How

[Robert L. Rankin]

> ... The Poncas don't seem to be big on greetings. I'm told that often a
> visitor will just be greeted with "dhathi'a" 'Did you (sg.) arrive?' or
> "dhathii'a" 'Did you (pl.) arrive?'

The Kaws have similar expressions that Mrs. Rowe used.  There is an older
tradition for asking how a person is doing, for men at least, among both
the Kaws and the Osages. It is much more elaborate.  I won't go through
the whole thing here, but it involves the terms "da~he'" (Kaw) and
"ta~he'" (Osage) followed by a classificatory verb ('sitting, standing,
lying, moving') in the 2nd person.

So, for example, in Kaw you might say "da~he yayi~$e" 'how are you doing?'
(literally 'how are you moving?').  Same for sitting, etc.  And with
analogous expressions in Osage.  There's a long list.

None of the Kaws or Osages I've talked to about it identify "da~he" as
anything special, but if you look it up in La Flesche's 1932 Osage
Dictionary (under "donhe" with raised "n"), you find that the concept was
a somewhat complicated social one involving social status, personal honor,
etc.  The interesting part is that this could suggest that the Kaws and
Osages were a part of some more complex and stratified social order at an
earlier time (there's been much speculation among anthropologists about
possible "Mississippian" affiliations of Dhegiha tribes). On the other
hand, there may be Omaha/Ponca analogs of da~he that I don't know about.
The form of the word if it exists should be [da~he'] or [do~he'], where '
represents accent.

Bob