Padouca

[David Costa]

For what it's worth, this name seems not to be attested in Miami, Sauk,
Shawnee, or Meskwaki before the late 1800's. But that doesn't mean much.
However, the attestation of this word from Miami probably came from an
Indiana speaker, not an Oklahoma speaker.

This name *is* listed in the synonymy for the Comanche in HNAI 13.

Dave


> Padouca is not attested in the early Illinois Jesuit sources. However, Pierre
> Potier, a Jesuit missionary at Detroit, recorded a personal name of a Native
> American in the form <PATOKA>, in the mid-1700s.
>
> This is also the name of southern Wabash River tributary. I have not seen this
> hydronym attested until the early 1800s, in English language reports.
>
> The Miami-Illinois attestation dates only to the turn of the 20th century.
>
> Michael McCafferty
>
>
> Quoting Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, David Costa wrote:
>> > In various forms, it's attested in Miami, Shawnee, Sauk, and Meskwaki.
>> >
>> > >> In Algonquian languages, the 'Padouca' name always indicates the
>> Comanches.
>>
>> In modern Siouan languages it refers to the Comanche, too, or to an
>> unknown group.  I think it's probably safer to say that ethnohistorians
>> are reasonably sure that before it referred to the Comanche it refered to
>> their antecedants, apparently Plains Apache gorups, perhaps with the Kiowa
>> included.  The more or less seemless shift from Apache to Comanche
>> suggests it applies to people forma given area, or with a particular
>> cultural or subsistance pattern, rather than to specific linguistic
>> groups.
>>
>> >From the pre-Comanche through the early Comanche periods we are in the
>> period before vocabulary lists for Siouan languages, and very nearly so
>> for Miami-Illinois.  The sources for the term(s) in this period are French
>> texts.  The source of the form seems to be Dhegiha, Ioway-Otoe and
>> possibly Miami-Illinois sources, presumably with a tendency toward
>> Miami-Illinois intermediaries.  I'm not really able to site chapter and
>> verse on the arguments these days.
>>
>> A somewhat similar pattern exists for the various terms for Northern
>> Caddoan groups which lead to modern English Pawnee, except that the
>> reference remains "Northern Caddoan."
>>
>> The etymologies for both terms are obscure, though Padouca might be 'round
>> head', assuming that some u and n confusion was involved early on, and
>> assuming that the term as it occurs in some modern languages has been
>> borrowed from French.
>>
>>
>
>