Thousand (fwd)

[Kathleen Shea]

I don't have much to add to this, except that I'm reminded that the Ponca
name of Old Man McDonald, who raised James P. Williams, the father of
Parrish Williams, winegi and one of the elders teaching me Ponca, was
ttaN'de naNkku'ge (TaN'de NaNku'ge) "making the ground roar (drumming or
pounding the ground by running)."  I'll try to find out more about the
origin of the meaning of "thousand" for kku'ge (ku'ge) at the day-long
workshop that the Ponca Language Arts Council is holding tomorrow,
especially since Henry Lieb, the Ponca language teacher in the high school,
whom most of the Dhegihanists met at our last Siouan and Caddoan Languages
conference, has been teaching how to do arithmetic in Ponca lately and plans
to show us some of the materials he's been using in his lessons.

Kathy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 6:22 PM
Subject: RE: Thousand (fwd)


> Anohter post for RLR:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 10:40:46 -0600
> From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
> To: 'Koontz John E ' <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
> Subject: RE: Thousand
>
>
> > It's generally reported that Omaha-Ponca kkuge 'box, thousand', derives
> > from the practice of delivering treaty payments in boxes of a thousand
> > dollar coins.  I don't actually know what the source is on that
> > anymore,
>
> I believe Mrs. Rowe was the first to mention this to me. But I'm no longer
> certain.
>
> The (Dakota) box term is khoka' 'keg, barrel', which is a regular match
for
> kkuge, etc.
>
> I've always assumed this was ultimately derived from the verb 'to make a
> hollow sound'.  As probably is 'gourd'.    bob