Dakota Dialects (was RE: Sign Language (was Dances with Wolves))

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> Koontz John E wrote:
> > I wondered about that myself.  I don't recall what Parks & DeMallie said
> > about self-identification
>
> "the Yanktons and Yanktonais are the least well known of the Sioux
> groups. When their speech was recorded in the nineteenth century, they
> called themselves dak'ota..; there is no evidence that they ever called
> themselves nak'ota." (Anthropol. Ling. 34.242)

In regard to the last comment, it occurs to me that whether the Yanktons
and Yanktonais ever called themselves nakhota, the evidence of the Dakota
Dialect Survey is fairly definitive that if that had they would have
pronounced it dakhota.

So, I conclude that Parks & DeMallie don't say anything about
self-identification as such?  In that case, of course, it would be
potentially possible for the Yanktonais or their neighbors to make an
identification about their connections not correlated with actual
Yanktonais speech practices.  The world is full of people who perceive
their dialect or someone else's through political lenses.  Barbed wire is
a sort of isogloss, I guess!

Another possibility would be that the Yanktonais originally spoke a
dialect related to Assiniboine, but have adopted or assimilated to Yankton
since then.  Unless there were relict forms or very early evidence there
would be nothing to support this but ethnographic report.  However, this
is obviously a possibility and I think something like this might explain
another ethnographic anomaly, which is why the various historical Hidatsa
villages had stories depicting themselves originating in various disjoint
locations - in effect, some originating along the Missouri and others at
some distance to the east of it.  This would be surprising if they had all
spoken ancestral (Crow-)Hidatsa at the times recounted, but plausible if
the (early Crow-)Hidatsa language were acquired subsequently in one case
or the other.  The simplest hypothesis in the context is that Crow-Hidatsa
came in with the easterners while the Missouri group originally spoke an
early form of Mandan.  Subsequent linguistic and ethnic realignments left
all of the later Hidatsa (and Crow) ancestral groups speaking acestral
Crow-Hidatsa, but retaining separate origin stories.  Some Mandan groups
remained as well, producing the historically attested situation.

Notice that if you adopt this sort of logic you have to account for Crow
in the same breath.  It makes no more sense to derive the language Hidatsa
from two different geographical points than it does to derive Crow and
Hidatsa from two different points.  It's true that one could imagine
dividing a population of speakers of ancestral Crow-Hidatsa into several
scattered pieces and having Crow and Hidatsa develop from two of them
(though not likely Hidatsa and more Hidatsa).  However, in that case there
is still an original point of unity somewhere in the background and the
origin stories (or archaeological hypotheses) are
both true only if the earlier period is not included in the story.

Given the need to account for the Crow and Hidatsa in the same breath it
seems easier to assume Crow and Hidatsa are always part of the same
history until known to be different, and since the Crow seem to lack
definitive stories about early history, it seems simplest to go with the
Hidatsa version.  So, it seems likely that Crow derives from Missouri
River "(Crow-)Hidatsa" villages that, like the Cheyenne, were compelled by
problems (and lured by advantages) into an entirely nomadic existance,
presumably at about the same time in the 1700s.  Since essentially all of
the Missouri River villagers were actually practicing a seasonal mixture
of settlement and nomadic hunting, switching to an entirely nomadic
existence is not a complete change, but only an exansion of one pattern
that is proving successful (nomadism with advent of horses) at the expense
of one that is not (sedentarism in the face of hostile gun-armed
neighbors).

In the same vein I suspect it makes more sense to see the Kiowa as pueblo
people who converted to a nomadic existence, than as the one Tanoan group
that has always remained wanderers.  However, the Kiowa do have a very
elaborate origin story that I don't think admits any period of pueblo
existence.