(O)maha

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 mmccaffe at indiana.edu wrote:
> True, but it's also clear that the Marquette generation knew next to nothing
> about the Michigamea, who, rather than flee to Wisconsin or southeast
> Missouri, went down the Mississippi, as you know, ...

My imprecision.  I only meant that the existence of the Michigamea in the
general area in proto-historic times, speaking an apparently
non-Algonquian language, suggests that we shouldn't too blandly assume
that we know everything about the linguistic conduit transmitting names
from the lower Missouri to Illinois, just because we know a fair bit about
Algonquian and Siouan languages of the area that survived into the era of
linguistic investigation.

Of course, Michigamea may be a fairly garden variety Mississippi Valley
language, but the fragments that survive are so limited and poorly
glossed, and the context of the preservation so just plain weird that I
hate to be very definite about that.

(If anyone is wondering what on earth I am talking about, see
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/michigamea.htm.)