Partisan

[Rory M Larson]

> William Clark records as "Torto-hongar, Partezon (Bad fellow)" the name
> of the second chief of a band of Tetons encountered in Sept. 1804.
> Moulton, in a footnote says the name may be blotahungka 'war leader'.
> Though the context is Teton, Clark's version shows no trace of bl-. Is
> inital bl- a recent development in Lakota (or might Clark have got the
> name through a non-Teton (but Sioux) interpreter? Riggs has
> mde-tang'-hung-ka and Teton blo-tang'-hung-ka 'leader of a war party':
> could Clark be recording something like mdotanghungka? (His R's here are
> silent, and it isn't surprising that he omits the initial m- and the eng
> after the second vowel.)

Moulton's suggestion makes sense to me, along with Alan's ideas
that the name came to Clark through a non-Teton Sioux interpreter,
and that the accent was not on the first syllable.  In OP, the
corresponding word is /nudoN'hoNga/, again meaning 'war leader'.
I believe the initial *R consonant goes to an oral stop (d/t) in
the other Dhegihan languages.

If Clark's R's are silent, and Moulton's view is correct, I would
guess that Clark's "Torto-hongar" was intended to represent
/tota'-hoNga/.  This would be very similar to the OP pronunciation,
except for the first few phonemes.  How about Osage or Kaw?
Wouldn't the Osage version be pronounced something like /totaN'-hoNka/?
I don't suppose the expedition had picked up any temporary followers
from downstream who might have been helping with the interpretation?
Or could Clark and the others have already learned enough words
themselves from the Dhegihans they had passed through earlier to
prejudice their pronunciation of Dakotan?  Otherwise, a Santee
version like /mdota'-huNka/ would be pretty close too.  Perhaps
by the time they reached the Tetons, their representation of the
local varieties of common Siouan words would have become something
of a pastiche.

Rory