Village of Make Believe Whitemen (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

Rory Larson asked me to post this comment of his.

> Have you ever heard of the expression kku'de, or kku'de tte, used at the
> end of a sentence, with the meaning of 'better!' or 'ought to'?

When I asked whether he had noticed it in Dorsey's texts since I didn't
recall it myself, he added:

> I don't recall ever seeing it in Dorsey either.  There, I think the word
> for 'should/ought to' is something like ttas^e or tHas^e, but [the
> ladies working with the Omaha class at UN] don't seem to recognize that.
> They gave us kku'de/kku'de tte instead, and we've been using it pretty
> freely ever since, without them objecting.  The kku'de is apparently a
> verb, but it's used impersonally and doesn't seem to conjugate.

The only possible example of -kkude in the Dorsey texts seems to be a name
Ma(N)'c^hawakkude (1891:66.6), which is glossed only as Richard Rush.  I
think that must be MaNc^hu Awakkhude 'Grizzly Bear + ???'.

I suppose if kkude indicates obligation that bikkude might indicate
something like 'obligate by pressing'.  In that light the village name
Bikku'de might mean 'obligated' or perhaps even 'traditional'.