The Casa tribe, homeland, and language

Sat Feb 17 18:33:54 UTC 2007

Rory is right that "Casa" could be Kansa.

There is no end of speculation on the part of ethnohistorians, archaeologists and linguists as to the ethnic identity of the multiplicity of town and tribal names found on early maps and in early explorer accounts.  Ordinarily each scholar has sought to maximize the presence of "his" tribal or linguistic interests in such studies, but very little ends up being established for certain. 

That said, there is general agreement that "Cappa" and variant spellings represent /okaxpa/, the Quapaw name for themselves.  I think this is generally unquestioned now.  Beware of the term "Pacaha", however, which is sometimes claimed to be a transcriber error for the same group.  This latter term is almost certainly a Tunican name for a different group.

I expect that any Osage story about Pittsburgh representing a limit of Siouan settlement is one of those accounts that requires a lot of "interpretation".  John Koontz will tell you that it's hard enough to establish that Dhegiha references to "Ohio" are really references to that river.  In Omaha is seems possible to interpret the sequence differently, so the identity of the ref. is hard to be certain of.  This gets us to the name "Kansa" (possibly your "Casa").

Perhaps the generalized usage of the name Kansa by groups within the Omahas, Quapaws, Osages and by the Kaws means that the term originally referred either to all five sister-tribes when they were living as a single group, or, alternatively, and I think more likely, to one of the clans or prominent social subgroups of this single, common tribe. We cannot know for certain.

We do know that the Algonquian-speaking Indians of the Illinois Country, the Miami, Peoria, Kaskaskia tribes and others, called all of these five Dhegiha-speaking groups Kansa. In other words, the Omaha, Ponca, Kaw, Osage and Quapaw were all Kansa to their Algonquian-speaking neighbors and trading partners, and these Illinois tribes passed this name on to the earliest French explorers with its Algonquian language prefix, A-.

These same Algonquian tribes of the Illinois Confederacy along with the Shawnees, named one of the prominent southern tributaries of the Ohio River Akansasipi or "River of the Kansa", after the people they said had formerly lived there.  This was noted in 1699 by the French missionary-explorer, Father Gravier, (1699-1700) and appears on several maps, Nouvelle CARTE dela Louisiane et Du fleuve Mississip(p)i, produced by the French in  1701, 1702 and 1703 (Michael McCafferty, personal communication).

Michael and I have discussed the name "Mosopelea" at length, and this correspondence can be found in the archives of the Siouan list, so I won't repeat all the discussion here.  Swanton showed that the name, as it underwent alterations as the tribe moved down the Ohio and Mississippi, evolved into something the Tunicas interpreted as "Ushpe" (or something very similar).  In a paper I did for the American Anthropological Assn. meeting back about 1980 I pointed out that the first two syllables, [moso] would, by regular phonetic change, have evolved into [ofo] in that language.  These two progressions taken together have convinced me that the Mosopelea were indeed the Ofo.  

The idea that VA, WVA and the Carolinas were the "Siouan homeland" is still speculative.  No doubt it was somewhere well east of the Mississippi, but we can't really pin it down just because the remnant of the Catawbas were in Carolina and some Siouan groups were in VA/WVA.  

That's my 2 cents worth.  There's more in the list archives if you want to look it up.

Bob

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From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Shane Henry
Sent: Fri 2/16/2007 6:15 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: The Casa tribe, homeland, and language

I recognize this post is part storytelling and part science...but what's wrong with stories? :-)

La Salle mentions four tribes on the north side of the Ohio River that were overthrown by the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars, from east to west: Kentaientonga (with 19 villages destroyed), Oniassontke (two villages), Casa (one village), Mosopelea (eight villages). [Page 589, Northeastern volume of the Handbook of North American Indians]

HNAI suggests that the Kentaientonga were the Gentaguetehronnon/Gentagega tribe of the Eire Confederation.

1) If the the Gentagega Erie tribe occupied watersheds draining into the south shore of Lake Erie, along the Portage Escarpment, and...

2) If the Honniosonts occupied the watershed of the Allegheny River, with the western boundary of their homeland being the confluence of the Three Rivers at Pittsburgh [a map of the Allegheny watershed is available here: http://concernedcitizens.homestead.com/maplink_Alleghenyriver.html], and...

3) If the Mosopelea occupied the watersheds on the north bank of the Ohio River in southeastern Ohio, from the Miami watersheds in the west through the Muskingum watersheds in the east [Swanton p.61; a map is available here: http://opal.osu.edu/watersheds.htm; approximately watersheds 23-42], then...

...based on the order of the quote (Erie-Honniosont-Casa-Mosopelea), the Casa would, schematically at least, occupy the watersheds south of Ohio River/Lake Erie divide (the southern border of Erie Country), west of the Allegheny watershed (Honniosont Country) and east of the Muskingum watershed (the eastern border of Mosopelea Country) - namely, the watersheds along the western banks of the Ohio River in northeastern Ohio [approximately watersheds 19-22 on the map].

It would be neat if an old reference to a "Casa River" in northeastern Ohio turned up somewhere...
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As far as the linguistic affliation of the Casa language, there is this:

According to Osage tradition, the Siouan host traveled from the Siouan homeland in the VA-NC-SC Piedmont, up the New River/Kanawha River (VA-WV), to the Ohio River, and then north along the river to the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (Pittsburgh, PA) where they lingered for awhile. Later the host (or part of the host) travelled down to the mouth of the Ohio River and from there spread throughout the Mississippi Valley.

What if they left a trail of Siouan "straggler tribes" along the way? Based on the Osage tradition of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers being the northeasternmost point of Siouan settlement, and given that Casa Country would lie just west of this point...the Casa could conceivably be a Siouan tribe.

Some other surrounding tribes would be the Siouan Monetons in the Kanawha-New River watershed (who could be stragglers from the initial Siouan migration through that that valley), and the Siouan Tutelos in their prehistoric homeland in the Big Sandy River watershed (formerly known as the Tatteroa River) along the border of WV-KY. The Quapaws would be further down the river, beyond the Mosopeleas. The Monetons (Big Water People) and Mosopeleas perhaps later moved downriver to become the Michigameas (Big Water People) and Ouesperies (later Ofos) [see Koontz and Swanton, and the sections on the Ouispe in Vol. 14 of HNAI].

However, if the Mosopeleas were not a Siouan tribe, but were the Turkey clan of the Shawnee as suggested by McCafferty, then the Casas might be Algonquian too. Or...they could be Iroquoian like the Eries and Honniosonts (Black Minquas).

Just for fun, does anyone know a Siouan (especially Tutelo or Ofo) or Algonquian (especially Shawnee or Miami-Illinois) word that would be similar to /kasa/?

Lastly, does anyone know of any other reference whatsoever to the Casa people besides La Salle's?

Travis Henry

P.S. Who are the Cappas mentioned by Coxe as living with the Ousperies on the "Cappa River", located about 30 miles north of the Arkansas River? [p64 Swanton] They aren't listed in the index to the Northeast or Southeast volumes of HNAI. Is the Cappa tribe certainly indigenous to that stretch of the Mississippi, or could they be Ohio refugees too? Is the Cappa River the modern-day Whitefish and Cache Rivers? [A map showing those rivers is available here: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/arkansas_90.jpg] If so, despite the suggestion that the river name "Cache" is from the Picardie French word for "hunt" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_River_%28Arkansas%29], is it possible that the name "Cache" was borrowed from /kasa/ or /kasa/? Is it possible that /kapa/ represents a Taensa pronunciation of /kafa/, which descended from /kasa/, in the same way that "Opogoula" is a extant Taensa pronunciation of "Ofogoula", with the /ofo/ supposedly descended from /moso/ or /moNso/ of "Mosopelea" and "Mons8pelea" via an intermediate form /woso/ or /woNso/ represented by "Oussipe" and "Onspee", as suggested by Swanton?

References:

Swanton's "Siouan Tribes and the Ohio Valley": http://www.jstor.org/view/00027294/ap020246/02a00050/0
John E. Koontz's "Michigamea, A Siouan Langauge?": http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/michigamea.htm and "Michigamea is not Dhegiha": http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=siouan&P=7493
Michael McCafferty's post on the Mons8peleas as a Shawnee clan: http://listserv.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0405&L=siouan&D=1&O=D&P=760&F=P <http://listserv.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0405&L=siouan&D=1&O=D&P=760&F=P> 

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