hoppas / hoppus

[Alan Hartley]

Please excuse the continued non-Siouan digression, but I just--what are
the odds?--ran across the word in T. Procter's Diary (1791) in Amer.
State Papers vol. IV (Indian Affairs vol. I) (1832) p. 151 "You are just
now rising from your seats, with your backs bent, bearing your loaded
hoppas." The Iroquois speaker here (in translation) is apparently using
the word in the plural, so it might indeed be an r-less 'hopper'. (This
antedates the earliest example (Lewis and Clark) in Mathews' Dict. of
Americanisms by 12 years.)

Alan