MVS 'eight'

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, David Costa wrote:

>
> >> My geographic objection is more hypothetical, but the gist of it is that when
> >> you start to trace where the M-I speakers were in the earliest historical
> >> times, or where they would have been pre-1492, the evidence strongly hints
> >> that they were a good deal further EAST than they were at first contact. From
> >> all evidence, the Illinois were very recent arrivals into what is now
> >> Illinois, possibly not entering that area at all until the Iroquois Wars.
> >> When you go further back in time, it starts looking like the M-I speakers
> >> were in Indiana before they were in Illinois, and in Ohio before they were in
> >> Indiana. That puts them in a place where it's more likely they would have
> >> interacted with Tutelo speakers than with I-O speakers, and WAY more likely
> >> than them interacting with Michigamea speakers. The M-I speakers' presence in
> >> the Michigamea area was probably very recent.
>
> > Would this still be an objection if the early I-O speakers were originally
> > located further to the east themselves? The sacred Legend recorded in Fletcher
> > and La Flesche specifies that the Iowa were with the Omaha (Dhegihans?) when
> > the latter made their luckless migration across the Mississippi after moving
> > down the Ohio.
>
> Well, that would have been my next question... I imagine that when M-I
> speakers entered Indiana and Illinois (early 1600's?) whoever they bumped
> out probably spoke some kind of Siouan language.

Bob Hall at the Field Museum in Chicago, a good archaeologist, has
probably done the most in figuring out this piece of the puzzle, at least
with respect to northeastern Indiana/Chicago area. I don't have access at
the moment to a list of his publications on the topic, but the gist of it
is that he believes the Winnebago were the resident native population
before the Miami-Illinois folks moved westward. He went so far as to place
the Winnebago at Chicago when Jean Nicollet dropped in for the first
French visit in 1634. That is not correct. The Winnebago were no longer
around the area at that time; they'd already moved further north and, in
fact, appear to have moved around a lot in the mid-1600s, for obvious
reasons. But, all in all, Hall's arguments are sound and convincing, and
I believe that "most archaeologists" concur with his conclusions related
to the location of the Winnebago in late prehistory.

Michael