ethnic terms in Lakota

[Koontz John E]

> Members;
> I'm reading your discussion re: the terms for whitemen, et. al. In
> actual usage with which I am familiar, WasicuN (sorry, no
> orthographically appropriate software) refers to white people but not
> to "white" people. Instead, I learned that it is a contraction of
> "wasi i'cuN" or "taking the fat" or "the fatty meat" which was said
> to be true for the early fur-trappers and the subsequent buffalo
> hunters. They are said to have killed the animal, taken the hide,
> then eaten the richest, fatty and most tender meats for survival,
> leaving the vast majority of the carcus to rot.

This is the standard explanation among speakers of Dakota as far as I
know:  was^iN - Buechel 'fat not dried out, fat meat; pork' - plus ic^u -
Buechel 'to take, take up anything; accept, receive'.  I believe that this
would regularly contract to was^i'c^u.  That is, I assume the nasality of
the final vowel of was^iN would disappear because it would lose out toor
be elided by the initial unnasalized i of ic^u.

So far so good, but I believe that the older pronunciations of the term,
at least as they are recorded in the lexical materials I normally see -
Riggs, Williamson, Buechel, etc. - show the 'whiteman' term as having the
final u nasalized, whereas ic^u does not, and so, presumably, neither
would was^ic^u derived from that.

As far as I know, this difference of nasalization is the only structural
difficulty with the 'takes the fat' analysis.  In regard to this, however,
it seems that an unnasalized version of 'whiteman' is quite common today.
I am not in a position to assert that it didn't exist in the past, too,
even though I suspect it did not, unless variability in the nasalization
of final vowels is common.  I know that at least some enclitics -s^i ,
-xti, etc., are variably nasalized across dialects, but to some extent
this is true across Missisippi Valley, with these enclitics.  My suspicion
is that denasalization of was^ic^u is to some extent a consequence of
fitting the word to the etymology - a fairly common process in language,
including in English, as the crayfish said to the sparrow grass.  (Two
famous cases of mangling uninterpretable words in English, the originals
being ecrevisse - French for 'crevice dweller' - and aspergeoise - French
for asparagus.  All French from memory.)

I ran into the was^ic^uN < s^ic^un ~ sic^uN explanation first in Powers'
1986 book Sacred Language:  the Nature of Supernatural Discourse in
Lakota.  I should probably have noticed that essentially the same analysis
is offered by Buechel ...

As I recall it, Powers' arguments stemmed [no pun intended] from a
consideration of plausabilities.  He may have discussed the nasalization
issue, too, I think.  I recall noticing that though he made some hay
ridiculing linguists and their silly orthographies he seemed to understand
aspiration and nasalization and similar fine points well enough.

I could add an additional argument at this point, which is that the
Winnebago form might provide a precedent for the Dakota form.  I would be
interesting to know what other formulations were used in the area, e.g.,
in the Algonquian languages of the Plains and Great Lakes.  I'm wondering
if it couldn't be argued that the Dakotan form is essentially a calque of
the Winnebago one.  In the same way there is some possibility that the
Ioway-Otoe form leads to the Omaha-Ponca one (if the 'maker'
interpretations are actually correct), and that the more southerly Dhegiha
languages have borrowed each others' terms.

So there we are. I suspect most, if not all, speakers of Dakotan accept
the 'he takes the fat' analysis.  I also suspect linguists, and apparently
anthropologists, too, tend to consider it a bit strained, though various
explanations are offered.  In general, one suspects etymologies based on
annecdotes.  The example of the folk etymologies of terms like Oglala and
Niut?ac^hi (Missouria) may make us pause, of course.  Sometimes the
annecdote points the way.  It is not folk etymologies that are wrong - it
is incorrect folk etymologies that are wrong.

It may also be worth pointing out that while historical linguists
certainly give precedence to an historically correct analysis - when they
are able to determine what it is - that from a certain point of view, when
a innovated analysis has effected a form so strongly as to change its
shape, it has also acquired a certain reality of its own - something that
the sparrow grass may well have observed back at the crayfish.

For the record, I think the explanation in terms of s^ic^uN makes more
historical sense.  It would be interesting to know when the 'takes the
fat' explanation is first attested.

JEK