The Casa tribe, homeland, and language

Sat Feb 17 00:15:26 UTC 2007

I recognize this post is part storytelling and part science...but what's wrong with stories? :-)

La Salle mentions four tribes on the north side of the Ohio River that were overthrown by the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars, from east to west: Kentaientonga (with 19 villages destroyed), Oniassontke (two villages), Casa (one village), Mosopelea (eight villages). [Page 589, Northeastern volume of the Handbook of North American Indians]

HNAI suggests that the Kentaientonga were the Gentaguetehronnon/Gentagega tribe of the Eire Confederation.

1) If the the Gentagega Erie tribe occupied watersheds draining into the south shore of Lake Erie, along the Portage Escarpment, and...

2) If the Honniosonts occupied the watershed of the Allegheny River, with the western boundary of their homeland being the confluence of the Three Rivers at Pittsburgh [a map of the Allegheny watershed is available here: http://concernedcitizens.homestead.com/maplink_Alleghenyriver.html], and...

3) If the Mosopelea occupied the watersheds on the north bank of the Ohio River in southeastern Ohio, from the Miami watersheds in the west through the Muskingum watersheds in the east [Swanton p.61; a map is available here: http://opal.osu.edu/watersheds.htm; approximately watersheds 23-42], then...

...based on the order of the quote (Erie-Honniosont-Casa-Mosopelea), the Casa would, schematically at least, occupy the watersheds south of Ohio River/Lake Erie divide (the southern border of Erie Country), west of the Allegheny watershed (Honniosont Country) and east of the Muskingum watershed (the eastern border of Mosopelea Country) - namely, the watersheds along the western banks of the Ohio River in northeastern Ohio [approximately watersheds 19-22 on the map].

It would be neat if an old reference to a "Casa River" in northeastern Ohio turned up somewhere...
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As far as the linguistic affliation of the Casa language, there is this:

According to Osage tradition, the Siouan host traveled from the Siouan homeland in the VA-NC-SC Piedmont, up the New River/Kanawha River (VA-WV), to the Ohio River, and then north along the river to the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (Pittsburgh, PA) where they lingered for awhile. Later the host (or part of the host) travelled down to the mouth of the Ohio River and from there spread throughout the Mississippi Valley.

What if they left a trail of Siouan "straggler tribes" along the way? Based on the Osage tradition of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers being the northeasternmost point of Siouan settlement, and given that Casa Country would lie just west of this point...the Casa could conceivably be a Siouan tribe.

Some other surrounding tribes would be the Siouan Monetons in the Kanawha-New River watershed (who could be stragglers from the initial Siouan migration through that that valley), and the Siouan Tutelos in their prehistoric homeland in the Big Sandy River watershed (formerly known as the Tatteroa River) along the border of WV-KY. The Quapaws would be further down the river, beyond the Mosopeleas. The Monetons (Big Water People) and Mosopeleas perhaps later moved downriver to become the Michigameas (Big Water People) and Ouesperies (later Ofos) [see Koontz and Swanton, and the sections on the Ouispe in Vol. 14 of HNAI].

However, if the Mosopeleas were not a Siouan tribe, but were the Turkey clan of the Shawnee as suggested by McCafferty, then the Casas might be Algonquian too. Or...they could be Iroquoian like the Eries and Honniosonts (Black Minquas).

Just for fun, does anyone know a Siouan (especially Tutelo or Ofo) or Algonquian (especially Shawnee or Miami-Illinois) word that would be similar to /kasa/?

Lastly, does anyone know of any other reference whatsoever to the Casa people besides La Salle's?

Travis Henry

P.S. Who are the Cappas mentioned by Coxe as living with the Ousperies on the "Cappa River", located about 30 miles north of the Arkansas River? [p64 Swanton] They aren't listed in the index to the Northeast or Southeast volumes of HNAI. Is the Cappa tribe certainly indigenous to that stretch of the Mississippi, or could they be Ohio refugees too? Is the Cappa River the modern-day Whitefish and Cache Rivers? [A map showing those rivers is available here: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/arkansas_90.jpg] If so, despite the suggestion that the river name "Cache" is from the Picardie French word for "hunt" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_River_%28Arkansas%29], is it possible that the name "Cache" was borrowed from /kasa/ or /kaa/? Is it possible that /kapa/ represents a Taensa pronunciation of /kafa/, which descended from /kasa/, in the same way that "Opogoula" is a extant Taensa pronunciation of "Ofogoula", with the /ofo/ supposedly descended from /moso/ or
 /moNso/ of "Mosopelea" and "Mons8pelea" via an intermediate form /woso/ or /woNso/ represented by "Oussipe" and "Onspee", as suggested by Swanton?

References:

Swanton's "Siouan Tribes and the Ohio Valley": http://www.jstor.org/view/00027294/ap020246/02a00050/0
John E. Koontz's "Michigamea, A Siouan Langauge?": http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/michigamea.htm and "Michigamea is not Dhegiha": http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=siouan&P=7493
Michael McCafferty's post on the Mons8peleas as a Shawnee clan: http://listserv.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0405&L=siouan&D=1&O=D&P=760&F=P

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