is found in Dakotan, Dhegiha and maybe Chiwere-Winnebago, but I can't recall for the latter. It is also found in OVS with the form /taN ~ taNyaN ~ taaN/ in Biloxi (Dorsey and Swanton 1912, p. 271). It is an areal term also found in Muskogean, Choctaw /tamaha ~ tomaha/ 'town' (maybe Chickasaw too?). So from one source or another 'big town' is a possible analysis. The /h/ is troublesome for a Siouan analysis and the /-itan/ is troublesome for a Muskogean one. Unless external corroborating data are found (like someone having written down that it means "big town" or the like) I don't see any way to find a solution. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 6:03 AM Subject: Tomahittan? > > Someone has told me that "Tomahittan" is analyzable as, and I quote, > > To = a variant of a prefix meaning "at" > > ma = "turkey" > > "itan" = "big or great" > > in Ohio Valley Siouan. > > > Any truth to this? > > Thank you, > Michael > > > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 17:18:02 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:18:02 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00b301c4a573$4559ed80$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > No. There is no locative prefix with the shape to- in Siouan. Some > people are obsessed with "big turkeys" and also analyze Mosopelea as > 'big turkey'. What is it about turkeys? In regard to a locative to- I was thinking of Dhegiha *to 'hither' (or something like that) - part of the du/s^u/gu series in Omaha-Ponca, for example. This occurs with articles, postpositions, and verbs as a leading element. It's usually more of a nigh demonstrative rather than a locative, but Wes Jones has shown that demonstratives tend to occur as locatives in Siouan contexts. This is definitely streching matters. I wonder if the anonymous etymologizer might have been thinking of *o- 'in(to)' as a verbal prefix. Neither *to- nor *o- really fits the syntax of the form. I'd expect *ma- to be outside of *o-, and any *to functioning as a locative to be final. A given language might well do surprising things with its morphology, but in guess-work like this I'd rather not assume surprising morphology. I tend to tolerate surprising conclusions better than surprising assumptions! If the form has a very reasonable Algonquian etymology there's really very little reason to prefer the Siouan one over it. If it has neither then it would be wiser withhold judgement. I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? From rankin at ku.edu Tue Sep 28 18:19:20 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:19:20 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: > I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? is standard Tutelo and OVS for 'big'. I think Ofo aspirates it. B. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 18:44:56 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:44:56 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00e701c4a587$ad87e970$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > I'd have thought that the -y- in Monyton went with the Moni- part? > > is standard Tutelo and OVS for 'big'. I think Ofo aspirates it. That helps with toma-h-ittan. In the case of Monyton, I assume then that we hypothesize moni-it(h)on. From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 21:52:24 2004 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:52:24 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: <00b301c4a573$4559ed80$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) David Sorg. Hmmm.... No. I avoid correspondence, in general. :-) Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. Michael From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Sep 28 23:31:18 2004 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:31:18 -0600 Subject: Tomahittan? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote: > Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the > spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. Yes, mostly ghosts. From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 29 00:48:27 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 19:48:27 -0500 Subject: Tomahittan? Message-ID: I heard from Sorg about a week ago and he proposed exactly the same etymology as your correspondent. Must be something in the water. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 4:52 PM Subject: Re: Tomahittan? > > > On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > > You must be corresponding with David Sorg. :-) > > David Sorg. Hmmm.... No. > I avoid correspondence, in general. :-) > > Thanks, Bob and John, for the ideas. That Ohio valley is one of the > spookiest places ethnonymically speaking. > > Michael > > > > From rankin at ku.edu Wed Sep 29 18:37:54 2004 From: rankin at ku.edu (R. Rankin) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:37:54 -0500 Subject: Tomahitan? Message-ID: Yeah, I figured this had to be some sort of group of amateur linguists or historians all corresponding about the same things. Right now none of the various Tomahitan theories can be confirmed, but Sorg liked my Toma = 'town' idea. Sorg had also heard from some guy at the Smithsonian Press that the Handbook of North American Indians series had been canceled. I checked this with Ives and he says there is no truth to the rumor. The Southeast volume is shipping in mid-October and the series is continuing. I take it that the rumor started because the Smithsonian Institution Press is apparently being merged with the GPO and will no longer have an independent existence. So if you hear Handbook rumors, they're false. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Mccafferty" To: "R. Rankin" Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 6:05 AM Subject: Re: Tomahittan? > Turns out you're right on. > > :) > > Sorg had asked the question through an intermediary. > > On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, R. Rankin wrote: > > > I heard from Sorg about a week ago and he proposed exactly the same etymology as > > your correspondent. Must be something in the water. > > > > Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Sep 29 19:56:53 2004 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:56:53 -0500 Subject: Tomahitan? In-Reply-To: <01cb01c4a653$706c7930$1eb5ed81@Rankin> Message-ID: R. Rankin wrote: > Sorg had also heard from some guy at the Smithsonian Press that the > Handbook of North American Indians series had been canceled. I checked this > with Ives and he says there is no truth to the rumor. The Southeast volume is > shipping in mid-October and the series is continuing. I just ordered the Southeast volume (#14) for $72.00 from http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ It's the last of the areal volumes in the wonderful series. Alan From poulsente at hotmail.com Wed Sep 29 20:46:38 2004 From: poulsente at hotmail.com (tom poulsen) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:46:38 -0600 Subject: Tomahitan? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From poulsente at hotmail.com Wed Sep 29 20:46:49 2004 From: poulsente at hotmail.com (tom poulsen) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:46:49 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: