Historical questions

[R. Rankin]

> 2.  The name Missouri itself looks like it _might_
>     possibly come from

The late Don Lance had a paper on the name Missouri (he taught at MU in
Columbia).  I don't know if he published it before his death last year or not.
You might try Googling his name and see if you can come up with it or check
NAMES, the journal of the American Name Society.

> 3.  The element /maha/ shows up in at least three
>     different contexts.  We have the Maha as the
>     UmaN'haN, or the Omaha tribe, which is said to
>     mean 'upstream'.  But we also have the Pani-maha,
>     who are usually Loup or Skidi Pawnee, but seems
>     sometimes to be used (or confused) for the Omaha
>     or Arikara as well.  And between the Kansas and
>     Platte rivers, we have a couple of small rivers
>     flowing into the Missouri from southeastern
>     Nebraska called Nemaha, presumably Ni-maha.
>     So are these maha's coming from the Missouria,
>     Osage or Kaws, with the meaning of 'upstream'
>     on the Missouri?  The Nemaha is the 'river upstream',
>     the Pani-maha are the 'upstream Pawnees', and the
>     O-maha are the 'ones who dwell in an upstream context'?

There's consensus among archaeologists (and, I suspect, linguists) that the
migration of the Caddoan-speaking peoples was from South to North.  For what
it's worth.

But I think there is more than one MAHA.  While the names Omaha and (Quapaw)
Imaha do appear to refer to 'upstream', I think Nemaha is from Chiwere ni
'water' and maha 'muddy' (another 'muddy river' name).  Jimm can confirm this or
not.  Maha may also have a reading in Caddoan languages -- I simply don't know
that.

> 4. Tabeau, probably writing
>     around 1806 if understand correctly, mentions a
>     "rivierre des mohens" several times.  The editor says
>     this is probably the Des Moines, . . .   Could
>     mohen simply be an alternate spelling for the old
>     (river of the) Maha?  In French, it would be
>     pronounced something like /mohaN/, which is at least
>     as close to /umaN'haN/ as is /maha/.

I can't say what's possible, but if it's Des Moines it's not likely from maha.
The etymology of Des Moines has long been disuputed, but the best bet is from
the new dictionary of Native American placenames that Bill Bright is editing
(with the questionable help of several of us on the list).  In the Des Moines
entry Dave Costa relates it to the French shortening of the Algonquian tribal
name /Moyiinkweena/, a derogatory term used by the Peorias meaning "visage plein
d'ordure" (shit-faces).

> 5.  How long have the Iowa and Oto been separate tribes?
>     As I understand, the two languages are hardly more
>     than dialects of each other.

These are vexed questions that are often not helped much by native accounts that
strongly tend to collapse long periods of time into an account that will make
sense to the layman.  Spanish, Gallego (Galician) and Portuguese are
linguistically quite close, but they have about a 1500 year internal time depth.
All I can offer is that guesstimates of linguistic time depth have most often
erred on the shallow side.

> 6.  Do we have any language material at all from the
>     Missouria?

Very little that I know of -- some names from Lewis and Clark at least.  Maybe
John and Jimm know of others.

> 7.  It looks like we have at least two words for 'horse'
>     in MVS.

The $oNge term seems to have been generalized (or transfered) to 'horse' pretty
much all over, including Osage and Kaw.   These latter do also have OS kkawa and
KS kkawaye from Spanish.  The poor dog then usually gets the innovated (derived)
term:  $oNge oyudaN 'canid + pull, drag' > $oNgiidaN 'dog' in Kansa.  All this
comes from the fact that dogs were used to pull travois.

Miner lists /$uuNk/ 'dog, horse' for WI.  And there are Hocangara words for
'saddle', etc. derived from it.  The folks in Mauston, Wisc. can elaborate on
that better than I.

Bob