Biloxi Words and Tutelo-Saponi

Sun May 13 18:37:03 UTC 2012

It occurs to me that the "shan" portion of this may correspond to the root for 'cedar' in Siouan and at least some of the Iroquoian language family:  "xan".  Muskogean does not have the /x/ sound and so may substitute the nearest thing to it, in this case, "sh".  Thus the term may be even more widespread than I thought.

Bob

________________________________
From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of Scott Collins [saponi360 at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 1:18 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Biloxi Words and Tutelo-Saponi

Thank you for the suggestion. I downloaded the Choctaw dictionary by Byington. The word it has for cypress tree is shankolo. Unfortunatly it doesn't have a breakdown of the literal translation for the word. If any of you know someone who works on the Choctaw language or Creek language please let me know. I'll try and contact some Choctaw and Creek folks I know and see what they may have on this.

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--- On Sun, 5/13/12, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU> wrote:

From: Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Biloxi Words and Tutelo-Saponi
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2012, 12:59 PM

Google "Choctaw dictionary".  There are some on-line including Byington's classic for free download.

Bob

________________________________
From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>] on behalf of Scott Collins [saponi360 at YAHOO.COM<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=saponi360@YAHOO.COM>]
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:48 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>
Subject: Re: Biloxi Words and Tutelo-Saponi

The cypress trees were numerous in the Piedmont areas of VA and N.C. along the fall-line and just north of them. In fact the extinct species of Carolina Parakeet ate the cypress cones as their staple diet and spread the seeds for porpagation in their feces. Thus at one time the cypress was very prevalent in the Tutelo-Saponi and Southeastern Siouan areas of residence. Once the Carolina Parakeet numbers dwindle the cypress seeds were no longer propagated in those areas and began to shrink to the piont that they are more common nearer the coast at present. I have read some information that suggests that part of what helped the demise of the Carolina Parakeet was the over harvesting of cypress from those areas during colonial times.

Any ideas as to what shąkolo or sankolo or sakolo means in Muskogean or Choctaw?

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--- On Sun, 5/13/12, David Kaufman <dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=dvkanth2010@GMAIL.COM>> wrote:

From: David Kaufman <dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=dvkanth2010@GMAIL.COM>>
Subject: Re: Biloxi Words and Tutelo-Saponi
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2012, 10:54 AM

Scott,

The data that I have are that Biloxi sokuno is cypress, Taxodium distichum, while sokudi nithaani is another large species of Taxodium found in Louisiana, which may be the same differentiation that you made.  Bi. sokuno is likely borrowed from Choctaw or Mobilian Trade shąkolo, as, like Anthony said, cuwahana is from Choctaw or Mobilian Trade cuwahla (Bi. didn't have /l/, so this was usually replaced by /n/ in borrowings).  The sokudi variant may be a hybrid of Muskogean and Biloxi, since -udi means something like 'root' in Bi., thus combining sokuno + udi.  Nithaani means 'big' in Biloxi.

Hope this helps somewhat, although neither of these tree terms appears to be originally Siouan, but rather Muskogean borrowings, which stands to reason since the Biloxis were migrants to the Gulf coast and from a region that likely didn't have cypress trees.

Dave

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Scott Collins <saponi360 at yahoo.com<http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=saponi360@yahoo.com><http://us.mc835.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=saponi360@yahoo.com>> wrote:
I'm trying to figure out how to get a translation from Biloxi inot Tutelo-Saponi.

The words in Biloxi are Sokuno and Sokudi nithaani.

Sokuno is Cypress or a.k.a. Bald Cypress

Sokudi nithaani is the Pond Cypress

I was doing a translation on the Juniper which was Cuwahana in Biloxi. I used acu:ti wi:ya for this because it is called the redwood tree or the words translate into literally as redwood tree or red wood. I have not yet found a word for Cedar which is another species of tree from the Juniperus virginiana a.k.a. Juniper tree.

I'm trying to get a breakdown on Sokuno and Sokudi nithaani as to better be able to literalize the translation and see if I can find the correlating Tutelo-Saponi words for these two species of Cypress trees.

I'm working on four tree species; the pine tree (waste or wasti in Tutelo-Saponi), juniper tree (acuti wiya in Tutelo-Saponi), the cypress tree and cedar tree.

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--
David Kaufman, Ph.C.
University of Kansas
Linguistic Anthropology