Language Site with Tutelo/Saponi materials

What a cool site. 🙂 Thanks for posting it.

Jeff give us some more leads re. this Tutelo lady, I have read of a Monacan woman doing some work but not Tutelo, as they are all from the New York state area and into Ontario canada.

I’m very excited. I just saw at Steven Ponyhill’s Site that sammarrog quoted today:

http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/C…ial_Period.htm

the following quote:

“After peace was made between the Virginia tribes and their ancient enemy, the Iroquois in 1722, a band of Sioux traveled north and settled on the Susquehanna at Shamokin, Pennsylvania, under Iroquois protection. Their chiefs were allowed to sit in the great council of the Six Nations, and the political status of the tribe was described as “that of a ‘prop’, or ‘support’, between the logs in the wall of the Long House.” In 1771 these eastern Sioux, now lumped together under the name of “Tutelo”, were settled on the east side of Cayuga inlet, about 3 miles from the south end of the lake. In the 1880’s, Horatio Hale interviewed Nikonha whom he described as the last full-blood Tutelo living among the Iroquois. Nikonha informed Hale that his Tutelo name was “Washinga” and gave Hale lengthy description of the Tutelo dialect, which upon later examination, proved to be clearly Siouan and closely related to the Catawba language. Nikonha died in 1871.

I Studied the Omaha Language for a year at UNL. That was 5 days a week for two semesters. It too is a Siouan language. It is now an endangered language with only approximately 70 speakers, two of which assisted in our class. Wazhinga, spelled with a “z” in the lexicon for Omaha is a general or generic word for bird or most often chicken.

Chicken is always Wazhinga. For instance you could say Wazhinga Tu for blue bird. Most species of birds do have their own name though. The name Blackbird would not be Wazhinga Sabe. Chairman of the Umohon Nation, Elmer Blackbird in 2000 said that would be Black Chicken and that’s not his name. (I’m sorry, I’d need to look up the word for blackbird.)

But Wazhinga can mean bird and chicken. Omaha shares many animal and color names with Lakota. I have veiwed this Hale work and will do so again. I don’t recall any other words so exact as this.

Perhaps I’ve jumped too rapidily to a conclusion. Wa is a common prefix attached to indicate a large group or general group of something. Many words begin with Wa. Shinga means small or child.

I’m wondering if Washinga could be associated with “being the last”. Or “Group diminished”. I’ll check with an elder speaker and get her opinion.

Here is the closest word I could find in Buechel’s Lakota dictionary (2002 paperback edition, pg353):

wasipa – to prune, cut off, a branch from a tree

other close words:

wasigla – mourning

wasicuta – a white mans town

the ‘s’ here is pronounced as ‘sh’, that’s Lakota spelling. Sometime the ‘s’ is just an ‘s’ and other times it’s an ‘sh’

The lakota word for chicken is kokoyahanla – the h being gutteral

and word for bird in general = zintkala

That’s cool. If it’s ok, I’d like to quote from a book I keep forgetting I have. As I learn more about my family’s geographic locations, info I’ve had lying around becomes more pertinent. This is from “History of Patrick County, Virginia” by O.E. Pilson and Patrick Co. Historical Society:

“Since no settlers came to the Patrick Co. area until approximately 140 years after the JAmestown settlement, we have no specific knowledge of any Indians who may have lived here during that time. Yet, about 1671, Thomas Bates, Thomas Woods, and Robert Fallin set out with an Indian guide to explore the area west of the mountains to see how the waters flowed in the hope of finding the South Sea. They told of coming upon a Tutelo Indian village, and according to their description of its location, it may have been on Peters Creek near the present North Carolina line in Patrick County. The travelers reported that the Indians were very friendly.”

This is the area where my Collins, etc. line lived in Virginia and Stokes County, NC. Lots of other familiar names were in this district on censuses.

The book goes on to talk about a large Occaneechi settlement on the Roanoke River, near present day Clarksville, as well as the 2 Saura settlements on the Dan River. Having grown up in said area, I’m finally getting a pretty good picture of where things might have been.