Osage

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote:
> It may be of interest to people that the Shawnee and Miami names for the
> Ohio River essentially translate as the 'Kansa River'. That is, that it
> contains a root which is otherwise the same root as found in both languages'
> names for the Kaws. This might indicate that the presence of Dhegiha
> speakers on the lower Ohio extended into more recent times than we think.

This, of course, is a much more reliable sort of evidence than a "folk
etiology."  However, it's not clear what the name Akansea (> Arkansas),
Kansea and other variants applied to the river implies.  It's
transparently Kansa (Kaw), of course, but seems to refer to the Quapaw
(Arkansas) within the historical period.  This could be a specialization
from a more general use originally referring to all Dhegiha speakers, or
at least more than the Quapaw alone.  Costa, McCafferty, Rankin, and I and
no doubt others have speculated as to what exactly it might have implied
originally without being able to cite any ethnographic evidence that might
clarify the linguistic similarity.

We've also debated whether the name would imply that the Kansa (whoever
they might be) originated somewhere up the river or simply lived on its
lower reaches at one point.  A lot depends on the way in which the namers
were familiar with the river and the Kansa in question.

Michael McCafferty points out that the Illinois were familiar with the
Ohio along a fairly long stretch of the lower reaches, and the Shawnee
were even further up stream.  This makes it difficult for me if I want to
claim that only certain elements, perhaps the Arkansas/Quapaw, lived
there, and only near the mouth.  It might suggest, for example, that these
Algonquian groups found the Dhegiha speakers present along the river when
they first encountered it.

I find this not unnatural as a historical implication of the naming
pattern, but really awkward linguistically.  I keep wondering how the
butler got to the pub in time for the Miami-Illinopis and Shawnee to see
him sipping a pint in the Ohio room, when he was apparently diverging
linguistically from the Dakota, Chiwere, and Winnebago in Upper
Mississippi Manornot too long before.  Unless, of course, they diverged in
the pub, but then why don't the other have Ohio Valley mud on their shoes,
too?  No matter how you work it, somebody has an energetic itinerary and a
tight time table.  Or perhaps the butler has an identical twin?

In regard to the interpretation of Kansa in this context, as far as I know
the Kansa specifically are a separate group at contact, but linguistically
they are very similiar to the Osage, albeit also with certain
characteristic developments (e.g., voicing of the lax stops, a particular
development of *s^R- in the second person of *r-stems, and so on).  It
seems like they must have been close neighbors of the Osage for a long
time, or may even have diverged from them within the last few centuries.

Since there are Kansa clans among the Omaha, Osage, and Kansa, it seems
likely that Kansa (KkaNze) is primarily a clan name, and only secondarily
a tribal name.  The same is true of Osage (Waz^az^e) and Ponca (PpaNkka).

During the historical period Dhegiha clans have served primarily as
kinship units and residential subdivisions within the assembled tribe on
the hunt.  As far as I know they have not been the basis of villages or
residential grouping within villages.  So, it's hard to see names like
Kansa arising among outsiders from a situation like encountering only the
Kansa clan first, or from one like dealing primarily with a Kansa clan
village.

It's also not clear how a clan-based name could come to be applied to a
whole tribe internally.  One possible scenario would be that the three
tribes with clan-based names were named for dominant clan-based factions
within them.  "Those who adhered to the Kansa faction" and so on.  The
only confirmatory evidence for this would be the absence of a Ponca clan
among the Omaha, even though the Omaha and Ponca agree in general terms
that they are fragments of an original whole.  Seemingly after they
divided no significant number of Ponca clansmen remained among the Omahas.
For that matter, the Ponca lack a Kansa clan.

So, if Algonquian groups call the Dhegiha or some portion of them Kansa,
this would probably refer to a group with a prominent Kansa faction.  The
name may have been generalized from this to apply to all known groups with
similar languages and cultures.  The Kansa-prominent group might, of
course, be the forebears of the modern Kansa, but they might equally be
some entity no longer extant or known today under another name, perhaps
the Quapaw.

Incidentally, for what it is worth, the only uniquely Dhegiha clan name
known among the Quapaw is Honga (HaNga).  The other Quapaw clan names
known are all based on natural phenomena like animals or stars.  This is
not terribly significant, because most Dhegiha clans have secondary
associations of this sort, and the Quapaw clan structure seems to have
been devastated during their demographic collapse and the successive
mergers of the several villages.  Still, we don't know of a Kansa clan
among the Quapaw.

One other possible reason for thinking of Dhegiha speakers as Kansa is
that the Kansa clan in some cases is especially associated with pipes
(perhaps the other association of wind is connected).  Pipes are
associated functionally with peace-making and so perhaps with foreign
relations.  Maybe the Kansa were the usual peaceful representatives of
Dhegiha groups.