Meaning of Siouan word "Shke-ma."

[are2 at buffalo.edu]

In general, I hesitate to say anything about songs due to sacredness
and other issues.  However, the 2 comments I have back up the original
translations and transcriptions given by the Elders (without a need to
posit additional reconstruction).

>>ha ni'kka bthe (ta ni'ke) egi's^e - Chief (commander) / you will
be / you said  (as given by T. Leonard)

Ths is certainly likely to be 'bthe' 'I go' or 'I become.'  It is used
as an inchoative auxiliary as well as a main verb in modern Omaha.
There's no need to reconstruct or posit it as bdhiN 'I am.'

Also in
>>I  ka-ga-ma  the,  i  shay  tho,  ‘you  said  he  was my friend!’
(in original and R. Larson posting)

the 'ma' is likely the progressive auxiliary 'ama' and not a particle
based on moNthiN or a causative.

I can only be amazed by Elder speaker abilities to translate.





Quoting Rory M Larson <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu>:

>
>
>
>
> Jonathan wrote:
>
>
> >  "Ha  ni-ka-bthe,  i shay tho, ‘I’m going to be a chief’. Let
> me give you
> the  story  behind this song. There was a young Sioux who was taken
> captive
> among the Poncas and finally became a young man. Every now and then
> he’d be
> missing.  Evidently  someone  had  told him that he was a captive
> among the
> Poncas and that he was a Sioux. So he’d go back to the Sioux. One
> time when
> the  Siouxs  raided  the  Poncas, someone spotted him. So the next
> time the
> Siouxs raided again, they singled him out and they recaptured him,
> and when
> they  recaptured him, he begged for mercy. He said, ‘When I get
> back to the
> Siouxs, if you’ll pity me, spare my life.’ He said, ‘When I get
> back to the
> Siouxs,  they  are going to put me in the place of my father in the
> council
> of  chiefs.’ But the Ponca didn’t spare his life, they killed
> him. The song
> goes  on  to say, MoNchu Shkema, that’s his name, but we don’t
> know what it
> means.  I  ka-ga-ma  the,  i  shay  tho,  ‘you  said  he  was my
> frien! d’.
> A-cha-tho,  that’s  a Siouan word which we can’t translate. I
> shay, ‘that’s
> what  you said,’ ‘that you were my friend,’ meaning that after
> he professed
> friendship  with  the Poncas, he had been in war parties against the
> Poncas
> and  they  captured  him.  That’s  how  the  song  was made, for
> that man."
> (Warrior & Brown, 1967, p. 30)
>
> That commentary helps a lot.  I wasn't making much sense out of the
> transcription alone.
>
>   i shay is es^e', 'you said (it)'.
>
>   tho must be dhoN, perhaps short for dhoN's^ti, meaning 'formerly'.
>
>   i ka-ga-ma the might be analyzed in two different ways.  In either
>   case, the ka-ga part must be kHage', or 'friend' in OP.  (I
> believe
>   Dakotan would use kHola'.)
>
>     1.  In both OP and Dakotan, a causative construction can be used
>         with a relationship term to indicate a relationship between
>         two people.  The causative is -dhe in OP, and -ye in
> Dakotan.
>         To conjugate, an affixed pronoun is placed between the
> elements.
>         Thus, to say 'He is my friend', we should have something
> like
>         'friend' + 'me' + -dhe/-ye.  In Dakotan, 'me' is -ma-, but
> in
>         OP it is -aN-.  So if we analyze this as a causative
> relationship
>         term, we are left with a reasonable OP kHage'dhe, inflected
> with
>         a Dakotan affixed pronoun, and no explanation for the
> preceding i.
>
>     2.  In OP, a preceding i- may be attached to relationship terms
> to
>         indicate the relationship in a verbal sense.  I think this
> is
>         used more often in OP, while the causative is normally used
> in
>         Dakotan.  So ikHa'ge would mean 'his friend' (and not 'my
> friend').
>         In that case, ma the would probably be moNdhiN', 'he walks',
>         used here as a behavioral continuative.  This interpretation
>         seems more likely to me.  So ikHa'ge moNdhiN', 'he goes as
>         his/their friend'.
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe is less clear.  I suppose the ni-ka is ni'kka, as in
> ni'kkagahi, 'chief', or ni'kkas^iNga, 'person'.  The bthe might be
> either bdhe', 'I go', or bdhiN', 'I am (a member of such a set)'.
> If
> ma the is in fact moNdhiN', as suggested above, then the possibility
> of interpreting transcribed e as [iN] is supported.  Another word
> for
> chief is gahi'ge, which seems to contain the same gahi as in
> ni'kkagahi.
> The word s^iN'gaz^iNga, 'child', 'baby', is the only one I know of
> besides ni'kkas^iNga to have that s^iN'ga element.  Perhaps s^iN'ga
> originally meant 'youth' or 'youthful'?  In that case, a 'little
> youth'
> would be a small child, and a young ni'kka would be a ni'kka who is
> immature, hence a common man in contrast to a chief, which could be
> extended from there to mean a person in general.  In that case,
> gahi'
> could mean 'lead' or perhaps 'drive', and gahi'ge could mean
> 'leader',
> while a ni'kkagahi would be one who leads ni'kkas.  This might
> suggest
> that ni'kka is a fairly honorable term.  In Osage, it means 'man'
> (La Flesche), so a ni'kkagahi would be a "leader of men".  But
> perhaps
> it was even better than that in Ponka, meaning, perhaps,
> specifically
> a young man of a good family, or the son of a chief.  Or perhaps the
> preceding ha combined with ni'kka to produce this meaning.  Either
> way,
> I would guess the meaning as approximately
>
>   Ha-ni'kka bdhiN, es^e' dhoN
>   "I am the heir-of-a-chief (?)", you said formerly.
>
> A-cha-tho The only thing I can think of here is that the ch is being
> used for [t?], which could give us at?a' or at?e', 'I die', for the
> first
> part of that.
>
>
> > MoN-chu Shke-ma, i ka-ga-ma the, i shay tho
>
> The Shke-ma here should probably be s^ki'-(a)ma or s^kiN'-(a)ma.
> To take one last shot at reading it in OP, I would try
>
>   MoNc^Hu', s^ki' ama', ikHa'ge moNdhiN, es^e' dhoN(s^ti).
>
>   Bear, you came back, it is said, he goes as a friend, you said
> formerly.
>
> Beyond that, I would have to trust the Ponka elders and appeal to
> the
> Dakotanists on the list for help on "Shke-ma".
>
> I'd also like to note that the "yo he ye oi" and "yo he ye ya"
> series
> listed look a lot like the other ones, though they can't have the
> meaning
> here that I was attributing to them there.  Hence, Tom's claim that
> they
> are semantically meaningless vocables is favored over my suggestion
> that
> they were stylized sentence endings.
>
> Rory
>
>
>
>
>
>
>              Jonathan Holmes
>
>              <okibjonathan at yah
>
>              oo.com>
>   To
>              Sent by:                  siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>
>              owner-siouan at list
>   cc
>              s.colorado.edu
>
>
> Subject
>                                        Re: Meaning of Siouan word
>
>              03/11/2005 04:41          "Shke-ma."
>
>              PM
>
>
>
>
>
>              Please respond to
>
>              siouan at lists.colo
>
>                  rado.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I have enjoyed the different commentaries, and have learned a great
> deal on
> the intricacies of linguistics. I just found another song translation
> using
> the same name, but the story behind it may give some more insights to
> the
> name origin. If the individual spoken of in both songs is the same
> individual, and if this individual was a Sioux (Lakota) boy that was
> captured by the Ponca and raised as a Ponca, and if we assume that
> the
> Ponca translated his Sioux name to a Ponca pronounciation, can we
> still
> theorize as to it's possible meaning?
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> Written Transcription of Ponca Song:
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the
>
>
> A-cha-tho, i shay tho
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the, yo he ye oi
>
>
> MoN-chu Shke-ma, i ka-ga-ma the, i shay tho
>
>
> A-cha-tho, i shay tho
>
>
> Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the, yo he ye ya
>
>
> (Warrior & Brown, 1967, p. 30)
>
>
> Commentary:
>
>
> "Ha  ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho, ‘I’m going to be a chief’. Let me
> give you the
> story behind this song. There was a young Sioux who was taken captive
> among
> the  Poncas  and  finally  became  a  young man. Every now and then
> he’d be
> missing.  Evidently  someone  had  told him that he was a captive
> among the
> Poncas and that he was a Sioux. So he’d go back to the Sioux. One
> time when
> the  Siouxs  raided  the  Poncas, someone spotted him. So the next
> time the
> Siouxs raided again, they singled him out and they recaptured him,
> and when
> they  recaptured him, he begged for mercy. He said, ‘When I get
> back to the
> Siouxs, if you’ll pity me, spare my life.’ He said, ‘When I get
> back to the
> Siouxs,  they  are going to put me in the place of my father in the
> council
> of  chiefs.’ But the Ponca didn’t spare his life, they killed
> him. The song
> goes  on  to say, MoNchu Shkema, that’s his name, but we don’t
> know what it
> means.  I  ka-ga-ma  the,  i  shay  tho,  ‘you  said  he  was my
> frien! d’.
> A-cha-tho,  that’s  a Siouan word which we can’t translate. I
> shay, ‘that’s
> what  you said,’ ‘that you were my friend,’ meaning that after
> he professed
> friendship  with  the Poncas, he had been in war parties against the
> Poncas
> and  they  captured  him.  That’s  how  the  song  was made, for
> that man."
> (Warrior & Brown, 1967, p. 30)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>