ethnic terms in Lakota

[Michael Mccafferty]

May I barge in here with a question. The term you are discussing was
applied also to Frenchmen in the 1600s, 1700s? To Spaniards? To Britons?

Thank you,

Michael McCafferty

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Koontz John E wrote:

> > 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
>
>
>


Michael McCafferty
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