land=mother???

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote:
> A colleague here at Wayne State is writing something about Native American
> vs. European views of "the land" and asked me if any Native American
> languages have a word for land that means/is derived from "mother" (or
> presumably vice versa).  I said not to my knowledge but I'd ask around a
> bit.    So....  Anyone know of any such thing in Siouan?   Or elsewhere?
> He'd probably be interested in any other metaphorical ways of refering to
> land too, and anything that indicates land conceived of as a possession (or
> not).

I don't have an explicit reference in mind, but I've always had the
impression that the Earth is Grandmother and that various grandmothers in
higaN are the personification of Earth, e.g., Rabbit's Grandmother.  I
think this applies across Dhegiha, Ioway-Otoe, and Winnebago.

As far as discussion of land, the letters in the Dorsey Omaha-Ponca text
collections would be a place to look for it.  I can recall some particular
examples.  One could find them easily by searching in the texts for
various terms like mazhaN, ttaNde, etc.  You have to be careful with
looking only at the English translation, as there are several different
possessive constructions in Omaha-Ponca, and these must to some extent
reflect different attitudes to or natures of possession.

Also, I recently read something in:

Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a
Winnebago Indian by Nancy O. Lurie (Editor), Ruth M. Underhill (Paperback
- June 1961)

MWW's father didn't take a homestead because he was Eagle Clan and felt
that land was the concern of Bear Clan, not Eagle Clan.  He said that
Eagle Clan was properly concerned with the sky, not the earth,

Certainly any discussion of treaty rights that includes or reports the
words of the Native Americans involved would be worth considering.  The
literature on this is large.  This is one of the sorts of things you can
find in the OP letters.

JEK