Sakakawea - Charbonneau

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

 >(John) Incidentally, this page refers to Charbonneau as "Troussant
Charbonneau," but my recollection is that it was Toussaint - "All
Saint(s)."  I suppose he was born or maybe it's christened on November
1?  (Not that I'm necessarily in position to complain about other folks'
spelling, and I'm fairly slovenly about editing, too.)<<


You're right - and I've found quite some variants how this first name is
spelled ;-) But would you judge from this that this site's statement on
the "chain of translation" is erroneous as well? ("It worked something
like this: A native speaker would ask Sakakawea a question in Hidatsa,
she in turn would then REPEAT (!) the question to her husband Troussant
Charbonneau. Charbonneau, in turn, would ask a French speaker (perhaps
fur trader Rene Jessaume) the same question in French, who would then
translate it to English for Lewis and Clark.")
To me, this repetition doesn't make much sense (except for the fact that
Ch.'s knowledge of the Hidatsa language was not good enough to wholly
understand other speakers than his wife - who might have rephrased the
sentences for him). This, BTW, sometimes is the case with me
understanding my wife's Transylvanian Saxon much better than that spoken
by her compatriots.

Here's an - original Canadian-French - text on the issue with some
interesting details:

http://www.leveillee.net/roots/frowen4-10.htm


Interesting also to know that 'Pomp' is said to having had a German son
named Anton Fries in Bad Mergentheim/Baden-Wuerttemberg, whose < parents
are noted as "Johann Baptist Charbonnau of St. Louis 'called the
American in the service of Duke Paul of this place and Anastasia
Katharina Fries, unmarried daughter of the late Georg Fries, a soldier
here.'" The child died three months later, after which Jean Baptiste
left for the United States >.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0302/feature4/online_extra.html


Alfred

P.S. Will anybody explain the meaning of the Native word pomp??