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Is there a language text, dictionary, or any other resource that would give a hint of how to use Tutelo?
I saw a couple of books on Amazon, but were unsure if they were texts that could be used for such a purpose. or if they were scholastic overviews of the language.
Thanks.
Lynne
Lynn,
I will try to answer your question, although I am not the expert in this area. Hale has a book on Amazon.com. Lots of people (not me, yet) have this book; it is a dictionary put together by Hale from the interviews with the “last Tutelo” in the late 1800s. If you search this forum, you might find other sources also. One of the closest languages that is still used is Lakota Sioux.
Techteach
PS: I have a ggggreat uncle who could be the brother of the “last Tutelo.” I tried to post his picture a couple of times but no luck.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
I am thinking of buying this book now.
Thanks again for answering.
Good story about your ancestor as well.
Regards,
Lynne
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I sometimes miss new posts in this forum, because it sits so far down on the computer screen, and I don’t always scroll down. There might be other people with better information that might notice your posting in a few days who actually have the book and can recommend it. Or put your question or a direction to this forum in the first or second forum too in case others are like me. I haven’t seen the book, but I know others on this forum have it.
Techteach
You can order “A grammar and dictionary of Tutelo by Oliverio, Giulia R. M. at this url
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/gateway
Hit the button for “Individual” then say you’re paying by credit card. You’ll get a search window, type in the title of the author’s last name and the title will come up and you can order it. It’s $38 for an unbound copy. I have it, and it is the most definitive collection of Tutelo words and grammar. I don’t understand linguistic terminology, however, so it’s not like a home study course, “Spanish in 14 days,” or anything like that. But, it does include everything in the Hale book, and adds other words recorded by others.
What I have invested in is the Oglala college course in Lakota. It IS a readily accessible home study course, and learning a living Siouan language first would make the fragments of Tutelo more intelligible. We know that Tutelo and Winnebago warriors were able to communicate with each other in their respective languages ca. 1805 in Tecumseh’s war camp. So, I imagine it would be possible to find out if Winnebago is intelligible to Lakota. If so, then we can infer that the languages are similar enough for the one to be instructive of the other. From my experience with it, it is.
Something that makes me go Hmm is that my family who lived as “white”, as they moved west of Iowa, did not go south to Oklahoma even though the story is that they were Cherokee, but rather, one is found on Rosebud land in the early 1900s; another went to Canada and his descendents live in Idaho. But maybe this was common? Just made me speculate considering the language similarities.
Techteach
Interesting thought. Where did/do the Winnebago live? I’ve noticed something along those line with the movements of Blackfoot families through the deep south. You seem to see them around places like Biloxi (some say the most similar to Tutelo).
They are here in WI, aren’t they? I just checked; yes, they are the Ho-Chunk. They have a casino we visited last summer in Wisconsin Dells.
“The Winnebago people call themselves Ho-Chunk, “People of the First Voice.” They trace their origins to modern-day Kentucky, where groups speaking a common Siouan tongue emerged in the first centuries of the common era. About a.d. 200, ancestors of the Winnebagos, Otos, Iowas, and Missouris began to move northward. The Winnebagos’ forerunners arrived in Wisconsin about a.d. 700. Linguistic, archaeological, and oral evidence supports this tale of the migration of the Chiwere Sioux tribes.” And “The year 1816 also saw the breakup of the traditional political structure of the tribe. Before the War of 1812 the Winnebago tribe relied on a clan system to manage tribal affairs. The tribe had twelve patrilineal clans arranged in two moieties. The Sky moiety consisted of the Thunder, Eagle, War, and Pigeon clans. The Earth moiety contained the Bear, Wolf, Buffalo, Water Spirit, Deer, Elk, Snake, and Fish clans. After 1816 the tribe used the clan system only in religious ceremonies and naming feasts.
With the arrival of American soldiers and settlers in Wisconsin, both factions of the Winnebago tribe signed three territorial treaties—in 1825, 1827, and 1828. When American miners invaded the southern portion of their homeland in 1827, the Prairie La Crosse band, led by Chief Red Bird, went to war with the Americans. The war ended in 1828, and in 1829 the American government forced the Winnebagos to sign their first cession treaty. By signing the treaty at Prairie du Chien, the tribe relinquished further claims to lands in Illinois and Wisconsin south of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers.
When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832, most Winnebagos remained neutral. However, because some members of the tribe aided Blackhawk, the tribe had to sign another cession treaty in 1832, ceding land between the Wisconsin and Rock Rivers to Lake Winnebago. In 1837, through government trickery, the tribe signed its last cession treaty and lost all its homeland east of the Mississippi.
The years between 1840 and 1863 were the removal period for the Winnebagos. They were moved to the Neutral Ground in northeastern Iowa, where they remained from 1840 to 1846; to Long Prairie, Minnesota (1846-55); to Blue Earth, Minnesota (1855-63); to Crow Creek, South Dakota (1863-65); and finally to the Nebraska Winnebago Reservation in 1865. During this period of turmoil, the tribe lost some seven hundred people on its own “trail of tears.” In 1866 the tribe sold its Crow Creek lands and purchased land in northeastern Nebraska from the Omaha people.”
My people also went to Nebraska and were, of course, in northeastern Iowa. The first group arrived there the same year that the Winnebagos were moved there. The Prairie Du Chien agent was named Joseph Street and I have Streets in my genealogy (They may have stolen other names.). He surveyed these lands and opened them up to settlement. I read a master’s thesis on him. He pushed Indians to learn white ways and buy land, so they could not be pushed off their land. He was well-liked by Indians and is buried next to Chief Wapello on land given him by Chief Wapello.
It is logical. I have found that several of my names were the names of missionaries. If the Mitchells had been missionaries to people who spoke a Siouan language, why not travel to a group that spoke a similar language? With them, traveled a Sinkey. My family says the Sinkeys were the Indians.
Anyway, just a thought…
Techteach
I think this is significant because it shows a persistence of culture among our folk a hundred years following their political demise. It demonstrates that these people, who, though categorized as white or black, were continuing to make key decisions in life based on an Indian identification. It also implies that they had a meaningful social relationship with these other tribes. Why purposely move near the Winnebago if you don’t feel more comfortable being around them?
Linda,
This would be your folks too, if these musings are possible. Vernon County is directly east of a fort in Iowa that was built to protect the Winnebago from their enemy tribes.
Bearing in mind that the story in my family is that they were Cherokee (but they were from PA and Martinsburg, WVA. One cousin said her grandfather still knew the dances and did them at family gatherings as late as the thirties, but no one has the answer to who they really were. Cherokee is the story in 3 lines and Blackfoot is the story in two. Deb and I both have Indian great-something grandmothers who were Blackfoot from Western PA. However, as I write this, the one who could dance did not come from this line but married into it. He was from the central PA and WVA line who moved to Ohio first. The two Blackfoot women married brothers from Pittsburgh and came directly to Iowa to join the others there.)
In any case, it was interesting to see that my folks came into Iowa when there were still settlements of Winnebago there, in fact, the year that fort was built. I was under the impression that all Indians had been removed from eastern Iowa when my folks came.
I watched the Ho-Chunk dances at the casino in the Dells last summer…
If these thoughts are not way off base and probably are, a question would be, why did they move to Licking County, OH, if they were following groups whose culture was similar? They bought land that had previously been the Wyandot town called Raccoontown from Tarhe, the Crane in the late 1700s like 1790 and moved through the early 1800s to that location.
Well, anyway, it’s interesting to ponder.
Tech
Our cousin, Brian, who lives in Vernon County still, has been doing a lot of work caring for our old cemeteries. That’s how we met him. He ‘just happened’ to be at our Ezra Hudson’s cemetery when my mom stopped there, on the way to a reunion.
He says he’s got some Ho-chunk buddies he hangs out with. They tease him, I think, about his slim b.q. Something like that.
Too bad that such a concept exists. We all have common ancestors.
Speaking of common ancestors, we ought to sometime see if there might be some evidence of a connection with your Hudson and my Huston. Yours come from PA right? I investigated Queen Esther and Catherine for a while. I think it was Catherine who married someone who called himself Thomas Hudson on, I believe. At the time, I read somewhere that Hudson and Huston were interchangeable. My Hustons originate near these folks.
Tech
I was thinking the same thing today. I wanted to look up that thread where we did find a connection in PA. Is that the one? The Hudsons? My memory is so poor for names. I could never be a genealogist! It has to have a conceptual thread to it for me to remember.
Thank you Linda!
I will invest in this book. The Lakota course sounds very interesting, and maybe in the future I can do that.
Thank you again, and as always, a pleasure to read the sharing of anecdotes and information on this board between you and other members.
If I can get my husband to scan those pictures, I will send them to you if I may. Knowing him though, my breath is not being held!
Regards,
Lynne
Originally posted by Linda
Interesting thought. Where did/do the Winnebago live? I’ve noticed something along those line with the movements of Blackfoot families through the deep south. You seem to see them around places like Biloxi (some say the most similar to Tutelo).
Thank you for this and the whole excerpt from the book, Tech. I am very much interested to learn about the early locations and migrations of the Siouan people, especially where those in VA came from. This was a first for me to read about them in Kentucky.
I’ve asked my ancestors to give me more understanding and insight into their early history. We live in times were things come full circle and what has been hidden for so long (that it would be considered ‘lost’ even) is not lost but accessible ‘in the annals of heaven’ as some would call it. None of his people’s history is ever lost with Creator.
Kind regards,
Rose
PS I found the following two quotes on the webpage http://www.runningdeerslonghouse.com/webdoc252.htm
“In an attempt to dispel them, the English, who were joined by the Pamunkey under Totopotomoi, precipitated what was perhaps the bloodiest Indian battle ever fought on the soil of Virginia, the last great fight between Siouan and Algonquian tribes…..
….This tribe, called Hanohaskie by Thomas Batts (1671), became in later narratives the Tutelo (Totero or Todirish-roone), a generic Iroquoian name applicable to all Siouan tribes in Virginia and Carolina. A subtribe of the Tutelo was the Saponi (the Monasickapanough of John Smith), who had moved from the Rivanna to a tributary of the upper Roanoke, where their town of Sapon was visited first by Lederer and then by Batts. Other tribes of Siouan stock were the Nuntaneuck (the Tauxanias of Smith); the Akenatzy (Occaneechi), who lived on an island in the Roanoke River; the Managog (Manahoac), who had but lately roamed the upper Piedmont region; and the Monakin or Monacan, who occupied the village of Mohemcho. All these tribes were of Siouan stock.”
I also found this extensive language link http://www.languagegeek.com/siouan/siouan.html
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