Autonym of Mosopeleas-Ouesperies-Ofos

[Rankin, Robert L]

> . . . if loss of the initial labial /m/ is a single event in Ofo-Biloxi, and if Mosopelea is the ancestral name of the Ofo, then the 17th century Mosopelea would have to be ancestral to the Biloxi as well.

No, the loss of initial m/w would have to precede the split of BI and OF.  

> I don't see why we are assuming that Ofo-ic speakers were an ethnic singularity at this time.  Swanton's account makes it clear that the Uspe and the Ofo-gula were two separate groups in the period from 1699 to 1722.  The Ofo-gula can certainly be identified with the Ofo as represented linguistically by Rosa Pierrette.  The Tunica knew her group as the Ushpi, which can equally certainly be identified with the Uspe.  Either name could be derived from Mosopelea, but not both at once.

No, one is a Tunica language adaptation of the name, the other is the Siouan progression via sound change.  

> Under the circumstances, I think the Uspe are the better choice.  Swanton gives the vowels in the Tunica version as long, with the first being circumflex: Uus^pii.  The various French versions given are Ouispe (/wispe/), Oussipe's (/usipee/), Ounspie (/uNspii/), and Onspe'e (oNspee).  We could reasonably reconstruct this as something like *woNs8pee ~ *wuNs8pii.  
 
I think it's a mistake to assume that a spelling like 'ouispe' contains the original labial.  That was long-gone and probably never actually attested from speakers.  That's just initial [u] and the "i" probably comes from the "oussipe" term.  I also doubt that it's possible to infer length from what may have been a circumflex in somebody's 17th cent. North American French handwriting.  French spelling then, like English spelling, was very idiosyncratic and not all these fellows were terribly literate (compare Lewis and Clark for example).
 
> . . . Michael McCafferty has stated that the first record of the Mosopelea name was on Marquette's map of the Mississippi of 1673, in which it was written MONS8PELEA, with the initial vowel nasalized and the second (I think) schwa.  
 
This map is not based on first hand information though.  It has a variety of ethnoynms that were collected indirectly through contact tribes.  The expedition didn't arrive at the Mississippi via the Mosopeleas.  There are other maps and accounts in which it's made clear that knowledge of the Mosopeleas came via other tribes who reported their earlier presence well up the Ohio.  The notation on the maps reads (in French) "eight towns destroyed".  These were people who were remembered, and that may account for the initial [m].  We have no way to know when the M disappeared in native speech, and it's presence may only be attested in the name as preserved by OTHER, non-Siouan, tribes.  It cannot, as far as I know, be dated to the 17th century definitively.  We just don't know.

> Could you remind me again: in OVS, what is the relationship tree of Tutelo, Ofo and Biloxi?  Any sense on the time depth?

Ofo and Biloxi are one subgroup.  Virginia Siouan the other.  Giulia and I have a paper on this in the Siebert Festschrift.  Time depth is very difficult, but I talk about it in the Maize paper I mentioned.
 
Bob