Little People

[Ardis R Eschenberg]

nushiaha means 'short' in Omaha.

My dog is nushiaha.
-Ardis



On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Koontz John E wrote:

> Assuming that the coyotes are now quiet - which they are not; I hear them
> nightly from my living room yipping up a storm in the open space - is
> anyone interested in discussing terms for 'the little people'?  I was just
> looking some up, and found them about as opaque a lot of terms as any I've
> seen.
>
> The simplest was OP ni'da, apparently a simple root, which is defined in
> passing in Fletcher & LaFlesche as 'imp', but in Osage refers to
> 'elephant' by way of use to refer to the beast implied by the bones often
> found sticking out of banks.
>
> Peter LeClaire, one of Howard's sources on Ponca culture, mentions
> mong-thu-jah-the-gah 'In the mountain {the Big Horns?} the dwarves [are]
> found and dreaded as it [they?] leads them away at nights and last [they
> are ensorceled] until morning."  The best I could make of that was
> maN=dhaN uj^aN=dhe egaN meaning, perhaps, 'like beautifully made
> arrowheads'.
>
> Mrs. Stabler offers niashiNga nushiaha, in which I am totally baffled by
> nushiaha.
>
> Then we have those Ioway-Otoe forms that were mentioned once already, I
> think:  hompathroji and humpathroxje, from Jimm Good Tracks.
>
> JEK
>
>
>