an Osage Imaha

[Robert Myers]

Thanks. Do you have any thoughts about the possibility of Emamoueta/Emam8eta shown on Marquette and Jolliet maps meaning Imaha to-wo ? (To-wo or ton-won representing the Osage word for village.)

Robert

----- Original Message ----
From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 6:27:07 PM
Subject: RE: an Osage Imaha

I think about the only thing I could add to this is that "Imaha" means "toward the upstream".  So if there is any possibility of locating this settlement in an upstream direction from the main body of Osages, then that might help confirm the name.  I supppose it could refer to wind direction as well as water direction too.  
 
Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Robert Myers
Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 11:28 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu; mhoffma at comp.uark.edu
Subject: an Osage Imaha


The following is apparently another reference to "Imaha". This is excerpted from the 1721 manuscript account of Le Gac, one of the directors of the Company of the Indies. The company employed La Harpe to explore the Arkansas River tribes in eastern Oklahoma. 

 

"Noms des nations situees tant au Nord qui nord nord ouest qui sont jusqu'au Panihouasas [Paniassa] au dessus desprecedens"

 

"Les Thouacanne [Tawakoni], Les Iriscario [Yscani], Les Cancey [Plains Apache], Les Chite?, Les Youanne [Yojuane], Les Canouches [Ahuache/Panimaha?], et les Hemaan qu'on nomme Ozage ville separ'ee des autres Ozages."




I understand this to mean that "Hemaan" is the name of an Osage village separated from the other Osage. I wonder if Hemaan is a another version of "Imaha". (Omaha and Quapaw examples are also noted.) In La Harpe's 1719 journal of his journey from the Red River to the Arkansas River, he reached the Touacara [Tawakoni] nation. "At a musket shot from their habitation we crossed a beautiful stream, surrounded by a clear forest, above which are the villages situated upon hillocks, along the southwest branch of the Alcansas River." In a footnote to the manuscript copy, the French geographer De Beaurain says, "Which they called Imaham, at the latitude of 37° 45'. Situated from the Nassonites eighty-nine leagues in a straight line to the north." (Margry) Eighteenth-century printed and manuscript maps deriving from La Harpe's trip note the village visited on the Arkansas River as "Imaha" or "Imahan". 

Speculation: Maps based on the 1670's Marquette/Jolliett expedition note the Emamoueta/Emam8eta on the Arkansas River. Maps from the next decade based on LaSalle show the Mahrout which may or may not be the same people. How likely is it that this was a version of  "Imaha ton-won" ("Imaha town" in Osage)? Could this be the origin of the name Mento? 

Tixler, a French traveler among the Osage in the early 1800's noted that the "Pani Mohawks" used to be Osage but lost their language. 

Robert Myers
Champaign, Illinois


________________________________

Luggage? GPS? Comic books? 
Check out fitting gifts for grads <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=48249/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz>  at Yahoo! Search.







       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/siouan/attachments/20070817/013afbf5/attachment.htm>