Osage

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote:
> > why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators?
>
> The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the
> Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this
> water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an
> English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times
> apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the
> Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami,
> Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.)


No, we actually (Dave and I) discussed this a few years ago and with the
help of biologists and archaeologists here at IU determined that
alligators (at least not in the memory of any humans) lived in the lower
Ohio. There was considerable trade up and down the Mississippi dating to
the Archaic. I imagine this is where the alligator teeth, presumably
skins, and the words came from.


Michael McCafferty

Michael McCafferty
307 Memorial Hall
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
47405
mmccaffe at indiana.edu