Place names and personal names

Fri Sep 15 12:44:43 UTC 2006

John, you're a dollar short. It is called "49 hill" named after a popular 
dance type. Most 49s take place in out of the way places and often after 
dark. Singers stand in the middle holding the drum and sing while 
surrounded by a relatively tight circle of  inward facing dancers. If 
you've every seen domestic turkeys huddled into a closely pack circle 
dancing you will get the idea.

The dance step is similar to a round dance. Male and female dancers are 
paired, or at least intermixed. It is an opportunity to sing and dance to 
love songs and other humorous ditties while trying to snag a partner for 
an ongoing relationship. This is an adult dance, after all.

On the other topic:
Omaha have quite a few so called "half breed" names for family members who 
may be mixed blood and no clan affiliation/name. Most are Omaha renderings 
of the English name. Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler (1905-1985) had no 
clan due to her paternal lineage back to Louis Saunsoci, the french 
trader. Her Indian name was "Thi'sabet". Other names include Julia=> 
Juthi', Jenny=> JEniwiN', Mary=> Mathe', or Methe' (similar to the 
Hawaiian renderings for Mary and Marie). I cannot call to mind male 
examples but I know I've heard them. There were also half-breed names that 
were descriptive in some fashion similar to the clan names. All of these 
names have never been gathered and analyzed to my knowledge. Perhaps an 
interesting little project for someone, enit?

For a time on the Omaha Reservation at Macy the name "Bedrock" was being 
applied to one of the tribal housing projects...taken from the Flintstones 
genre.

Sunrise Village, the oldest tribal housing venture north of the tribal 
offices is still known by that name.

Omaha Lodges is the housing project due east of Macy.

Oakleaf is the name applied to a housing project between Macy and 
Walthill. I believe the name originates from the early 20th century 
country school and township at that location.

Million dollar hill gets it name from the speculated cost of improving 
that section of highway 75 back in the early 20th century. It is a several 
miles long grade rising from south to north along the east side of Macy. 
Grandpa Charles Stabler (1900-1992) recalled how he worked on the grading 
because he had a team of horses available for the job.

Uthixide
Mark Awakuni-Swetland

UmoNhoN ie thethudi
Omaha Language Spoken Here

Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> 
Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
09/14/2006 03:58 PM
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Subject
Re: Place names of foreign origin in garbled form

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, shokooh Ingham wrote:
> Interesting about the Omaha sounding place names in English.  You find
> that also in the Gulf (Persian not Mexican) countries.  ...

My language was ambiguous.  I was thinking about places like Skunk Hollow
Road - namesake of the Skunk Hollow Singers, and a road through Macy named
by Omahas - I should even remember the name of the name giver, but I
don't.  Skunk Hollow Road is named after a locale in Dogpatch of comic
pages fame.

Or ... uh ... 48 ... Hill?  I'm not sure I have the number of the kind of
place right there.  It's a place named after a dance, I know, and I think
the number there changes with time, too.  It's a pan-Plains thing, I
think.  There are various folks explanations, but I once read that it was
probably a borrowing from English tent-show nomenclature, e.g., "Review of
'48."

Or the Million Dollar Hill (grade on the highway outside of town).

I just meant that the basis of these English language names was in Omaha
culture and history, and often also in the Omaha sense of humor.  It was
in that sense that I meant that they were characteristically Omaha, though
English in form.

More venerable and closer to what you understood would be the town of
Rosalie.  Folks explained that it was named for a lady named Dhuzadhi - a
member of the LaFlesche family, I believe, though the details escape me at
the moment - and that Rosalie was just the English version of her name.
I was a bit skeptical at the time, but I think they were right.  I hadn't
realized at that point that certain French names - mostly with common
English equivalents to confuse matters - had become Omaha personal names
through the merger of the Omaha metis population with the Omaha tribe.  I
actually suspect now that this may account for the lack of attested Omaha
names for some of the better known metis figures.  Very likely that had
Omaha names in most cases, but these were displaced by their metis names,
which were, essentially, perceived as Omaha.

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