Dakotan ''wichasha'' 'man'.

[jurga at ou.edu]

Bob,

Here is Lakota scholar and speaker Albert White Hat's (Rosebud Sioux Reservation) analysis of "wic^as^a":

Wic^a, "a male"; s^a, "adornment". "S^a" is a short form of s^aic^'iye, "to dress up".
Buechel (1983:460) translates s^aic^'iye as "to paint one's self red" or "to dress well".
Albert's interpretation of the word focuses not on the color red, but on the aspect of maturity and responsibility that the adornment implies for the male. According to him, the term wic^as^a implies a position of honor which he achieves through exhibiting the maturity of his actions.

References:
Buechel, Eugene. 1983. Lakota-English Dictionary. Ed. by Paul Manhart. Pine Ridge, SD: Red Cloud Indian School.
White Hat, Albert, Sr. 1999. Reading and Writing the Lakota Language: Lakota Iyapi un Wowapi nahan Yawapi. Ed. by Jael Kampfe. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.

Jurga

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu>
Date: Thursday, April 28, 2005 5:52 pm
Subject: Dakotan ''wichasha'' 'man'.

> All,
>
> I have a note from Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian
> asking about the Dakota term for 'man, person',
> variously wichasha, wichashta; Stoney wiNcha.  He was
> looking at some of the earliest transcriptions of the
> word in accounts from the mid 19th century and found
> that 'wichasha' was analyzed as wicha 'man' + -sha
> 'red'  = red-man or Indian.  Here are his citations:
>
> 1) Bruce Husband, Ft. Laramie, June 26, 1849.  man =
> wi-tsha Indian; people = witshasha (note: Literally=Red
> men)
>
> 2) Ferdinand V. Hayden, Lakhota vocab (cf. Hayden
> 1862:378).   man = wi-tcha'-sha Indians, people =
> wi-tcha'-sha red man
>
> 3) Albert Bierstadt, Lakhota, 1863.  man = wicha
> Indians, people = We-shota
>
> Is there an argument (for or) against taking wichhAsha
> as etymologically wichhA 'man, male human' (as also in
> Riggs's Dakota) + sha 'red'?  Is this a commonly
> accepted reading/analysis of people who speak the
> language?  Or is the ending/augment -sha or -shta an
> arbitrary addition, essentially an empty morph?
>
> What do you make of Bierstadt's form We-shota?
>
> Any chance the -shta of Dakota is connected to (Lakhota
> only?) shota 'muddy'?  Or is the -shta of Dakota
> somehow cognate with the -sha of Yankton and Lakhota
> after all?
>
> I pass these comments and questions on to you in the
> hope that you can shed more light on them than I can.
>
> Bob
>
>
>