Water Monsters

[Koontz John E]

In regard to Crow buluksa'a 'water moster', cf. Teton uNktehi
'watermonster'.

First, with apologies for not checking sooner, for *kt, cf. *-kta
'toward', Crow (ku)ssaa' 'toward (that)', Hidatsa (ku)htaa 'in (that)
direction', Teton (e)kta 'to', Omaha-Ponca (e)tta 'to, toward (it)', etc.
And, just in case, *tk, cf. *itka 'egg', Crow ihka', Hidatsa ihka', Teton
(w)i'tka, itka', Omaha-Ponca (w)e'tta, Winnebago hiic^ge', etc.  So *kt is
problematic in a regular development, though *t and *s do fall together
and then redivide into t ~ s ~ s^, if I recall correctly.

(My source here is a draft version of the Comparative Siouan Dictionary,
though these are standard comparison.)

I've also noticed that Hidatsa 'snake' is waapu'ks^a (< CSD).  W. Matthews
says mapo'ks.a means 'any animal or animals offensive to the sight of
these Indians, or unfit for food, as worms, insects, snakes, etc.  He also
lists mapo's.a (waapu's^a (?)) 'a term applied to flies and insects less
offensive to the sight than mapo'ks.a'.

Crow 'insect' is baapuxta (< CSD).  The draft of the CSD suggests
comparing the pus ~ pux root here (we have to assume metathesis in
Hidatsa) with pu"s in Osage z^apu"ska 'ant' (actually, all Osage u are
[u"]), and I might go further and compare Omaha-Ponca z^aNgdhis^ka 'ant',
which suggests that the Osage form modifies z^aN 'wood' to z^a
irregularly.  The Osage form uses pu"ska as 'bug', while OP relies on
gdhis^ka (Osage has the cognate -lu"s^ka, spelled -gthushka by LaFlesche,
but not in this compound).

Also, the CSD suggests that Te wablus^ka, Sa wamdus^ka, etc., are modified
from *wakru^ka (as attested in the Dhegiha forms) under the unfluence of
the *puska form.  (In all these forms -ka is a noun former, common with
names of creatures.)

We can also add the CSD Mandan wa'akiruxka? < *waakruxka 'snake, worm,
snail' (from the CSD), which is a sound-synbolism grade of *wakrus^ka.

I'm not sure where this leaves Crow buluksa'a, which is clearly similar to
Hidatsa waapu'ks^a 'snake, creepy crawly' in its latter parts, but not in
its former ones.  In fact, it's more similar at the -ksa'a end than Crow
baapu'xta 'insect', though the CSD seems to assume Hidatsa -ks^a involves
metathesis.  But Hidatsa waapu'- doesn't match Crow bulu- at all well,
even though both involve a labial and u (and Crow b is the proper match
for Hidatsa w, which is [m] in initial position.  (In other words, if we
step beyond the phonetics of the languages the forms are something like
waapu- and wuru- underlyingly.)  Randy could easily be right that the
bulu- is essentially 'water', though perhaps we need to consider some
amount of reanalysis, mutual influence, and dialect borrowing in place of
strict compounding.

Watermonsters, snakes, bugs, and the likes are a complex matter in Siouan
comparisons.

JEK