calumet de paix

[Michael Mccafferty]

Oh...
sorry. I didn't see your last sentence.

"Never mind"  -Emily Latella

Best,
Michael


On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Wallace Chafe wrote:

> John's take on this seems right. The Northern Iroquoian languages have a
> word ske:no? (both vowels nasalized), or similar forms, which means
> something like "well-being". It gets applied to good health, the absence of
> strife, having plenty of food, etc. Nowadays it's sometimes translated
> "peace", but it has a broader meaning than simply the absence of war. And
> in fact both peace and war, as we understand them, weren't quite the way
> the Iroquois understood things in pre-contact times. Obviously there were
> raiding parties and so on, but European-style warfare was something
> different. I'm not familiar with a "peace" morpheme occurring in an
> Iroquoian word for "pipe".
>
> Wally
>
> --On Friday, February 27, 2004 9:18 AM -0700 Koontz John E
> <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> >> Does anyone know if a morpheme for "peace" occurs in any Siouan
> >> language's term for "pipe"? I'm trying to determine the origin of "paix"
> >> (peace) in the French expression "calumet de paix" (peace pipe).
> >
> > The concept of "peace," itself is perhaps somewhat difficult.  I remember
> > looking for this fairly recently.  This is a complex collection of
> > associated ideas, the details of which seem to me to depend on a "Western"
> > and Christian context.  The cultural dependence is perhaps not as obvious
> > or absolute as something like 'junk mail' and to some extent my
> > difficulties may stem from awkward or literal translations.  The 'peace'
> > forms I tracked down in Omaha-Ponca seemed to refer to mental peace, or
> > calm, and although this might certainly be connected with not fearing an
> > attack that didn't seem to be the emphasis.  Peace in the sense of an
> > absence of declared war or an agreement not to fight, among other things,
> > seems harder to find a term for.
> >
> > I'm not sure there's a countervailing term for 'war' either, though there
> > is certainly the term nudaN rendered 'go on the warpath' (itself a
> > formulation growing out of early French and English interactions with East
> > Coast groups), i.e., 'to conduct a military expedition', which is rendered
> > 'war' in translated compounds like 'war chief' (or 'war leader').  There
> > are also, I think, some terms often rendered 'to hate each other' ('be in
> > a state of war?') that might be relevant.
> >
> > On the other hand, I believe I have seen references to agreements not to
> > fight being concluded.
> >
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