whitemen etc (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

Since most of the Caddoanists are on this list and there's no Caddoan list
... and since the patterns of adaptation and change of scope may cast
light on Siouan usages.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 22:30:23 +0100
From: Anthony Grant <Anthony.Grant3 at btinternet.com>
To: john.koontz at colorado.edu
Subject: whitemen etc

Dear John:

Post this to tjhe list if you think it's apposite.

I checked my transcription of Randolph Barnes Marcy's Wichita vocab in
'Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana', which I made at the Bancrofft
Library, UC Berkeley, in the mid-1990s.  Whiteman is: E-ka'-rish
('English', also the form for whiteman in Kitsai and Caddo), Mexican is
Es-ta'-he and the term for African-American is: Es-ta'he-es co'-rash, the
second word co'rash being an ill-transcribed form o Wichita 'black'.
Es-ta'he is possibly the same as Quapaw i$taxi and similar forms which
resemble the word for 'eye'.  I believe there's a similar form in Osage,
and that this may be the source for the Wichita word, that they learned of
whites from the Osages and that for them the archetypal white was a
Mexican, but that with the advent of Angloamericans the use of the term
es-ta'-he.(Marcy's spelling) later became more narrowly focussed on
Mexicans rather than on all whites in general.  The form for Black people
as meaning what was by then (early 1850s) interpretable as 'black
Mexicans' (because of the semantic narrowing of Es-ta'he) suggests this.

Anthony Grant