'snake' and 'god' terms.

[BARudes at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/23/2006 7:59:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
dvklinguist2003 at yahoo.com writes:

> Just for the record, the Biloxi word(s) for 'medicine' is tixi, with 
> another variant tyi.  Come to think of it, this may actually be the same word 'ti,' 
> with a palatalized variant 'tyi,' if that -xi suffix on 'tixi' is really the 
> word for 'sacred/mysterious' that also occurs in 'aNya xi' meaning chief or 
> doctor.  Further, apparently the Chickasaw and Choctaw (?) word for 'tea' is 
> 'tii,' of course probably a borrowing from English.  But I wonder if it was 
> borrowed into Biloxi to mean 'medicine' since medicinal plants are often put 
> in teas.  Then perhaps the real Biloxi translation would be 'ti xi' = 
> 'sacred/mysterious tea' or something like that.

Perhaps the Biloxi word is borrowed from the Chickasaw or Choctaw word for 
'tea', but it is also possible that it reflects retention of an old 
Siouan-Catawba root. The Catawba root for 'root' is -ti:. It is a dependent root (meaning 
it never occurs by itself), but is found in such constructions as ?yapti: 
'tree root' and, more important to the current discussion, wiNti: 'medicinal root, 
medicine' as a compound with the older word for 'medicine', which itself is 
not found uncompounded in the Catawba data, wiN.

Blair
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