Dakotan ''wichasha'' 'man'.

[Constantine Chmielnicki]

We should also count in Assiniboin "wiNc^ha's^ta"

In  Albert White Hat Jr. "Reading and writing the Lakota language" (1999)
the "red-man" hypothesis is also stated.

Can it be folk etymology like S^ahiyela for Cheyenne (S^a-(h)-iyA-la,
red-talk-little)?

Interestingly, there are more examples of D. s^t -> L. s^ change :
es^(t)a, "although",
toks^(t)a (<tokhe es^(t)a), adverb many meanings: later; at any rate
es^(t)as^, "indeed!"

Connie

Friday, April 29, 2005, 2:52:05 AM, you wrote:

RR> All,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RR> Bob






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Best regards,
 Wablenica                            mailto:wablenica at mail.ru