Lakota letter from Leeds at the turn of the century

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

 > (Jan:) “My father, I am sending (‘giving’) you a letter today. I am
not going to
tell you(pl.) much, but I will speak to you shortly. Here where I am I have
no troubles. I am doing very well. That is all (‘That is the way it is’).

Indeed, the switching between singular and plural in the three verbs of the
first sentence is weird (wowapi chic’u; echiciyapi; wochiciyakin kte). So
alternatively “un” is some sort of a stumbled word or part of a word,
perhaps “echiciya waun kte shni”. Such cases are not uncommon in Lakota
manuscripts either.<<

The _echiciya uN kte_ <- _echicia pi kte_ interpretation, to me, seems
quite convincing :-) (Thanks!)

Here, just my two cents referring to the 'weird' switching between
singular and plural:

As being familiar to the ancient (German) dialect of the Transylvanian
Saxons/Siebenbürger Sachsen (although not really being a speaker myself)
I can tell you that this issue is a - syntactical/logical(?) -
peculiarity of this language also, even when transferred into the modern
High German they speak. So, I usually hear (German) sentences like this:
1)
"Karin sind gekommen" (K. _have_ come) - i.e. she's come with, say, her
husband (=myself), her sister, children etc.
2)
"Wir sind mit Mutti dort gewesen" (we've been there with Mom) - i.e. Mom
and I have been there (=we two)

This (#1) is kind of pars pro toto, which might also be the idea behind
the above Lakota addressing: "My father (and Mom, brothers etc.) ..."

Alfred