School: ttappuska

[Rory M Larson]

Catherine wrote:

> Dorsey (slip file) translates it as 'teacher, missionary' (for both
> Omaha and Ponca) and gives wagoNze as a synonym (that's the word Jimm
> cited in IOM). 
>
> Actually, even the speakers I worked with in the 1980s seemed to prefer
> "ttappuska tti" for 'school', not just "ttappuska", though I don't think
> they used it to mean 'teacher'. 

Thanks, Catherine.  Somehow my thesis has it down that wagoNze is Ponca 
and ttappuska is Omaha, both based on Reel 3, 163:6.4.  Shucks!  I thought 
I had a Ponca/Omaha vocabulary difference for you!

Anyway, that helps to confirm that the original reference was to the 
person who taught the school, not the school itself.  Your note about how 
1980s elder speakers preferred "ttappuska tti" over "ttappuska" for school 
is news to me; our generation of speakers has always used just 
"ttappuska".  That would seem to correlate with the trend to drop the 
"tti" among school children as being around the 1930s and 1940s or so. And 
the standardization on "wagoNze" as 'teacher' rather than "ttappuska" must 
have been significantly earlier, like around the turn of the century. 
Maybe "ttappuska" meant specifically the missionary teachers, and was 
dropped in favor of "wagoNze" when secular education took over?  In that 
case, "ttappuska tti" would have meant "missionary building" as much as it 
meant "school".

Rory
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