Algonquian ( or ther group?) term for White Buffalo Calf Woman?

[Jimm GoodTracks]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: "Siouan List" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: Algonquian ( or the group?) term for White Buffalo Calf Woman?


Among the Pawnee and Arickara, the parallel is Atira Reksu/ Atina Reksu
[Mother Corn].
Such a single Sacred Personage does not occur for the IOM.  Instead, the
Sacred Pipe and Teachings are woven into each individual Clan story with the
elements being unique to each Clan version names.  The bowl of the pipe is
discovered by the Bear Brothers [an Earth moiety] in the meeting of a little
spirit man.  The stem is later secured in a revelation of seeing a snag in
the water with moss hanging from it.  Also later, the Beaver Clan give a
stem to the Brothers, after one of the Brothers chews the end of the stem.
The Buffalo are said to have already had their Pipe when they came down to
the earth [Sky moiety].  I have looked into the Winnebago/ Hochank Clan
origin legends available and find a similarity to the IOM, although the
versions available are less informative than those for the IOM.
WBC seems to be unique to the L/Dakotas.

> I haven't really run into an parallel for WBC Woman, though there could
> easily be one I don't know of.  This sounds like a question for Jimm
> Goodtracks or Jan Ullrich.  Actually, my only encounters with WBC Woman
> have been people asking me if I've run into a parallel outside of Dakotan.
>
> Trickster is another matter.
> There is a interesting study of the Trickster cycle and some others in
> Winnebago (Hochank) by Paul Radin.  English texts are provided, with
> extensive footnotes and some folkloric analysis.   Many of the Trickster
> stories in this volume and many of the others, too, are represented in the
> Dorsey Omaha-Ponca text collection of 1890.
>

Yes, it is one of several good studies by P.Radin.

> The Iktomi stories I've seen have a heavy overlap with the Winnebago and
> Omaha-Ponca Trickster stories, but less than you find between those two.
>

This is true for the IOM stories as well, and the same is true as mentioned
below for the Hidatsa and Mandan, albeit, with anticipated variation as
would be expected.  And as suggested, I can see some stories seeming to have
been exchanged from other groups.
> At least some of the standard Mississippi Valley Trickster stories occur
> also in Mandan (and so I assume also Crow and Hidatsa), in Cheyenne, and
> in Wichita.  They seem to be different from the Coyote stories
> elsewhere, though there is some overlap.   There are actually a few
> Omaha Coyote stories, perhaps imported.
>

The D/Lakota Iktomi is the IOM Ishjinki [Is^jiNki].  In English, he is
simply referred to as "Old Man Ishjinki".  There is a story that he was
orphaned as a youngster, without discussion of how so.  He was raised by a
grandfather who killed a large raccoon, tanning the hide, cutting it into
strips, so the boy could wrap his extrodinary long genital, which he carries
upon his back.  The period between his youth and the time he becomes an old
man are quite absent.  All the remaining stories of Ishjinki occurr as an
old man.  There are a number of stories that entail situations which include
the use or misuse of his long member.  This was also noted in several of the
Mandan/ Hidatsa stories.  In one episode, he encounters a ground squirrel
who teases him and taunts him that he will bite his member.  Ultimately,
Ishjinki chases the squirrel to a hole in the ground.  Ishjinki trys to prod
him out with his erect member to which the squirrel bites off the end and
continues to whittle it down further to a contemporary size.  The story
concludes that had the squirrel not done this act, the Buffalo Clan people
would still be overly endowed.
Due to the rather saucy theme of these kind of story episodes, it becomes a
rather delicate matter to relate these stories to mixed audiences of
non-Natives, and even to some Natives themselves today.  Nevertheless, I
have recordings of elderly ladies in their 80s who had no difficulty
relating the episodes which they found to be amusing and of no other
consequence, and Christian teachings to wit, notwithstanding.  They laughed
together as one sang the the Wekan (story) song that is included with the
squirrel episode, as in their minds they could picture the ridiculousness of
such an old man going along with his "re'" drapped over his shoulder down
his back and then being teased by the little squirrel who sings the song.

> The Dakota trickster Iktomi 'Spider' shares the sense of the name which
> with Cheyenne.  I think that's a Northern pattern.  The Dhegiha,
> Ioway-Otoe, and Winnebago Trickster is called (Omaha-Ponca version)
> Is^tiniNkhe ~ IshtidhiNkhe.  The name might be rendered Ishtinike in
> English spelling, but he is usually called Monkey in English by Omahas and
> - I think - Poncas.  He appears physically as a human character with an
> enormous phallos, detachable, that he keeps wrapped in a raccoon skin.
> The name has no clear meaning other than Trickster
>

 In the Twins (below) they are actually born by an act of violence  in both
the Ioway/ Otoe-Missouria version, as well as the Hidatsa-Mandan version,
although by different evil beings.  The IOM have the father taking the
younger to the woods where he is abandoned and adopted by a wood rat
Grandmother.  He does so by fact of the father's inability to raise two
infants.  The northern version has the evil headless being throwing one to
an outside spring and the other to the back of the lodge.
In a conversation with a Navajo/ Dine woman, I learned that the Dine had
legend stories about the Twin Holy Boys.  A Dine friend lent me his book
called something like Dine Bezhanni or the like, which included the Dine
version of the Twins.  While I noted some parallels, the episodes were quite
divergent, more than any other versions I had read to date.
> Another widespread cycle - with a lot of local variation - is the Twins
> story, which is considerably abbreviated and missing its beginning and
> later episodes in the Omaha-Ponca texts, though this is just chance, since
> longer versions are available from LaFlesche and for Ioway-Otoe.  Also
> Pawnee.  This cycle is important in the Southwest and Lowie's study of the
> Hidatsa (and Crow) version calls it a "national epic" in that context.
> In the Omaha-Ponca version the twins are sons of the Sun and after careful
> training in monster slaying by their father track down and kill the
> Two-Face monster who killed their mother, using a sun arrow.  Most of this
> detail is missing from the truncated story in Dorsey 1890, but obviously
> parallels the Navajo and Hidatsa versions.
>
> While some stories shared by different groups seem to be cases of a whole
> cycle and collection of ideas being shared, others seem to involve random
> individual stories that appealed to someone.  Examples are:
>
> The Omaha-Ponca story of Big Turtle's (Snapping Turtle's) War Party, which
> I noticed in thumbing through a Fox collection.
>
> The Omaha-Ponca story about a nation led by grizzly bear that abandons
> its children, who then form a new tribe.  This has such a different view
> of the kinship system and Ishtinike that Dorsey comments on the anomalies.
> I discovered it in a Blackfoot collection where it appears perfectly in
> context in a society based on age-grouping.  (And I understand the
> tutelary Trickster who invents arrows and warfare is a northern element,
> too.)
>