Meaning of Siouan word "Shke-ma."

Fri Mar 11 22:41:01 UTC 2005

I have enjoyed the different commentaries, and have learned a great deal on the intricacies of linguistics. I just found another song translation using the same name, but the story behind it may give some more insights to the name origin. If the individual spoken of in both songs is the same individual, and if this individual was a Sioux (Lakota) boy that was captured by the Ponca and raised as a Ponca, and if we assume that the Ponca translated his Sioux name to a Ponca pronounciation, can we still theorize as to it's possible meaning?
Jonathan

Written Transcription of Ponca Song:

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the

A-cha-tho, i shay tho

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the, yo he ye oi

MoN-chu Shke-ma, i ka-ga-ma the, i shay tho

A-cha-tho, i shay tho

Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay the, yo he ye ya

(Warrior & Brown, 1967, p. 30)

Commentary:

"Ha ni-ka-bthe, i shay tho, ‘I’m going to be a chief’. Let me give you the story behind this song. There was a young Sioux who was taken captive among the Poncas and finally became a young man. Every now and then he’d be missing. Evidently someone had told him that he was a captive among the Poncas and that he was a Sioux. So he’d go back to the Sioux. One time when the Siouxs raided the Poncas, someone spotted him. So the next time the Siouxs raided again, they singled him out and they recaptured him, and when they recaptured him, he begged for mercy. He said, ‘When I get back to the Siouxs, if you’ll pity me, spare my life.’ He said, ‘When I get back to the Siouxs, they are going to put me in the place of my father in the council of chiefs.’ But the Ponca didn’t spare his life, they killed him. The song goes on to say, MoNchu Shkema, that’s his name, but we don’t know what it means. I ka-ga-ma the, i shay tho, ‘you said he was my friend’. A-cha-tho, that’s a Siouan word wh!
ich we
 can’t translate. I shay, ‘that’s what you said,’ ‘that you were my friend,’ meaning that after he professed friendship with the Poncas, he had been in war parties against the Poncas and they captured him. That’s how the song was made, for that man." (Warrior & Brown, 1967, p. 30)

Tom Leonard <tmleonard at cox.net> wrote:
A translation I have from some other Ponca sources:

MaN'chu ni'ta - Bear Ears

Free translation: Bear Ears, when I got there, they were fleeing

One individual I spoke to about this song insisted the word was "ni'ta"
(ears) and that the song was ABOUT the individual named MaN'chu ni'ta (i.e.
the enemy were running away from MaN'chu ni'ta). A few other Ponca sources
gave the same or similar translations.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rory M Larson"
To:
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 4:59 PM
Subject: RE: Meaning of Siouan word "Shke-ma."

> Jonathan - Thanks for posting the whole text, and the hints
> that go with it. That makes the picture a whole lot clearer!
>
> > L. SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > S. SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY YO HAY YE OI
>
> > tail. MOnCHU SHKEMA SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY YO HAY YE YA
>
> It looks like A = a, AY = e, or perhaps ai, E = i, O = u, and
> Un = aN. That leaves us with I, which might represent ai, or
> perhaps i, or maybe even ia. I presume TH = dh. So in NetSiouan,
> the repeated line should initially be transcribed as
>
> s^upaidi dhi dhu aNhe
>
> > SHUPIDE -- WHEN I ARRIVED ON THE SCENE, YOU RAN AWAY.
>
> s^u- + motion verb means the motion is toward you. John Koontz
> has described an Omaha elder feeling his way around a darkened
> room, warning the people in his path: "S^ubdhe'", "I'm going
> toward you". In this case, the motion verb is surely pHi,
> which means "I arrived there". (I believe this is aspirated;
> John or other OPanists might want to comment on this!) So
>
> s^upHi' probably means "I arrived at where you were".
>
> -di would probably be the "when" part of that. In OP, "when"
> is typically tHE-di, but the tHE is presumably just the
> positional that wraps up the preceding into a single chunk.
> It might reasonably be left out, in which case we would have
>
> s^upHi'(a)di = "when I arrived at where you were".
>
> The UnHAY must be aN'he, or aN'ha-i, meaning "to flee".
>
> The THE THO is more problematic, but I find it tempting to
> read it as dhe'dhu, meaning 'here', despite the inconsistency
> in the rendering of the first vowel. Putting it together, we
> would have
>
> s^upHi'(a)di dhe'dhu aN'he (or aN'ha-i)
>
> "When I arrived here where you were, to flee... (or he fled...)"
>
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY YO HAY YE OI
>
> This might complete the sentence. If the line suggested above
> is valid, I would think YO HAY could be uhe', 'to pass', with
> epenthetic Y from preceding aN'he. In other words, somebody
> went (passed) fleeing. The YE would represent the -i particle,
> strongly stressed with preceding epenthesis. The OI would be
> the closing particle, something like -u! or hau! or ho! With
> this interpretation, the sentence comes out as
>
> s^upHi'(a)di dhe'dhu aN'he uha'-i hau!
>
> "When I arrived here where you were, they went fleeing!"
>
> This has the slight problem of seeming to switch from direct
> address to third person reference with respect to the enemy.
> This might be reasonable, however, if one is addressing the
> leader of the band, but referring to his men as fleeing.
>
>
> > tail. MOnCHU SHKEMA SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY
>
> The assumption has been that MOnCHU SHKEMA is all part of the
> name, which I gather is supposed to be Dakotan. But if it is
> Dakotan, the first part should really be MATO. If SHKIMA is
> to be pronounced s^ki-ma, then I think we can get a reasonable
> OP translation as part of the sentence. In OP, s^ki can mean
> "you come back". The MA would be a pluralizing article, -ma
> or ama'.
>
> Now when they are talking about this Sioux running away, are
> they talking about a single man fleeing from individual combat,
> or do they mean that the war band of a particular leader was
> put to flight? I suspect the latter. How would that band be
> referred to? Could it be [leader name] + (a)ma? I noticed
> recently that this happens in Old Norse, in which you can have
> constructions like "They Ingolf were ..." for "They (under the
> leadership of) Ingolf were ...". If this works, we should be
> able to assume a Dakotan leader named MATO, transparently known
> to the Ponkas as MOnCHU, whose war band was routed. The line
> might read
>
> MaNc^Hu' s^ki-ma(-s^e) s^upHi'di dhe'dhu aN'he ...
>
> "MaNc^Hu' you-all that came back, when I arrived here where
> you were, to flee ..."
>
> And the sentence would end
>
> > SHUPIDE THE THO UnHAY YO HAY YE YA
>
> s^upHi'di dhe'dhu aN'he uha'-i a?
>
> "... when I arrived here where you were, did they run away?"
>
> The final YA would be the question particle -a, with preceding
> epenthetic Y.
>
> > MOnCHU SHEMA -- THATS A SIOUAN NAME [...]
>
> Jonathan- is that a typo? SHEMA for SHKEMA? Otherwise, does
> this translation seem at all reasonable?
>
> Rory
>

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