ASB puza

[Michael McCafferty]

Quoting David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>:

> Well, I can't speak for Siouan, but in Algonquian it's not uncommon for the
> old 'bobcat' word *pe$iwa to end up meaning plain old 'cat'. This is at
> least the case for Miami pin$iwa and Kickapoo pesia (tho not Shawnee or
> Ojibwe).
>
> Given the morphological transparency of *meh$ipe$iwa ('big bobcat'), it
> might not be of Proto-Algonquian or even Proto-Central Algonquian vintage.
> Moreover, I'm not convinced panthers existed in the original
> Proto-Algonquian homeland.

The Proto-Algonquian homeland is about as fixed as flowing water. In more
naive times Siebert placed it in southern Ontario around Georgian Bay;
Goddard has recently correctly repositioned "west of Lake Superior," but
meaning what?--somewhere between Duluth and Hokkaido? In any event, the Proto-
Algonquians would no doubt have had contact with the mountain lion since it's
original habitat included all of what is now southern Canada.




 In Central Algonquian words for 'panther', one
> often sees forms that reference the animal's long tail or long body, such as
> Shawnee keenwaaloweeta ('one who has a long tail'), Miami kinoosaawia, and
> Fox kenwaasoweewa.
>
> best,
>
> Dave Costa
>


This is true. What's curious about all this is that while Proto-Algonquain
/*meh$ipe$iwa/ 'big bobcat' is the term for the chthonic deity known in
English as the Underwater Panther, it is rather the longness of things,
the long-tail of the mountain lion, and the long nature of other animals
such as weasels and snakes, that are constellated in the domain of the
Underwater Panther. How the short-tailed, squat-bodied bobcat got mixed up
in this circle is truly a curiosity.

Michael McCafferty





>
> I think it pretty unlikely for lynxes (lynx canadiensis and lynx rufus, both
> designated by PCA *pes<caron>iwa, BF natááyo, occasionally also occuring with
> initial change: nitááyo) to end up in the same biotaxon as domestic cats,
> for which A mostly uses the same loan already mentioned by David Rood (BF
> poos, PC poosiis-, poosiy-, poosiiw-, also from French minoos-). However,
> there is a second — quite uncharming — etymon PC kaasakees "glutton; cat" <
> PCA *kaas<caron>akeensa (anachronistically glossed just "cat" instead of
> "wolverine" in Hewson, A computer-generated dictionary of Proto-Algonquian,
> p. 53 #0857).
>
> What may be interesting to note is that is that many NAN languages derive
> the word for "puma" from "lynx/bobcat" (BF omahkatááyo, PCA *me's<caron>ipes<caron>iwa
> "puma; Great Lynx, Underwater Manito" as in Nakoda ig^mu-thaNka, Dhegiha
> iGdháN-seN-snéde "long-tail-bobcat"). A differentiation between Canadian
> lynx vs. bobcats is rare (bobcat as "spotted lynx": Miami-Illinois
> wiikwee-pinaiwa, Minnesota-Ojibwe gidagaa-bizhiw, BF kííhstsipimi-natááyo) —
> as are overlapping habitats...
>
>
>
>