paduka identity

[Michael McCafferty]

There were people with this name as a last name at Kaskaskia, e.g., <Maria 
Pad8ca>, a person on one of the 18th-century Detroit Jesuit missionary Pierre 
Potier's rosters of people living at Detroit whose name was <Patoka>, and, 
according to a hear-say I'm still tracking, there was a Wabash Valley Kickapoo 
leader known by this name. One or none of these may be connected to "Patoka 
River," a relatively good sized eastern tributary of the southern Wabash, the 
name for which appears to be unattested in the French sources.

I imagine the "slave" folk definition came from the notion that Comanches were 
sometimes traded into the Miami-Illinois slave network. But I don't know.

Michael

Quoting David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>:

> I can assure everybody here that 'Patoka' absolutely did not mean 'slave' in
> Miami-Illinois.
> 
> Morever, the 'Patoka' were not a Dhegiha group -- as Mark says here, the
> term generally indicated the Comanche, a Uto-Aztecan (specifically Numic)
> group closely related to the Shoshone. Look in the Handbook of North
> American Indians, volume 13, pps. 903 & 939. According to that source, it
> was originally used for the Plains Apache, and was transferred to the
> Comanches later on, when the Comanches displaced the Plains Apache on the
> high plains.
> 
> The Miami name for the Comanche is paatoohka, the Shawnee name for them is
> paatohka, and the Fox name for them is paatoohka(aha). This term has no
> etymology in Algonquian.  Algonquian probably got this name from Siouan. It
> is in fact found in several Siouan languages -- John Koontz has looked at
> this term in the past, and can give you a handful of Dhegiha cognates and
> etymologies for the term, for those of you who don't have access to the
> discussion of the term in HNAI 13.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> ----------
> From: "Mark-Awakuni Swetland" <mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>
> To: "Siouan List" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
> Subject: Fw: paduka identity
> Date: Thu, Sep 29, 2005, 7:37 am
> 
> 
> Aloha All,
> Perhaps someone can assist this fellow in his inquiry about the
> Patoka/Paduca, please! My response was limited to the Fletcher and La
> Flesche source.
> Mahalo!
> Mark Awakuni-Swetland
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Barry Haglan <mailto:BarryHaglan at msn.com>
> To: Mark-Awakuni Swetland <mailto:mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 9:40 AM
> Subject: Re: paduka identity
> 
> mark, I pestered old John White about the paduca thing, and he said that
> when he was going through stuff on the Miami tribe, he kept running into the
> term Patoka. There's a river in Indiana named the Patoka River, in the old
> Miami-Wea-Piankashaw stomping grounds. He pretty much insisted on the
> meaning as slave by the Miamis, and said he thought the whole William Clark
> thing of naming the city of Paduca was complete B.S. I have the George Hyde
> article on Paduca identity, but the first page is missing, which would be
> the part before the migration across the Mississippi. Maybe we'll never know
> for sure, but I think it could be the stuff of a juicy manga comic or a
> screenplay.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark-Awakuni Swetland <mailto:mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>
> To: Barry Haglan <mailto:BarryHaglan at msn.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 12:03 PM
> Subject: Re: paduka identity
> 
> Barry,
> the Paduka are usually glossed as the contemporary Comache. The Comanche are
> a relatively newly formed group of Shoshoni bands emerging from the Great
> Basin onto the Southern Great Plains. It is my understanding that they are
> classed linguistically as Uto-Aztecan, not Dhegiha/Siouan
> 
> This does not seem to match the information and references you are citing. I
> cannot suggest an alternative persective to the Mississippi valley
> appearance or the "slave" aspect.
> 
> In Fletcher and La Flesche "The Omaha Tribe" 1911:49, 79-80, 88 the Padouca
> are noted as follows: The Ponca reportedly encountered the Padouca on their
> buffalo hunts near the Rocky Mountains. The Ponca and Padouca battled until
> a Ponca killed a Padouca warrior, following which the Padouca sued for
> peace.
> 
> Omaha were reported as knowing the Padouca in their western-most territory,
> and knowing of a Padouca village on the Dismal River.
> 
> Mark Awakuni-Swetland
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Barry Haglan <mailto:BarryHaglan at msn.com>
> To: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu <mailto:mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>
> Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 11:35 AM
> Subject: paduka identity
> 
> dr. a-s, my friend John White, a student of the Illinois-speaking tribes,
> told me that the Paduka were a Dhegiha group that didn't cross the
> Mississippi until circa 1710. He said Paduka meant "slave" in
> Illinois-Miami, and both the Chickasaw and Illini raided them for fresh
> genetics. Have you ever heard of anyone calling themselves Paduka? The only
> thing I've seen is an old paper by George Hyde that leaves out a lot. Sounds
> like a good title for a Tarantino thriller...SEARCH  for the LOST PADUKAS!
> 
>