Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre

[Erik Gooding]

See Doug Parks' and Ray DeMallie's work on this list in the Handbook of
North American Indians, p. 723-24. They answer  most of your question
including stamena.

At 10:16 PM 2/7/02 -0700, Koontz John E wrote:
>I ran across a potato in:
>
>Wedel, Mildred Mott.  1974.  LeSueur and the Dakota Sioux.  pp.  157-172,
>Aspects of Upper Great Lakes Anthropology:  Papers in Honor of Lloyd A.
>Wilford.  Ed. by Elden Johnson.  With a combined list of references. St.
>Paul:  Minnesota Historical Society.
>
>This article includes a list of early village (hence band) names, one of
>which is Menostamenaton, glossed as Nation de la pomme de terre.  I assume
>Meno is mno and ton is thuN[waN] 'village, band'.  I can't figure out
>stamena, though -na might be the diminutive.
>
>Warning - these names are not always glossed correctly, and the spelling
>may be mangled at either the hearing stage or some later transcriptional
>stage, e.g., Yanktons comes out Hinhanetonsouanons, where one might expect
>Hi(n)hanctonouanons, for IhaNkthuNwaN=na 'little end-villagers'.  The
>extra -s- may be a result of analyzing the form as Hinhanetons ouanons,
>with a modifier (agreeing in number in French).
>
>This latter was actually glossed 'village de la pierre separee des
>autres', which I make 'stone village separated from the others'.  I think
>this refers to the gloss 'Stone Sioux' for Ojibwa Assiniboine (assini- is
>'stone' and boine is 'Sioux'), cf. Engish Stoney.
>
>In this context, the 'separated from the others' is an early reference (c.
>1683) to the notion that the Yanktonais are a group of Assiniboine/Stoney
>Sioux who have separated from the rest and joined the Seven Council Fires
>grouping instead.
>
>This is a kind of fun list, if anyone is interested in old band names,
>which are often nice early sources of vocabulary, e.g., the very first
>name in the list is Tangapsinton 'village de la Crosse', Perhaps
>representing tham-kapsin-thuN[waN] or something like 'ball-playing
>village', from thapa 'ball' + kapsic^a 'to make jump with a blow, as in
>shinney' (or kapsiNta 'to whip'?) + thuN[waN] 'village, band'.  Williams
>gives t[h]akapsic^api as 'lacrosse'.  Riggs has t[h]akapsic^a 'to play
>ball by taking up the ball in the club and throwing it' and
>t[h]akic^apsic^a 'a ball club'.  Perhaps kapsic^a 'throw with a stick' is
>a specialized meaning of 'make jump with a blow'.  It looks like the
>t[h]a- in Santee is a reduction of thapa, corresponding in comparable
>words to Teton thab-.  In this context, the -n- in Tan-gapsintons becomes
>interesting.  Rather than nasalization, it's probably a reflection of -m
>in tham-, a Santee vesion of thab-.
>
>A better known example of a disappearing -n is Teton, if it's based on
>thiNta 'prairie'.  In that case ThithuNwaN has to be reduced from
>thiNl-thuNwaN, pronounced [thiNn=thuNwaN].
>
>Another of LeSueur's village names that I just figured out, because it
>*is* glossed correctly, is Ouidaougecunaton 'nation de l'Isle pleine' or
>'People of the full island'.  Ouida is clearly wita 'island', but ougecuna
>is somewhat obscure:  uz^kuna?  However, since oz^ula is Teton for 'full',
>I suspect this is a misreading of ouge-ou-na.  So it really is
>'full-island people'.
>
>JEK
>
>