Dorsey's Footnotes

[Koontz John E]

As in the preceding posting, Dorsey's footnotes can be very interesting.
For example, in the Omaha and Ponka Letters, p. 93:

"The style is not that of the usual Ponka, e.g., ittaNge wiwitta t?e,
instead of wittaNge iNt?e; ...; wa?u witta t?e, instead of wa?u=s^ti
iNt?e; though both forms are used, fide G[eorge Miller], an Omaha."
Here we see an early use of the possessive pronoun instead of the
inalienable possessive prefix and a dative sibject verb.

Or, p. 101-2:

"Hexaka-mani's mother was an Omaha.  He is the chief of a Yankton gens.
When the author met him at the Omaha Agency in 1878, he found that H-m
coul read and write his native tongue, the Yankton dialect of the Dakota.
In the course of an hour H-m learned the aditional characters required for
writing Omaha, and after his return home he sent the accompanying Omaha
letter written in detached syllables.  Being a Yankton he is used to
writing k before d, so in writing Omaha he retained the k (instead of
using g) before the [cent sign] (=dh)."  (Here dh is actually Dorsey's
spelling.

P. 105

"The two letters dictated by this Indian [Ttenuga-zi] are peculiar (i.e.,
unique) in the number of English words adopted."  (The words seem to be
used to further specify more generic Omaha equivalents like IttigaNdhai
Commissioner" 'the Commissioner grandfather (senior or non-local
official)' or unaN's^taN depot 'the stopping place depot'.

P. 109

Points out an instance of 'you see' as dhas^taNbe, i.e., doubly inflected,
which is today the norm, but then noteworthy.

P. 116-117

IhaN=khe e=da'=daN iz^a'z^e adhiN   e'=iN=the
gmo  the what      name     she had perhaps

"IhaN=khe [the reclining grandmother] is used because the old woman's
mother's body was laid in the grave years ago, and is regarded as still
reclining."  And notice that khe is here used with a subject, abeit
apparently an obviative one.

P. 95 "S^ahiedha was a Yankton by birth.  He married a Ponka woman and was
adopted into the tribe."  In Cheyenne's letter occurs makhaN
"mak<apostrophe>a<raised n>'" 'medicine', in Dakota form, which Dorsey
notes would be makkaN "maka<raised n>" in usual usage.  The letter is
otherwise in OP form, and it's not clear if there are other trace of a
Dakota "accent" that Dorsey (or I) may have missed.  Note that Dorsey's
printed orthography is different from his usage in his fieldnotes, which
was a sort of extended Riggs system, so it's not clear to me what he wrote
that he latter rendered as "k<apostrophe>."  Probably just that, but I'm
not sure.

I haven't really begun to touch on the significance of the notes (and the
letters) to historical issues, or matters of sociolinguistics, except
perhaps in mentioning some examples of intermarriage and mutual influence
of languages.  Dorsey often comments on the degree of facility of the
individual in English or other languages, as well as relationships, name
changes, and the like.  In regard to the last, he often seems to have
updated names to reflect the time of publication as opposed to the time of
recording, something I discovered in examining some of his fieldnotes
(thanks to Dr. Archambault of the NAA).

JEK