A sampler : "Thoka WaN Itkokip Ohitike KiN He"(Jan 1944)

[Clive Bloomfield]

Jimm,      Thank you so much for this generous-spirited & thoughtful  
reply! Your note of caution to me is obviously well-considered, and  
straightforwardly made, and I appreciate that.
I did realize that I was addressing a group of trained linguistic  
analysts & professional Siouanists, rather than an audience of  
literary aesthetes, and yet, in a way, you are exactly the people  
I've long been wanting to talk to about this, and to learn more from!  
I wish to subject my intuitions to the disciplined & rational light  
of linguistic science.
                   May I explain myself a little further? : As I say,  
I am acutely conscious of a pronounced emotive component in my  
enthusiasm for the rich Lakhota style of Emil AFH, but I wish to  
counterbalance & critique that possible bias with as rigorous a  
linguistic analysis of AFH's Lakhota vocabulary & syntax, as his  
texts can possibly bear. It is about much more, for me, than merely  
confirming my private prejudices & inevitable biasses. I'd like to  
ascertain whether, (as I'm now strongly inclined to believe) this man  
Emil AFH. is a significant & remarkable,
indeed "sui generis", Lakhotaiyapi author. My personal "discovery" of  
his quality occurred sometime after I'd begun to seriously &  
systematically apply myself to the study of Lakhota & Dakota, about 5  
-6 years back, using B&D (1941), Buechel's 1939 Gr. (1939), Bruce  
Ingham's 2001 "Lakota" monograph, Rood & Taylor's CULP material &  
Sketch, MA & PhD theses such as those by Willem DeReuse & Berthold  
Simons, Internet sites such Jan Ullrich's invaluable one, and various  
journal papers from IJAL by many scholars here.
                Having also read with close attention by then, a  
great deal of of Buechel's Lakhota Bible History stories(1924), all  
of Ella C. Deloria's (1932) Dakota Tales, and as much of the  
Bushotter corpus as I could manage,  I next acquired a copy of  
"Watakpeya Tanka" ("The Great Crusader"), his 1925 translation of an  
English version by an American Jesuit Fr. Bernard Wildenhues S.J. of  
a German language abridgement (1922) of Fr. George Schurhammer S.J.'s  
voluminous biography of the Roman-Catholic Missionary Saint of the  
Far East, St. Francis Xavier. I have read & studied all three of  
those texts now, and am in the process of a close reading & rereading  
of every one of those Lakhota language BIA readers, translated by E.  
AFH. I was utterly astonished to find, in the first few chapters of  
"WT", evocative Lakhota language descriptions of intimidatingly  
majestic Mediaeval castles on mountain tops in the Basque country of  
NE Spain, (Xavier's stamping ground, as you will no doubt know). I  
think it was then that I realized that I'd stumbled across something  
quite extraordinary. E. AFH's Lakhota style seemed so difficult, &,  
in some ways, unlike any of the Lakhota I was already familiar with,  
both in subject matter, vocab. and to a certain extent syntactically.  
That encounter so fired my imagination & stimulated the intellect,  
that I became determined to learn more about him, and analyse his  
fascinatingly difficult Lakhota.
                 I'd like to tell you a little more about my personal  
background, to enable you & other members here to form a clear  
picture of "where I'm coming from", as they say. I realize that  
excessive & gratuitous personal revelations are not encouraged on  
what must remain a list for scholars, but perhaps just this once, it  
may be necessary & relevant for me to clarify matters, & tell a  
little of what I'm on about? I dare say that, as one might   
reasonably expect in a professional community, most of you on the  
list would be well acquainted, through conferences, shared  
professional experiences, etc., over many years. I would like to  
introduce myself a little, & to get to know you all somewhat better.
                I am not (obviously) a professional linguist, & do  
not presume to be your equals in depth of knowledge & sophistication  
in that particular discipline. However, I have been fortunate enough  
to have been on the 'receiving-end' of some excellent training, under  
the 'old' (60's & 70's), quite exacting, university régime/ 
dispensation in the field of Classics (Ancient/Mod.Greek & Latin),  
esp. in Classical Philology and textual criticism. I was privileged  
to have been trained, by lecturers & senior academics who had earned  
their "wings" at Ox-bridge or the U.S. 'Ivy League', to take a  
classical text 'apart', parsing each word precisely, and by  
constantly analysing the syntactic contruction of its clauses & long  
"periods"  minutely, as one goes through it. We also had to learn  
composition/translation in those languages, an art which has mostly  
now become a thing of the past, practically everywhere, nowadays. To  
me, its linguistic value alone in taking one "inside" the language,  
so to speak, made it well worth the effort! So I am very at home with  
getting my philological "teeth", so to speak, into more or less  
demanding & complex texts such as Homer's "Iliad/Odyssey", Pindar's  
"Odes", Aeschylus'  "Oresteia", Sophocles'  "Oedipus Tyrannus",  
Horace's "Odes', or Virgil's "Aeneid" - masterpieces to which ,  
naturally, it is difficult, (not to say impossible!), not to have a  
frequently earth-shattering emotional reaction, as well as sheer  
intellectual pleasure! I have also studied Italian at tertiary level  
to the point of reading Leopardi, & Dante's Inferno, and have been  
studying many languages of diverse families for some decades, at  
least since I was a brow-beaten Catholic altar boy, tremblingly  
repeating the Latin responses during the old Mass from about 1958  
onwards!
              Basically, I want to learn to apply those analytical  
skills, to these texts in Lakhota/Dakota/Nakota/Nakoda, in  
particular, and eventually to learn as much as possible, about the  
other languages belonging to this fascinating family! I have learned  
to be on guard against possible Eurocentric linguistic "blinkers",  
having studied a few non-Indo E. languages such as Finnish, Turkish  
in some depth, & a measure of Georgian & Classical Arabic as well.

It seems to me that these 1940's BIA reader's translated by E. AFH  
are a potential "well of (Lakhotaiyapi) undefiled", as Dryden said  
about the Middle English (mutatis mutandis) of Chaucer's  
CanterburyTales (I think). So many of the words in Afraid-Of-Hawk,  
EITHER do not occur at all in Buechel-Manhart -- I do understand that  
Rigg's works & B-Md. was a groundbreaking, pioneering work, and would  
not wish to be thought of as belittling Fr. Buech.'s fine  
achievement  -- OR else one has to hunt them up, & do some  
(hopefully) educated guesswork on the evidence of any cognate roots,  
using such knowledge as one may have acquired of the laws of Lakhota  
Word-building (esp. gratia B&D). I find the "discovery" entailed by  
this process continually fascinating, and sometimes even  
exhilarating! I haven't derived such intellectual & emotional  
pleasure from a text, since grappling with the rigours of Thucydidean  
speeches, which any Classicist will tell you can be horrendously  
difficult, even for very experienced scholars!

I would submit that there is a treasure house of new vocabulary, &  
perhaps new light shed on some aspects of lakhota syntax, to be  
gained from close study of E. AFH's texts.

For instance only last night, I found the word : "woguonazeye" / 
wog^uonazeye/ (presumably with accent on initial syllable (?). E.A.  
Kennard did not transcribe word accents ) used for "COFFE-POT" [Brave  
Ag.The Enemy" 1944, p.163].  I had already learned, thanks to Bruce's  
estimable efforts, the word "wíkhalye".  Emil AFH's word is not to be  
found in B-Md., or Riggs, but "og^ú" : 'scraps; dregs; coffee  
grounds' is!  Nor does the item "onazeye" occur there, but, sure  
enough, 'nazéyA' 'to filter' is there, so with some pondering on the  
functions & nuances of those locative prefixes, again by the grace of  
Buechel, B&D, Riggs and Ingham, it is not too difficult to work out  
how the word came to be used with that meaning.

Two further examples  :  the reflexive verb 'wicalaic'iyA' <'wicala/  
in the sense of 'induce oneself believe/persuade oneself--->admit/ 
confess to oneself (a home truth)' occurs in the 4th para. of that  
extended excerpt I posted from BAtE [p.19] the other day, but is  
nowhere in Buechel, or Riggs.

In the 2nd, paragraph, [Ibid. same page] : "waNwichaglagyeh^ci" which  
appears to have an adverbial sense something like "under his very  
eyes", or perhaps better : "under their owner's very gaze" (his herds  
died away). Clearly, from "WaNyaNkA". Could it be here a truncated or  
"frozen" Possessive-Dative verb-form, used ADVERBIALLY (adverb- 
equivalent?  of accompanying circumstance? a 'Participle' as Buechel  
would have it) to qualify that principal clause verb? ["... 
(ptegleshka optaye waN).....saNp conala AYAPI"]. [=under their  
owner's very (-h^ci") gaze, a buffalo herd dwindled way.]

Lastly, I would like to say that any Lakhota writer who is capable of  
opening a novella, as Emil AFH does in BAtE [p.5], with a  
dramatically vivid scene of a car screeching to a halt in a cloud of  
dust, as a teenage boy leaps athletically from the moving vehicle  
before it arrives, in florid Lakhota, has won me over for life! ;D I  
think he must have had a truly remarkable mind! An artist with words,  
in my opinion, whose life, given his elderly status in the early  
'40's, must encompassed profound traditional knowledge, in addition  
to substantial experience of the modern world of the early to mid XXc.!

The whole concept of Native American writers producing their own  
literature in their own language, e.g. poetry  (as with the wonderful  
Lucie Tapahonso, or Rex Lee Jim for Navajo, mingled with English)  
using the native tongue, or biographies, or novellas (even in  
translation) like Emil AFH, really excites me. Yet I suppose from a  
publisher's mundane angle, they wouldn't exactly 'leap off the  
shelf', as they say? If only Emil had written an Autobiography (à la  
Bushotter), or a Lakhota novel! His long life must have been so  
interesting.

To answer your last inquiry Jimm, I do not know exactly when Emil AFH  
died, but I think that he may have been the same Emil who is  
mentioned in "Fools Crow" by Th.Mails, as the father in law in Chief  
Frank. If that is he, then he was possibly born around 1855, which is  
also remarkable because if so, he must have been in his 80's when  
translating those readers, and had truly, by then, been a denizen of  
two cultural universes! Perhaps that may explain the difficulty &  
richness of much of his (old fashioned?) vocabulary? I have acquired  
all of his BIA texts, as well as two seemingly relatively  
unremarkable articles in English by him from the old "Indian  
Sentinel" from 1932, and 1943 respectively. I wrote to the Archivist  
at the Oglala Lakota College, last year, but received no reply.  
Perhaps they thought I must be what we Aussies call a  
"ratbag" ("crack-pot" in American, I understand)! Not to worry. ;)

As for Ann NOLAN CLARK, here is a Wiki article for you :
  

Hope I  have made my perspective & purposes here a little bit clearer  
now! Next time I contribute, I'll hold back on the autobiographical  
detail! ;)

So, thanks again for giving me a hearing, Jimm Good Tracks - if I  
could say that in Oto, Ioway, or Missouri, (or Pawnee, or Winnebago),  
I'd have done so forthwith! ;)
Maybe someday I will. I have been studying with great interest, the  
folk tales & letters on that terrific Omaha-Ponca website, and will  
continue to do so! Maybe that will take me at least one step nearer  
to your Chiwere branch!
I was intending to learn enough Biloxi to write to Dave Kaufman : I  
ordered the Einaudi grammar on Interlibrary loan from Sydney  
University's Fisher library, but was dismayed to learn that the book  
had been stolen from the shelf! So we can surmise that there is at  
least one other dedicated Siouanist (if not Lakotanist) in the Great  
South Land!

Best regards,

Clive Bloomfield.


On 09/01/2008, at 3:14 PM, Jimm GoodTracks wrote:

> I hope members may enjoy the clarity & elegance of that Lakhota as  
> much as I do!
>
> I am conscious of being enthusiastic about it, but needless to say,  
> I am also interested in it in a more analytical & dispassionate  
> way, so I would appreciate any critical observations, or  
> corrections members may care to make.
>
> Clive:
> It may be a bit much to expect your level of appreciation to be  
> wide spread among a group of professional linguists, whose primary  
> focus is on analysis and language dynamics, so you will have to  
> look to the exceptions.  I myself do like to the reviews how  
> contemporary literature is expressed in the Lakota language, as I  
> am involved to a much lesser degree how modern literature might be  
> composed in similar languages.  Most of the community languages  
> study is directed towards basic communication, with few instances  
> that I have come upon that encourages, even rewards oral or written  
> composition on contemporary subjects.  It is left to the  
> imagination, as to how Native languages could blossom if the notion  
> would become widespread.  So for my part, you can continue to share  
> your Native prose discoveries.
> Jimm
> PS:  Are you aware of what became of Emil AFH and Ann NC, and if  
> they had further opportunities to apply their word craft?
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Clive Bloomfield
> To: SIOUAN LIST LIST
> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 11:55 PM
> Subject: Re : A sampler : "Thoka WaN Itkokip Ohitike KiN He"(Jan 1944)
>
> Here is a sampler of what I consider to be the high literary  
> quality of Mr. Emil AFRAID-OF-HAWK's Lakota translations (& of the  
> wonderful human insight & sensitivity of Ann Nolan CLARK.)
> It is a passage [Pp. 19 to 21] from the above text : Thoka WaN  
> itkokip Ohitike kiN He /"BRAVE AGAINST THE ENEMY" (1944) by Ann  
> Nolan CLARK (1896-1995), which is subtitled in Lakhota :
>
> "Wichoichage yamni etaNhaN wichowoyake : H^talehan akhotaNhaN kiN  
> he, na h^talehaN kiN he na hiNhaNna kiN hehaNyaN wichowoyake waN."
>
> [=A story of three generations : Of the day before yesterday, of  
> yesterday, and of tomorrow.]
>

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