Fw: Waist deep in sexist racism

[ROOD DAVID S]

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
>  ***********************************************************
>