Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre

[bi1 at soas.ac.uk]

I have also seen Ouiidebatons or Hoebatons,  'Gens de la Riviere'
presumably WatpathuN also Songatskitons or Chongasketons
presumably ChuNkas^kathuN 'dwellers in the stockade'

Bruce
On 11 Feb 2002, at 13:37, Parks, Douglas R. wrote:

> John,
>
> Before trying to identify the names below (and other Sioux band names), you
> might take a look at Ray's article "The Sioux to 1850" in vol. 13 of the
> Handbook of NA Indians.  These are identified there.
>
> Doug
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Koontz John E
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Sent: 2/8/2002 12:16 AM
> Subject: Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre
>
> 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


Dr. Bruce Ingham
Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies
SOAS