Missouri, etc.

[Michael McCafferty]

----------
From: "R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: Historical questions
Date: Thu, Jan 1, 2004, 9:57 am



>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.

MM: Don’s paper, titled “The Pronunciation of Missouri: Variation and Change
in American English,” came out just recently in American Speech (Vol. 78,
No. 3, Fall 2003). I helped him with the Algonquian language aspects of the
paper that are discussed in the introduction.



ÿ 3.  The element /maha/ shows up in at least three different contexts.



MM: For the record, <MAHA> occurs on Marquette’s map of the Mississippi,
rather near <PANA>,


>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
ÿ of the) Maha?


MM: No. This is simply an English speaker’s attempt to write the French term
‘riviere des moines’.


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).

MM: True, although there was really no good reason why it was disputed.
There were never any “monks” (Fr. Moines) on this river. And it has been
known for a long time (see Callendar’s piece on the Illinois in HNAI vol.
15) that the French referred to the Illinois band known as the Moingwena as
“les Moines,” shortening the name of this people just as they shortened the
names of many tribes (Les Pes for the Peoria, les Kas for the Kaskaskia, les
Mis for Miami, les Ouias for the Ouiatanons, les Poux for the Potawatomi,
etc., etc. Dave Costa figured out and explained the “shit-face” etymology of
“Moines” in his Miami-Illinois tribe names paper (Miami-Illinois Tribe
Names, Proceedings of the Thirty-first Algonquian Conference (2000): 30-53).
I took Dave’s ball, or cowpie, and ran with it in my recent paper in the
journal names on “Missouri,” ("On the Birthday and Etymology of the
Placename Missouri") by showing the name's development in French, British
and American cartography—and getting quite a bit of flack from folks in Des
Moines, Iowa, and Des Moines, Oregon. :-)

Michael

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).

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