Hand gestures: Companion Terms for 7 and 8

[lcumberl at indiana.edu]

Quoting Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>:

> On Sun, 9 May 2004 lcumberl at indiana.edu wrote:
> > Per Denig, "The number 7 has two names, shakkowee and enshand (the odd
> > number)."
>
> How does the latter related to iyu's^na?
>
>
>


I was sort of hoping someone would have an idea on that. Denig's orthography is
fairly inconsistent - frequently I can make out what he's writing because I
already know the word.  'e' to him is 'i' to us, and 'a' is usually the typical
'a' in 'father', so you could almost make that case that he's attempting
'iyus^na', but where is the -yu- ? Denig knew the Assiniboine language, so it's
not likely that he didn't hear the -yu-.  Yet the meaning he assigns it
correlates well with Deloria's explanation about a game of seven sticks in which
the odd one determined the outcome. (Whether that's shinny or not, I don't know
- I probably should ask Ray next time I see him.) Anyway, I figured "enshand"
was in the ballpark, and since I have other things on my mind, I didn't explore
it any further.

Linda