Dakotan ''wichasha'' 'man'.

[R. Rankin]

All,

I have a note from Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian
asking about the Dakota term for 'man, person',
variously wichasha, wichashta; Stoney wiNcha.  He was
looking at some of the earliest transcriptions of the
word in accounts from the mid 19th century and found
that 'wichasha' was analyzed as wicha 'man' + -sha
'red'  = red-man or Indian.  Here are his citations:

1) Bruce Husband, Ft. Laramie, June 26, 1849.  man =
wi-tsha Indian; people = witshasha (note: Literally=Red
men)

2) Ferdinand V. Hayden, Lakhota vocab (cf. Hayden
1862:378).   man = wi-tcha'-sha Indians, people =
wi-tcha'-sha red man

3) Albert Bierstadt, Lakhota, 1863.  man = wicha
Indians, people = We-shota

Is there an argument (for or) against taking wichhAsha
as etymologically wichhA 'man, male human' (as also in
Riggs's Dakota) + sha 'red'?  Is this a commonly
accepted reading/analysis of people who speak the
language?  Or is the ending/augment -sha or -shta an
arbitrary addition, essentially an empty morph?

What do you make of Bierstadt's form We-shota?

Any chance the -shta of Dakota is connected to (Lakhota
only?) shota 'muddy'?  Or is the -shta of Dakota
somehow cognate with the -sha of Yankton and Lakhota
after all?

I pass these comments and questions on to you in the
hope that you can shed more light on them than I can.

Bob