Iskousogos (Re: Siouan etymology?)

[Koontz John E]

Good catch, Bob!  I think Michael has asked about this ethnonym before,
maybe on the list, but I don't think anyone ever noticed that resemblance
before, which is fairly striking.  I remember wondering whether I could
analyze escansaques in terms of Dhegiha, but the best I could do was:

eskans aques
hkaNze akha
Kaw    the

"(it's/they are) the Kaws"

I've written hkaNze rather than kkaNze to emphasize the potential for
treating a tense stop as a a preaspirate.  I don't know the historical
distribution of aspiration of (e)s- in Spanish.

I would have to assume -e is elided before a- of following akha, a normal
pattern of contraction within phrases in Siouan generally, I think, though
I think that akha may tend to come out as [kxa] in Kansa, under rules I
don't know.

Alternatively, the form also looks like it might involve reduplication:
is-kouso-kos, is-konso-ko(n)s, which I don't think works in a Siouan
context, either as to form or sense.  You'd expect *-konsko(n)so, and
reduplication is typically for inanimate plurals.  Is there anything about
the linguistic context of their attestation that explains any of the
morphology of the form?

Returning to the -akha suggestion, I'm not sure akha, which something like
'the singular animate proximate' is appropriate for the context.  I can't
remember if I've seen akha as opposed to ama (nominally the plural animate
proximate) or ma (animate collective obviative)  with ethnonyms in
Omaha-Ponca.  In fact, the simgular/plural glosses here are somewhat
arbitrary and off target, as Ardis and Carolyn have suggested but for
whatever reasons ama tends to appear with plurals.

The "articles" are also the progressive (or continuous?) auxiliaries, of
course, and have some existential functions as well.  Omaha-Ponca akha and
ama also appear in some contexts as akhe and ame, which I take to be
akha(a)  or am(a) + e in a cleft construction, so perhaps, akh=e is
actually a good potential reading here.

I don't recall the details of Mildred Mott Wedel's discussions, but I
think she was negative or neutral.

I wonder about the locations?  The historical period Pawnees, Osage,
Omahas, Poncas, etc., certainly went fairly far west in buffalo hunts.  I
don't know the exact routes, though I've seen some maps for Pawnee
practice.  I don't know to what extent horses were necessary for the later
routes, but I think that some prehistorical archaeological materials in
eastern Colorado have been suggested as reflecting hunting activities of
more easterly Caddoan groups rather than year round residence.  I don't
remember the details.

The Iskousogos are a closed book to me?  Where are they supposed to have
been?

John E. Koontz
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz