Osage

[Eric]

----- Original Message -----
From: <rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 10:38 PM
Subject: RE: Osage

Rory wrote:

> I agree that Mississippi Valley would have to have
> originated in a relatively restricted area, though
> it might have first spread from its point of origin
> over a rather wide area as a single language before
> diverging into its separate subgroups.
>
> Another question is how mobile the people speaking
> the language were.  In an earlier time, with a
> smaller population and a less intensified mode of
> procuring a living, a single band of people might
> have ranged over hundreds or even thousands of
> miles in the course of their yearly itineraries.
>
> But suppose we just try relocating that butler a
> little to the east, and pushing him back farther
> in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say
> more like two thousand years ago than one.  If
> we give him a range covering roughly the modern
> states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and southern
> Wisconsin and Michigan, we still have a fairly
> compact and reasonable territory for MVS to
> differentiate on.

Hopewell, as in George Hyde's pre-C14-ly anachronistic _Indians of the
Woodlands_?

>                            In time, one group intensifies
> to the south, along the Ohio River, and evolves
> into the Dhegihans.  To the west, another group
> intensifies along the Mississippi, and becomes
> the Dakotans.  To the north, another group
> focusses on the shores of Lake Michigan, and
> becomes the Winnebagoes.  In the middle, yet
> another group adapts to an upland type of
> environment, and becomes the Chiweres, who
> remain rather intermediate to the rest.  Later,
> the Dakotans move up the river to Minnesota,
> while the Dhegihans expand westward into the
> Bottom areas of southern Illinois and up the
> lower Missouri.  The Winnebagoes become
> concentrated around the Green Bay area, and
> the Chiweres expand across the Mississippi
> into Iowa.  Finally, we have an influx of
> Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley.
> The Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are
> defeated, and many are forced to flee for their
> lives, down the Ohio River and across the
> Mississippi.  The crossing is a confused mess,
> and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups
> here, one moving south to become the Quapaws,
> and the other wandering northwest to become the
> Omahas.  The immigrant Algonquians know the
> Ohio as the River of the Dhegihans, this
> specific historic event is remembered by the
> Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for
> hundreds of years after the disaster, all players
> are where we want them at the time of contact,
> and nobody but the Omahas, Poncas, Quapaws, and
> perhaps a few of the Ioways has any Ohio Valley
> mud on his shoes.
>
> Would this scenario fit everybody's requirements?
>
>
> Rory
>
>

Well, there's that 900 lb. archaeological gorilla sitting on his American
Bottom and at Angel and Kincaid. It always seemed to me that the "bones of
animals and of men" that "lay scattered and bleaching around the village" of
the strange people encountered by the Wa-zha'-zhe, HoN'-ga, and Tsi'-zhu in
their wanderings after their descent from the sky, according to Francis La
Flesche's "Rite of the Chiefs" in the 36th Annual Report to the BAE, (a
strange people later incorporated into their tribal structure as the HoN'-ga
U-ta-noN-dsi, "the Isolated HoN'-ga"),  might actually have something to do
with Middle Mississippian moruary practices.  Just a thought.

Eric Nicholson