O/P term for one thousand

[ROOD DAVID S]

This is purely anecdotal, but some of you word sleuths out there might be
able to pursue it.  Somewhere, somehow, once upon a time I heard that the
Native American words for 'thousand' often had something to do with cash
boxes in which silver dollars (or maybe gold pieces) were shipped.  If
that's true, using 'box' for 1000 might have developed that way.


David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Jonathan Holmes wrote:

>
>
> Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:    ...I noticed recently a remark in Dorsey's paper on dwellings, tools, etc.,
> that the Omaha dealt with arrows in standardized sets - there is even a
> word for such a set - and not as individual artifacts. Since sets were
> usually of ten arrows each, it seems on that basis that the urge to count
> by tens may go back at least as far as the introduction of the bow. On
> the other hand, perhaps throwing spears were also handled in sets, though
> maybe smaller ones. Another instance of systematized counting might be the
> use of bundles of sticks to represent honors. Men are reported to have
> recounted their honors by working through their sets of sticks. The
> handgame also involves a system of formal counters, though the modern form
> is fairly recent and I don't know if the counters are earlier.
>
> Rory - what do you think about the use of kku'ge 'box' for 'thousand'?
> Does this imply that 1000 is a new concept, or is it a new word for an old
> concept? How widespread is 'box' in this sense? I just noticed in the
> texts that kku'ge often appears glossed 'box' when a numerical
> interpretation is clearly meant.
>
>   John,
>   If I may offer...in Dr. James H. Howard's work titled "The Ponca Tribe" (BAE Bulletin 195) he states on page 73,
>
>   "The term for one thousand is derived from the fact that the money which the Ponca received for treaty payments came in boxes which contained $1,000 each."
>
> Hope it helps,
>   Jonathan
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