'eight' some more

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Koontz John E wrote:

Dave Costa:
> > Well, that would leave open the question of why the Siouan
loan is attested
> > through *all* known M-I dialects, including Miami. That is, if the word for
> > 'eight' was borrowed by the Illinois from Chiwere speakers around the
> > Mississippi River, why do Indiana Miami and Wea dialects have the word as
> > well?
>

John Koontz:
> What is the date of the Indiana Miami and Wea?  My understanding is that
> at present MI communities in Oklahoma crosscut the Miami vs. Illinois
> distinction.  In other words, only the Indiana Miami and Wea communities
> would be Miami without Illinois population infusions?  However, ... in her
> atlas suggests ...
>

The earliest French accounts concerning the Miami and Illinois, which
appear after the great Central Algonquian diaspora of the mid-1600s that
sent Miami-Illinois-speaking bands from a presumed homeland in the western
Lake Erie watershed west to the Mississippi and northwest to what we call
today Wisconsin, refer to all the bands as "Illinois", which is what
the Ojibwe called them, and the French got the name from the Ojibwe. The
division into "Miami" and "Illinois," as Dave notes, took place between
the beginning of the diaspora ca. 1640 and the arrival of La Salle in the
West, winter of 1679-80. All roads of research lead to the notion that the
Miami became chummy with the Iroquois and that relationship, even though
it was in short order betrayed by the Iroquois, drove a wedge
between two "camps" of Miami-Illinois speakers that remained and made the
relationship irreconcilable during the early and middle historical
periods.

Now, what is important to realize is that this wedge was primarily between
the bands that in time "usurped" the original "Illinois" designation
as applied by the Ojibwe--the Peoria, the Kaskaskia, the Tamaroa, and
other related groups (in other words, the latter group became known as the
"Illinois" even though that moniker had originally applied to *all* the
Miami-Illinois speaking folks) and the Miami proper, and by "Miami proper"
I am referring to the bands that lived during the diaspora in Wisconsin,
subsequently on the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan in the very late
1600s and very early 1700s, and then in the vicinity of the headwaters of
the Maumee throughout the 1700s. Other bands that are typically referred
to as "Miami," specifically the Wea and Piankashaw were not a part of this
"Miami/Illinois" rift, or better put, sometimes they were and sometimes
they weren't. But the Wea in particular maintained fairly good relations
with the so-called "Illinois" throughout the 1700s, at a time when the
Miami and the Illinois were constantly at each others' throats.

Once the Kentuckians and Virginians took control of what is now Indiana
and Illinois, once individual bands of M-I speakers were sent across the
Mississippi, the Peoria and the Piankashaw fused into a tribal
organization. Other bands of M-I speakers fused to form the Miami of
Oklahoma.