Caddo ethnic terms

[Wallace Chafe]

It's nice to find an excuse to talk about Caddo. Maybe this should be a
Caddoan list too.

The Caddo word for Frenchman is especially interesting. It's ka:nush, with
an accent on the first syllable. Hoijer's Tonkawa dictionary gives ka:nos
for "Mexican", noting its origin in Mexicanos. I suspect that the Caddos
borrowed it from the Tonkawas, though I suppose they could have invented it
independently. Palatalization of s to sh after u is regular in Caddo, so
it's a perfect match. Evidently this word first referred to any European,
and then got narrowed down to Frenchmen, while ispayun came to be used for
Mexicans.

Ghost in Caddo is kahyuh. Any connection with haka:yuh "white" is unlikely,
especially because of the h before the y in "ghost". By the way, that h in
kahyuh is the murmured one I mentioned earlier, and earlier transcribers
often interpreted it as an extra syllable. Hence the spelling kahayu. You
find the same extra syllable in Cadohadacho, or however it's spelled, which
is really kaduhda:chu?.

I've also heard the story about how the Coushatta got their name from Caddo
kuyashadah "I'm lost". Sonorants like y get lost intervocalically in Caddo
fast speech, so the word can be kuashadah, even closer. It's a cute story.

I guess it's just possible that yahyashattsi? for the little people came
from "little lost ones" or something like that. I wonder.

Wally

--On Wednesday, July 24, 2002 2:38 PM -0700 Dayna Bowker Lee
<daynal at nsula.edu> wrote:

> I have greatly enjoyed following the threads of this discussion.  With the
> caveat that I am not a linguist, I have a couple of bits of information
> that might be of interest.  The Caddo term used for little people -
> yahyashattsi? or ha'yasatsi, Parsons (Reichard) associates with "lost."
> More precisely, I suppose, "lost" + diminutive. In Caddo oral tradition,
> a group of Alabama were said to have been encountered by the Caddo and
> told them, "We're lost." This group came to be known as ku'yushsahdah
> (Coushatta). Kuuwi yushsahdah is "I'm lost."
>
> The word for ghost is kahayu or kuyu, which may be derived from hakayu
> (white).  ?ín-ki-nish-ih is pretty much universally used for white people
> now, but began as a designation for an English person.  There were
> specific terms for each of the dominant groups of white people that the
> Caddo dealt with during the historic period.  A Mexican or Spanish person
> = ?ispayun.  A French person = kah-nuush.  Although
> ?ispayun certainly seems like a Spanish cognate, I don't know the origins
> of the Caddo words for English and French people.
>
> Dayna Lee
>