Indian perfume set.

[Kathleen Shea]

I didn't know where to jump into this conversation.  Just to get a cultural
background from a Ponca perspective on "Indian perfume," I checked by phone
with my main consultant, Uncle Parrish Williams.  He called it
i'nubdhaN'khidhe (with ' indicating that the preceding syllable is accented)
'You smell like a man' (his gloss).  Several years ago he had shown me some
that he kept in a handkerchief, and he repeated what he had told me
then--that men would wear the perfume (an amount about the size of a silver
dollar in a handkerchief in the pocket or elsewhere) as a deodorant.
Sometimes it was used to attract women, but it could also be used every day
and could be smelled about 10 feet away from a dancer who was wearing it.
He said that there are four kinds of Indian perfume but only three are used.
(The kind that isn't used is called nuga' 'male.')  The three that are used
vary from mild in fragrance with a smell like an orange peeling, a stronger
smelling type, and a third that smells really strong.  The second type of
plant, with the smell of middle strength is the one preferred.  He says that
all the plants look alike, with purple flowers and leaves that are really
green.  They grow in clumps about two feet tall, except the very stong
smelling one, which is small and grows only about 4-5" high.  They can be
replanted, but they won't propagate and will quit growing if someone keeps
picking them.  Uncle Parrish says that that's the reason that he would
always keep three different plants going in the wild and would keep the
knowledge of their whereabouts to himself, so that no one would over-harvest
them.  Most of the time, he would just use the leaves and not the flowers;
the flowers can be used, but the seeds from the flowers are needed for new
growth.  Other people have told me that Indian perfume is hard to find and
that you will usually smell it before you see it.

Another of my consultants, Grandma Edna Hinman, sadly now dhiNge' ('gone'),
told me that women would put the Indian perfume in their mouth and blow it
on a shawl to perfume the shawl.  Uncle Parrish confirms this and says that
the women would chew the leaves (about 1/2 teaspoon) and just use their
saliva for the liquid with which to spray the shawl.

About the near non-existence of the word ppi 'good' in Ponca, I have a few
thoughts about what might be some fossilized instances of it in certain
words.  One is a word for 'to love,' ppi/dhe (with the slash here to show
where the person markers can attach), so that 'I love you' is ppiwidhe.
Uncle Parrish describes this as "puppy love," and LaFlesche's Osage
dictionary lists it as 'the love of a woman for a man or boy.'  Another
remnant of ppi might be seen in ppiduba 'some more' (duba 'more'), as in,
MakkaN sabe ppiduba akkigdhize ttiNkhe, 'I'm going to get myself some more
coffee.'  I'm sure there must be some more instances of ppi....

Kathy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rory M Larson" <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: Indian perfume set.


>
> John wrote:
> > Another point, which the Dhegihanists are aware of,
> > but maybe not others, is that OP *ppi 'good' is
> > completely obsolete.  In fact, I think *ppi is
> > obsolete throughout Dhegiha.  It exists in a few fossil
> > forms, e.g., ppi'=az^i ~ ppez^i' 'bad < good + not'.
> > The usual OP term for 'good' is u(u)daN.
>
> This is a good point, and it might help to explain
> the outcome in OP of the first syllable.  For a
> Dhegihan speaker, the first syllable *hpi=u- would
> be unanalyzable because they no longer had the word
> *ppi.  But since the second syllable *braN was clear,
> there would be some motivation to reanalyze the first
> syllable into a familiar morpheme.
>
>
> >  The Osage cognate of this - o(o)taN - means essentially
> > 'be a coup'.
>
> "Be a coup"??  Do you mean as in 'counting coup'?
> I don't understand this translation.
>
>
> >  Anyway, if nubdhaN < *p(p)y=obdhaN then it isn't
> > likely to be a recent form.  This is also evident
> > in the necessity that any such form has undergone
> > the *py > *pr > *R changes, with *R subsequently
> > becoming n in OP by regular sound changes.
> > Corresponding Osage, Kaw, and Quapaw forms would
> > be *tobraN, *doblaN, and, I think, *topdaN or *dobdaN -
> > I forget how the *R and *pr sounds come out in Quapaw
> > at the moment!  I don't believe there are any cases
> > of n ~ bdh alternations in OP at present.  That is,
> > there is no perceptible contemporary connection
> > between the two.
>
> If nubdhaN is coming from MVS (Hypothesis 1), then
> it certainly wouldn't be recent.  If it is coming
> as a loan from a prehistoric IOM *pyobraN or *pyubraN
> (Hypothesis 2), then the most likely time for it
> to happen would be at the *pr stage of the above
> sequence (assuming OP nu < *pro, but not < *pyo).
> Since all the Dhegihan languages have single
> consonant sounds where the *pr should be, I would
> suppose that *pr had gone to *R before Dhegihan
> diverged.  That would favor putting the borrowing
> after proto-MVS but before proto-Dhegihan (Hypothesis 2a).
> On the other hand, the circumstantial considerations that
> this set apparently exists only in IOM and OP, and
> that there are traditions of OP and IO associating
> with each other after the divergence of OP, and that the
> IO template pyu- is a significantly modified contraction
> of the hypothetical proto-MVS *hpi=o-, make the
> idea of a later transference tempting (Hypothesis 2b).
>
> For Hypothesis 2, these considerations might be
> resolved if we imagine proto-Dhegihan existing as
> a dialect field over a wide area for a period of
> several centuries.  During this period, *pr > *R,
> and thence toward its reflexes in the various
> Dhegihan daughter languages, which are still
> contiguous dialects.  During the same period,
> proto-IOM lives in a neighborhood adjacent to the
> pre-proto-OP part of Dhegihan, and maintains
> especially close relations with these people.
> Early in the proto-Dhegihan phase, pre-proto-OP
> adopts and readapts the proto-IOM word for mint,
> IOM *pyubraN > pre-proto-OP *prubraN, where
> *pru is reinterpreted as 'potato'.  Later
> in the phase, this evolves to *RubraN and still
> later to *nubdhaN.  Finally, in the course of
> some crisis, the proto-OP people move away from
> the other Dhegihan groups, accompanied by their
> IO associates.
>
> Otherwise, we always have Hypothesis 3, which
> holds that the first syllables of IOM pyubraN
> and OP nubdhaN are only coincidentally similar!
>
> Rory
>
>
>