ku'uytEn 'horse'

[Mike Cleven]

Aron Faegre wrote:
>
> Klahowya tillikum,
>
> How did the link to Ojibwe 'moos' get made in these discussions?  'Moos'
> must be a very old Ojibwe word, and is pronounced much like the moose's
> call -- the ending like a 'z'.  There would have been no confusion
> between horse and moose -- you never ride a moose, you seldom eat a
> horse.  And Baraga's 1850 Ojibway Dictionary gives horse as
> 'bebejigoganji'.  The CJ 'moos-moos' would make some sense transfering
> to cattle or buffalo, but how does it relate to horse?

Well, now, _actually_ this is _very_ interesting ;-) ;-) . . . .

Some time ago in one of the NGs I frequent there was a discussion on the
proper plural of moose.  Now that I remember, there were a series of
temporary NGs which had this in the caption; something like
alt.moose.what.is.the.proper.plural; a search of Deja News for moose,
plural and cavalry (see below) would probably dig up the debate.  All of
this in the course of tormenting someone who'd dared to pronounce
(wrongly) on the subject.  There were all kinds of interesting
submissions, ranging from meese to moosen and mooser (based on Germanic
plural models; many people seemed to think it was Swedish or some other
European language; the word there, of course, is "elg", i.e. "elk").
The correct plural - moosoutch - was provided by a (non-native) Ojibway
speaking participant; the subject of the s > z sound didn't come up
though.  In English the customary plural is "moose" of course; too bad
we don't talk about "mooses", though..... e-)

Things got really fun when the discussion began to interface with
soc.history.what-if, where someone had suggested an alternative to horse
cavalry in the history of the New World; the idea that moose or another
large quadruped might have been domesticatable in the New World, either
as draft animal or (preferably, in what-if make-believe) as a riding
animal; namely moose, which would be of great advantage in both bog and
brush as well as open country and through fairly dense forest; nothing
like those horns to keep branches out of the way!  And can you imagine
facing a line of charging moose riders?

Well, it turns out that there were semi-successful attempts to do
exactly that with moose in 17th or 18th Century Sweden, sponsored by no
less than the King of Sweden himself (Gustavus Vasa, I think, but I
can't remember for sure).  If thet experiment had been continued (it was
not unsuccessful) and moose were raised to be battle-hardened, there is
little doubt that moose cavalry would have overrun horse cavalry in the
worst way imaginable; properly armoured horns would also be very nasty.
Possibly domestication would have taken generations of breeding to bring
that big bog-stomper temper under control; I don't know why the
experiment was abandoned, but it remains an intriguing idea.  Damned big
animal to have underneath you, though, and if bred and raised for
running long distances could probably make serious time on a
horse....it'd be one way to get around the wilderness quickly, though.
Funny that no one in soc.history.what-if thought of the idea of Hudson's
Bay Company moose caravans..... ;-).  As it happens, there is currently
a major moose over-population problem in Scandinavia (and New
England)........not that you could replace the automobile entirely with
them, but . . . . ;-)