Cryptos

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Richard L. Dieterle wrote:
...
> This is the criterion that you (Lance) give for culling out legendary
> animals:
>
> "1. Was the animal thought of as a real PHYSICAL animal? (can be killed, does it
> bleed, is similar to other animals)
> 2. Did people see it recently (not in legendary times) and did it behave like
> an animal? (eating, running, having young)"
>
> The problem is that waterspirits (waktcexi) seem to satisfy these criteria.
...

Watermonsters have young in Omaha-Ponca mythology, because Haxige killed
the children of the watermonsters to avenge the death of his brother.

But, anyway - *ahem* - to turn the discussion back to *linguistic* matters
the way to tell would seem to be to see if a given creature is covered by
a given superordinate term, e.g., using Omaha-Ponca examples, wanitta,
waz^iNga, wagdhis^ka, maybe we's?a, maybe nikkas^iNga.  If the creature is
also - well, unattested - then it can be crypto-wanitta or whatever as a
matter of attestation.  It would be rather interesting from the standpoint
of anthropological linguistics if a creature could belong to several
different superordinate categories, though perhaps in thinking that I am
out of date.

It is certainly a handicap in this and related conversations in this list
that nobody, as far as I know, has done any modern anthropological
linguistic investigations of any Siouan language, and scarcely even of any
other Plains or Midwestern (let alone Southeastern) language.  If I'm
wrong on that it would be interesting to hear otherwise.  This includes
color terminology, ethnotaxonomy, kinsip systems, the works.

JEK