Bows (IO tradition)/Yankton sociology

[Rankin, Robert L]

> Is the UA *wata a regular set, or, as sometimes happened in
> early attempts at Proto-Siouan, a sort of formula covering some >
generally resemblant forms?

That's certainly the question to ask. But it's not one I can answer. I don't
think they've gotten a whole lot farther than Wick's "UA Cognate Sets" from
about 1986 in an overall understanding of things. The person to contact
might be John McLaughlin, who is supposedly continuing Wick's comparative
work.

I think Kay Fowler said something about someone having looked at the terms
continent-wide and found look-alikes all over the place. But that doesn't
tell me much, since, the older the source, the more the terms look alike
just because of sloppiness in orthography and wrong assumptions about
phonology.  E.g., using old sources some people have turned wagmu and wathan
(squash) into "cognates".

There is no question in my mind though that the Dakotan, Chiwere-Winnebago
and probably all Dhegiha plus Tutelo 'bow' terms are borrowed from
Algonquian, no matter where bows originated.

Bob