Missouri

[Alan Hartley]

Rory M Larson wrote:

>>According to Carl Masthay's edition of an Illinois-French dictionary of
>>early 18c., the basic sense of the word miss8ri was 'dugout canoe'; a
>>bark canoe was called 8ic8es mis8ri.
>
> Is mis8ri = miss8ri ?
>
> And does 8ic8es mean 'bark'?

Yes to both. In miss8ri, the 8 = ou, and in 8ic8es it's w. (Cf. Abenaki
wigwa-ol, Plains Cree waskwayi-o:s- 'birchbark canoe'.)

> If so, then wouldn't that mean that mihso:ri has
> become the basic word for 'boat' or 'canoe' in
> Illinois, with presumption of 'dugout' if it's
> unqualified?

Seems so to me, but I'll defer to David. (He has written The
Miami-Illinois Language, 2002, U. Neb. Press, and An Overview of the
Illinois Language in the intro to Masthay's edition of the
Illinois-French dict.)

> But if the mihs- part of that is from PA 'wood',
> then the -o:ri part should be 'boat'.  Is that
> ever used independently in Illinois?

I don't think so (David?), but it is used in at least one other noun,
irer8ri 'canot de bois, pirogue', which seems literally to mean
something like 'tippy canoe'(?) The same widespread Proto-Algonquian
word *o:Si [S = esh] is used as the bare noun in several languages,
e.g., Plains Cree o:si & Menominee o:s, and occurs with the 'wood'
prefix also in several eastern languages. In Ojibway, it occurs (only?)
in we-mitig-o:Si 'Frenchman', lit. 'he who has a wooden boat/canoe'.
This construction for 'Frenchman' has a long history, having been
recorded by Champlain in Montagnais in 1608-12 as mistigoche, whence it
was probably calqued south- and westward (Illinois-Miami, Shawnee, Fox,
Ojibway).

Alan