(O)maha

[Michael Mccafferty]

At little ethnohistory may be useful. I don't know.


Good archaeologists now at the cutting edge of our knowledge of the late
prehistoric settlement patterns in the lower Midwest see the
Miami-Illinois as coming out of the general pool of Algonquians situated
near the west end of Lake Erie before ca. 1640. There's still a lot of
foot-shuffling about where particular groups were, but there are, for
example, strong correlations between what we know is proto-historic/early
historic Illinois pottery and pottery (known as Ft. Meigs applique') made
in the Maumee River valley in the 1500s. The gist is that the Iroqouian
conflagration that swept through Huronia as well as south of Lake Erie
in the 1600s pushed the Miami-Illinois and other folks (Sauk, Meskwaki,
Kickapoo, Mascouten) from around the western end of Lake Erie either 1)
across the Mississippi or 2) into Wisconsin.

Now, Bob Hall, a good archaeologist, places the Winnebago at
the south end of Lake Michigan in late prehistory.

In addition archaeologists at the Glenn Black Lab at Indiana University
have been finding, in late prehistory, interesting sites in western
Indiana that suggest a Siouan/Algonquian interface. In fact, a Siouan
presence at Strawtown on the upper White River of Indiana is common
knowledge around here.

Now, who these Siouans might have been is a good question. They could have
been Winnebago coming down from the Kankakee area to hunt or Missouri
valley Siouans chasing bison, which had first appeared in the Indiana area
only in the 1400s.

It should be noted, too, that the 1400s were a horrendous time to be alive
in the Midwest. It appears that mostly people were dead.

Michael


On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:
> > Or Dakota /ho'taNke/, or Iowa-Otoe <hotu'nge>.
>
> Although those have th (aspirated t).  I thought Dhegiha -tt- ~ -ht- might
> be more likely to yield -d-.  I'm not sure about the final e in the
> Dakotan form.  Maybe -a?  IO tunge is probably thaN<eng>e ~ thaN<enye>e,
> depending on dialect, as this is what happens to forms like *-thaNka in
> IO.  Nobody know what this would have been in Michigamea, of course ...
> :-).
>
> > Either the name was not borowed from Winnebago directly, or it was
> > borrowed from Winnebago before that language had palatalized /t/ to /c/.
> > We're talking at least 300 years ago, so the latter idea seems entirely
> > possible.
>
> True, though I think Winnebago has had c^ in forms attested for about the
> last 200 of those years.
>
>
>