Lakota=>Siouan polyandry inquiry

[Jan Ullrich]

Dear Mark,

The term 'buried man' is an English rendition of one of two Lakota words for
'son-in-law'. Normally son-in-law was addressed thako's^, but another term
was wicha'woh^a. The latter was used for a man who moved to his wife's band,
rather than live with the band of his parents.

The term 'buried man' is possibly a translation of folk etymology although
it must have been around for quite long as it was first mentioned in Riggs'
1852 dictionary. Riggs gave the following definition of wicha'woh^a  

"a man who lives with his wife's relations, literally a buried man" 

Buechel defines it as follows: "a man who lives with his relatives, lit. a
buried man, or one who being attracted to a family stays on with them."
(sic) Note the lack of "wife's" before 'relatives', which is very likely an
omission done by Manhardt (who edited the manuscript after Buechel's death),
as omissions of words or parts of words in both the English and Lakota texts
are rather frequent in Manhardt's editing. (I find it hard to understand why
Univ. of Nebraska Press re-published the dictionary under his editing or why
it was re-published in the first place since the manuscript is problematic
with respect to so many of its aspects.)

Deloria in one of her dictionary manuscripts gives the following definition
of wichawoh^a: "son-in-law i.e. living near his wife's relations where he
must enact his part, maintaining the correct attitude towards them at all
times." Riggs defines wichawoh^a as "a buried man" taking woh^a to mean
"cache," but from the second form for daughter-in-law - wiwayuh^a - it is
quite clear that woh^a is a contraction of wayu and h^a. (cf.  wiwoh^a)."

What I think Deloria is hinting at is that the woh^a component of the term
originates from the verb iya'yuh^a or one of its forms. This verb verb means
'to follow someone, to constantly stay close to (as a relative, a child to
his/her mother etc.)'. I think this makes sense in the context of the kind
of son-in-law and daughter-in-law that wicha'woh^a and wiwo'h^a respectively
describe.

I never encountered any mention of polyandry among the Lakota other than
Walker's. In the light of the above I tend to think that Walker
misunderstood or misinterpreted some of the information on marriage and
marital customs that the Lakota people had given him.

Jan



Jan Ullrich
Lakota Language Consortium
www.lakhota.org