Colors in Dakota

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Violet Catches wrote:
> >Can anyone tell me how or why the color green (To) is now the color blue?
> In Lakxota txo covers the blue of the sky and water
> it also covers the grass and leaves of summer time
> we make a distinction  between them by using maxpiya txo for blue
> and makxa txo for green
> Omaha and Hochunk do the same thing

Yes, I've noticed something like that for Omaha-Ponca.  I think part of
the problem might be that lists of colors in English references on
Omaha-Ponca instinctively adopt the notion that the English color scheme
is universal or primary, which, of course, it isn't.  So, some sort of
Omaha-Ponca translation is provided for both 'blue' and 'green', whether
or not these translations are actual fixed phrases (lexical items) or
merely descriptive phrases.  If it were an Omaha-Ponca reference on
English, it would list 'blue, green' opposite ttu 'grue', and we would
have a situation like the "two Russian words for blue" that David
mentions.

My recollection is that older sources tended to give blue as ttu s^abe
'dark grue', and green as ttu 'grue'.  More recent Omaha usage lists blue
as ttu 'grue' and green as ppez^ettu 'grass grue'.  I don't know if Ponca
has gone the same way.  The 'grue' term is fairly widely used by students
of color terminology, by the way, but I don't know who coined it.  My
suspicion is that modern Omaha and Ponca usage may be more fixed, as Omaha
and Ponca adapt themselves to a situation in which English is widely used.
However, I don't know if any Siouan color system and its terminology have
ever been investigated with any degree of sophistication or thoroughness,
and I don't really know if the Omaha usage of ttu, ttu s^abe, and/or
ppez^ettu is fixed and to what extent.  The use of s^abe as a modifier
occurs with several color terms.  Another common modifier was =xti 'very,
real'.  There was some use of fricative gradation (s/s^/x or z/z^/gh) or
of palatalization (t/c^, tt/c^c^, d/j^).

My favorite reference on the subject of Omaha-Ponca ttu is a comment in an
article by, I think, Howard on Ponca archeology or anthropology in which
he mentions a stone that is called maNhinttu 'grue knife(stone)' in Omaha.
He takes this as 'bluestone', but comments that examples of the material
that he's seen seem more 'greenish' to him.  (I may have reversed the
colors!)

One other observation on Omaha-Ponca colors that I might make is that I've
seen xude 'grey' (cf. Dakotan xota) glossed things like 'tan' or 'violet'
(an appropriate reference in the context!), and I've noticed that students
of Apache color systems (I don't recall the reference, but I have it in my
records) have noticed that some Apache dialects (I forget which) have a
term covering a range of indistinct, pale colors like 'grey, tan, pink,
violet' and so on.  This was a pattern of color term that the original
students of color systems hadn't noticed.  I think parallels were
discovered elsewhere.  I thought this was both an interesting structural
parallel between Omaha-Ponca color terminology and another color
terminology somewhere, and I wondered, too, given that the pattern
occurred in Apache, if there was some degree of areal connection.  A
number of Apache groups seem to have western Plains historical roots.

It's also interesting that paleness and indistinctness seem to feature as
a dimension in Siouan systems otherwise, in connection with the sabe/s^abe
and ska/saN pairs, to give them in their Omaha-Ponca form.