More on the meaning of Siouan word "Shke-ma."

[Tom Leonard]

A nice person just mentioned that, in my last post, I did not include any alternative translations that may have been offered by the Ponca individuals that said "MaH'chu shki'ma" wasn't correct. Sorry about that.

When I did inquire about the song and word in question, I had one elder say the word should be "MaH'chu hi'ma" (Bear Teeth) and another tell me the word was "Ma'chu ni'ta" (Bear Ear). 

I've never found a reference to "MaH'chu hi'ma" (Bear Teeth) as a Ponca name. 

However, "MaH'chu ni'ta" (Bear Ear) was the name of a Ponca man born in 1808; he is listed on the 1861 and 1890 Ponca census rolls. That would place this individual in a time when fighting between the Sioux and Ponca was heating up and during the time when many of the songs on the Stewart tape were composed.

This is all anecdotal at best. We don't know if the individual singers on the Stewart recording learned the song "incorrectly", or learned it from someone that "didn't have it quite right", or the meaning of their rendering was "correct" with a translation lost in antiquity.

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