Bows

[David Costa]

/bihi'/ is the Chickasaw word for 'mulberry', and this is probably cognate
with Alabama /bihi/. Apologies if I mentioned this already, but a similar
semantic connection is found in Shawnee & Miami as well; in Miami, 'bow' is
/mihtekwaapa/, while 'mulberry tree' is /mihtekwaapimishi/, literally 'bow
tree'. 'Mulberry' in Miami is /mihtekoopimini/ (Shawnee /mtekwaapimina/),
literally 'bow berry'. I guess the reason for the connection is that
mulberry wood was favored for making bows?

Dave Costa


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>From: Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
>To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Re: Bows
>Date: Tue, Aug 7, 2001, 11:53 pm
>

> On Thu, 2 Aug 2001 Zylogy at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Here is what I was able to grab in a very quick run-though at UCSB library:
>
> Thanks, Jess!  An association with 'back' is an interesting possibility I
> hadn't thought of.  However, I think at least once of the cases you
> mention is just chance.
>
>> Koasati:          ittobihi
>>                 "back" : atabi
>
> My understanding of the Koasati term (per Karen Booker's note to Bob
> Rankin that I mentioned before) is that it is a compound of itto 'tree,
> wood' and bihi, which is probably the archaic term for 'bow', or at least
> 'blowgun' or 'weapon' or something like that, cf. Alabama bihi 'bow'.  In
> other words, after bihi was transferred to 'gun', ittobihi was innovated
> to refer specifically to 'bow'.  It doesn't have anything to do with
> 'back', I think.  I decided not to list it at the time since bihi doesn't
> seem to bear any resemblance to the Siouan term.
>
>
>