Lumbee

[SHEA KATHLEEN DORETTE]

In addition to the obvious Catawba words for "river" and "blaze (of fire)"
(also in other Siouan languages) and aside from the widespread word for
"tobacco," another word on the list that might be a good candidate for a
Catawba source is tukar "to fall."  Other words that more remotely
resemble Catawba words are the words wata "maple," shiyoosh "grandmother,"
and getda "blueberries,": Catawba atae? "maple" (Swadesh), is^c^u
"grandmother" (Swadesh), and wa'kta:? "huckleberry" (Swadesh).  (I'm using
ae for an open mid-front vowel, and the short accented a of wa'kta:? is
actually a centralized a.)

It's very interesting that most of the word list turns out to be
Iroquoian, as Blair has so clearly shown, whether most of it was lifted
from old Seneca dictionary or not!  I know very little about Iroquoian,
but I wonder if it would be worth noting that, of the 15 words on the list
having to do with plant-derived food, 9 start with o.  Three of the rest
start with g, leaving only the words for "grapes," "corn," and "red
raspberries."  Is it possible that there is some kind of noun
classification in effect here?  (Admittedly, there are a couple of words
starting with o on the list that don't refer to food, like the words for
"tobacco", "fire," and "Great Feather Dance.")  The only reason I'm
commenting on this is that words in Catawba having to do with berries,
nuts, tubers, and other plants used as food often start with wV-,
indicating that there is a noun classification system functioning.  Bob
Rankin presented a paper on noun classification, comparing Catawba with
Yuchi and Tutelo, as I remember, but not having his paper handy, I am
getting all the details and much of the substance mixed up, I'm sure.

Kathy Shea

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Robert L. Rankin wrote:

>
> thanks to Blair Rudes for a really great job of sleuthing on that "Lumbee"
> word list.  I don't suppose it will any longer be of interest to
> Siouanists, but the Iroquoian list might be interested in his findings.
> Since whoever came up with the list apparently didn't use Chafe's Seneca
> dictionary (the spellings are all different), I wonder if it would be
> possible to find the list that was actually used?  Walt Wolfram and
> Natalie Estes might still be interested in further digging.
>
> Oh well ... another problem solved!
>
> Bob
>