Village of Make Believe Whitemen

[Koontz John E]

I've assembled some notes on Francis LaFlesche's Village of Make-Believe
Whitemen for John Ludwickson and Ives Goddard that might be of interest to
at the Dhegiha folks.

Make Believe Whitemen

This expression actually appears c. 10 times, it turns out, in the Dorsey
texts.  It is glossed 'to act the whiteman' by Dorsey.  The idiom is wa'xe
ga'ghe, which is literally 'whiteman make', using 'make' in the sense of
'pretend to do, feign to be'.  As far as the contrast of x vs. gh in
wa'xe, note

91:69.3 wa'xe wa'gha=i 'they acted the whiteman'


The Village of Make-Believe Whitemen

The Omaha villages are listed in Dorsey 1970 (1884):337:  "The Omahas had
three villages after 1855.  Bi-ku'-de [Bikku'de or perhaps Bikhu'de] was
Gahige's village, where most of the people were.  WiN-dja'-ge [WiNj^a'ge]
was Standing Hawk's village, near the Mission.  JaN-c/a'-te [Z^aNdha'the]
was Sanssouci's village, near Decatur.  Frank LaFleche remembers one
occasion when WiNdjage challenged Bikude to play t.abe-gasi [ttabe'gasi,
the men's ballgame], and the former won."

Fletcher & LaFlesche 1972(1911):629-630 also refer to three villages, "one
in the southeastern part of the reservation, another (the largest) near
the agency; the third to the northeast not far from the banks of the
Missouri.  ... The Middle village, as the one near the agency was called,
was on the stream now known as Blackbird creek.

LaFlesche himself in The Middle Five 1978 (1900):xix-xx says "at the time
the Omahas were living near the Missouri River in three villages, some
four or five miles apart.  The one farthest south was known as
Ton'-won-ga-hae's [TtaNwaNgaghe] village; the people were called 'wood
eaters', because they cut and sold wood to the settlers who lived near
them.  The middle one was Ish'-ka-da-be's village, and the people
designated it as 'those who dwell in earth lodges', they having adhered to
the aborginal form of dwelling when they built their village.  The one to
the north and nearest the Mission was E-sta'-ma-za's [INs^tamaNze, or
Joseph LaFlesche] village, and the people were known as 'make-believe
white-men', because they built there houses after the fashion of the white
settlers."

I equate the villages as follows:

Vilage 1

Bikku'de, Gahige's (Dorsey)
Middle, most populous, near agency (Fletcher & LaFlesche)
Middle, Is^kadabi's, Earth Lodge Dwellers (LaFlesche)

Village 2

WiNj^a'ge, Standing Hawk's [Gdhe'daN NaN'z^iN] (Dorsey)
northeast, near Missouri (Fletcher & LaFlesche)
northern, near Mission, Make-Believe Whitemen (LaFlesche)

Village 3

Z^aNdhathe, Sanssouci's (Dorsey)
southeastern (Fletcher & LaFlesche)
southern, TtaNwaNgaghe's, Wood-Eaters (LaFlesche)

So, I think that WiNj^a'ge was the "Village of Make-Believe Whitemen."
(I have a tendency to remember this as Bikkude, but I believe WiNj^age is
correct.)  Let me state specifically that the Omaha and English
expressions don't seem to have anything to do with one another other than
refering to the same place.  Except in the case of Z^aNdhathe and
Wood-Eater, the Omaha names given by Dorsey don't seem to reflect the
names given in translation by Fletcher and LaFlesche.  So, the possible
implication in the HBNAI (13:401) concerning the glossing of bikkude and
wiNj^age are incorrect as far as I can see.  I'm not sure what the authors
intended here, however.  Perhaps simply a list of equations as above.

I believe z^aNdhathe 'wood eater' is the term for 'carpenter ant' (and
maybe 'termite') so there may be a bit of humor in the naming here. HBNAI
sates that Z^aNdhathe's wood was being sold to steamboats for fuel.

I've wondered if bikkude might be Ioway-Otoe, e.g., bikhuj^e would mean
'moon-shooter'.  However, I'm not sure what the implication of such a name
would be, and I'm just grasping at straws here.

For what it's worth, 'Earthlodge' would be maNdhiN'tti, and '(in the)
Middle' might be udhiz^aN(tta) or i'daNbe, though there are a number of
ways to say something like this and I'm not at all sure what would be
idiomatic in the context of the village name.