"bow"

[David Costa]

> Siouan has a good term for 'arrow' or some antecedant weapon also, presumably
> atlatl darts.

> Biloxi aNksapixti means 'real bow' (xti is the usual suffix for 'real' when
> there has been a replacement.).  ANksi, as David points out, is the 'arrow'
> root.

This is intriguingly tho probably coincidentally similar to Shawnee: Shawnee
'arrow' is /hilenalwi/, which is literally 'ordinary bullet'. Shawnee
'bullet' is /halwi/, which is from PA */a0wi/ 'arrow' (As far as I know the
only reconstructible non-possessed etymon for the concept).

The words for 'bow' got dragged into this as well, in that the Shawnee word
for 'bow' is /hilenahkwi/, which is literally 'ordinary wood'. And of
course, the Shawnee word for 'gun' is /mtekwa/ (pl. /mtekwaapali/), which
derives from the old 'bow' word.

> This leaves -api unexplained.  Note that Ohio Valley Siouan has no trace of
> the MVS pluralizer -api, so that interpretation is hors de combat.  I wonder
> if it could be from the Algonquian term Dave Costa cites just below?  I'm not
> 100% happy with the idea since Siouan usually just takes the first one or two
> syllables of those interminably long Algonquian words, but at least we have a
> look-alike.

Well, I think it's really a Siouanist's judgement call as to whether that
kind of borrowing is likely, tho I can at least say that in Algonquian, that
/-api/ part is the part that means 'string'.

Dave