Fw: Waist deep in sexist racism

[Jimm GoodTracks]

With no detraction from David's etymology below, the Pawnee word for the Wichita People is similarly: 
Kirikuruks ("Bear Eyes").

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROOD DAVID S" <David.Rood at Colorado.EDU>
To: <siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:20 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Waist deep in sexist racism


> 
> I have missed this discussion except for the "squaws wade to test the 
> river depth" quote, and have also lost (before viewing) the PDF referred 
> to below.  Mary Haas wrote a paper on the origin of the word "Wichita" in 
> which she proposed a Muskogean word for 'arbor' as the source.  I think 
> Ives wrote something more comprehensive later, perhaps in the Handbook. 
> I'm not in the office much this summer and don't have a way to follow up 
> on that recollection right now.  Remember that most English names for all 
> the tribes are rarely self-designations, but rather derived from a 
> language further east, as a result of answers to the question "who lives 
> over there (west of here)?"
> 
> Historically the archeologists and ethnohistorians identify a number of 
> "bands" with the modern Wichitas, including "Iscani" and others, one of 
> them being spelled "Taovaya" in the modern literature (I would guess 
> that's the "Tow-e-ash" word (Wichita /s/ sounds like [sh] to most English 
> speakers)).  I have no clear sense of how those scholars have decided that 
> the people they so name are Wichita, but there are lots of 19th century 
> records of group movements, villages coming and going, and wars of various 
> sorts which use the names.  I suppose the fact that they all built grass 
> houses practiced agriculture has some influence.
> 
> The Wichita self-designation, kirikir'i:s (spelled various ways, usually 
> using "t" for /r/ and "sh" for /s/, and inserting a random apostrophe 
> somewhere to represent the glottal stop), has a traditional etymology of 
> 'raccoon eyed' (kirik'a 'eye', kir'i:s 'raccoon', supposedly describing 
> the practice of drawing tattoo lines out from the corners of the eyes.  I 
> have always been suspicious of that because most Wichita compounds are 
> modifier-modified, so the order is backwards from the norm.  I have come 
> across a Kitsai word for 'person' which is kirika, however, and have 
> speculated that that's the first element in this word.  The second element 
> would then be hir'i:s 'first', with the compound meaning, logically, 
> 'first people'.  The problem with that is that there is no excuse for 
> dropping the /h/, unless it be folk etymology.
> 
> I'll try to remember to look up Ives's description some time in the next 
> few weeks.
> 
> Best,
>  David
> 
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu
> 
> On Wed, 29 Jul 2009, Jimm GoodTracks wrote:
> 
>> Ask David Rhood on that one.
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>  From: Bryan James Gordon
>>  To: siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU
>>  Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 4:52 PM
>>  Subject: Re: Fw: Waist deep in sexist racism
>>
>>
>>  Well, that pdf seems to have a much more plausible story than 
>> Hendrickson's. Shame Hendrickson doesn't read anthropology. What, 
>> though, does the "Tow-e-ash" referred to in Tilghman mean?
>>
>>  --
>>  ***********************************************************
>>  Bryan James Gordon, MA
>>  Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
>>  University of Arizona
>>  ***********************************************************
>>
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