Washabe (Re: More regarding "wa")

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Tom Leonard wrote:
> Then there's "washa'be" - "sha" often having a translation such as
> "grey", "in a mist", "in between black and white", "a dark object -like
> on the horizon". Joe HairyBack (Ponca) (have this on tape) said
> "washabe" clan is the "buffalo clan" but the word means "buffalo in a
> mist or a fog...you can't quite make it out".
>
> La Flesche (1939) calls the War Ceremony "Washabe Athi^n". Jablow points
> out "the Washabe gens, one of the gens in charge of the tribal hunt,
> 'was the same as THE NAME OF THE CEREMONIAL STAFF used by the Omaha
> leader of the annual tribal buffalo hunt, and also of that subdivision
> of the Omaha Honga gens..."

I've always associated the Ponca Was^abe clan with the Omaha Washabe
subclan, myself.  When you compare lists of clan names between the several
Dhegiha groups you find a number of instances like this in which what is a
subclan in one group is a clan in another.  Or sometimes a clan in one
simply seems to have several correspondences in another, or, of course,
none.