Iskousogos (Re: Siouan etymology?)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Koontz John E wrote:
> If /hk/ was heard and rendered as "sc" it would get the initial epenthetic
> e (prothetic e?) automatically.

{All references are from the Handbook of North American Indians series.)

It appears that the Iskousogos were on the Ohio, below the falls at
Louisville and were reported to LaSalle at Montreal in 1688 by some
visiting Iroquois (Hunter 1978 15:588).  It's probably fair to note that
"isk" to transcribe hk doesn't make as much sense in French terms as it
does for Spanish.

> > It may actually be from the Coronado expedition. (Bob speaking)
>
> I'll look this up.   ... (various not very helpful remarks from me)

Per Parks (2001 13.2:965) "in 1601, Juan de On~ate visited a village
consting of skin-covered tents placed in a circle, estimated at 5000
inhabitants, whom the Spaniards called Escanjaque (refs).  A Tonkawa
captive in the village, taken by the Spainards to Mexico City, drew a map
that depicted 8 villages of the Escanjaque, who lived scattered along both
sides of a river.  He called them Aguacane, apparently the native name of
this people (refs)."  Parks rejects rejects Apache and Tonkawa
identifications based on the inability of an Apache scout to speak with
the Escanjaque and on the Tonkawa captive.  Since the apparent location
was in the North Canadian valley in Oklahoma near present Watonga, he also
rejects a Kansa or Osage identification.  He suggests Aguacane resembles
Aucanis, connected with the Iscani, while Escanjaque resembles Iskani.
The Iskani were later subsumed within the Wichita.

Parks reports variants Escansaques, Extcanjaque, Escanxaques and
Estanxaques.  I believe in this period there would be a good chance that j
would represent z^ (zh) and x represent s^ (sh).

So, though the business of camping in a circle in skin tents certainly
sounds more Siouan, and certainly more Dhegiha-like, than Caddoan, there
are problems with a Dhegiha association, and there are serious problems in
dating and location with associating the Iskousogos and Escansaques.

There are some archaeologists who argue that the Kansa evolved in place in
Kansas from Woodland predecessors, and they would have an easier time with
the Escansaques as Kansa, but that approach eliminates the Iskousogos
conneciton.  And I doubt any Siouanist would be comfortable with this
endemic approach, unless they were willing to derive the Kansa elements
throughout Dhegiha from pre-Siouan people in the area.  But, KkoNze
'Kansa' is a nearly universal Dhegiha clan name and, if lacking any clear
meaning, it is in reasonably even canonically Siouan form.

A very small minority of non-archaeologists largely ignorant of
contact period ethnography (mainly me) suspect all the Dhegiha groups of
being Oneota groups from somewhere in the general area of southern
Minnesota and northern Iowa, arriving in the historical Dhegiha
localities from c. 1450 or so on - later on further south, of course.
This small minority group wouldn't be too surprised to find a village of
Dhegiha-speakers hunting in the general area in which the Escanjaque were
found in 1601, and engaged in hostilities with a wichita village 15 days
away, but permanent residence sounds unlikely.

Pondering Aquacane - Awakane (?) or perhaps AwakaniN (?) - in terms of
Dhegiha doesn't bring anything to mind, though a'k?a is 'south wind' and
the Kansa are sometimes called 'the people of the south wind'.  The rest
is nice and Siouan in form, but doesn't seem to combine usefully.

Note that though Osage and Kaw have a number of superficial phonetic
differences, they are rather similar grammatically,  and in other phonetic
ways, and are probably not very deeply diverged from each other.  Kaw
might be a very independent village of a combined Kaw-Osage population at
some not very deep remove - a century or two?  Maybe less.