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My ggggg grandmother, according to Guion Miller Eastern Cherokee applications, was an Indian woman from Virginia named WATHACAPEE or WATHACAPA. Her husband was Leonard or James Leonard BROWN; they were in Middle Tennessee by 1802 where my gggg grandmother Jaley Ann BROWN was born, at a Station Camp on the Little Duck River. The BROWNs were in Lawrence Co., TN in 1820. Jaley had a brother named Stephen BROWN, b. @ 1792 somewhere in VA. WATHACAPEE, if the name is correct, isn’t Cherokee: there is no “th” or “p” sound in the Cherokee language. Help please!
Welcome, Kapi. I forwarded your question on to someone who knows Tutelo. Hopefully we’ll hear back from him soon.
WATHACAPEE or WATHACAPA
I looked at Horatio Hale’s Tutelo dictionary and spotted a few words with similar syllables. Though I haven’t any idea what kind of patterns would be used to combine words.
watai = beads
witaqa = friend
pi = good
wahtahka = man
You can search some more yourself. There’s a link to the on-line version of the dictionary on our main page. I guess it’s called Early Canadiana online Horatio Hale dictionary, or something to that effect.
If witaqapi is a valid word formation it would make a sweet name. Good friend.
Another thing. I’m not sure that the nonexistence of “th” or “p” sound would necessarily rule out a language, since the anglicization of the word may have been just an approximation of the word, with some distortions.
Yoohoo! Lawrence says the correct word order would be friend, good. Maybe we should name my son, Ami, that for his Indian name. Wataqapi.
Lawrence was also telling me at one time that there were many NDN’s, including Saponi, who applied for the Cherokee rolls because those were the only Indian rolls available. So the only way to establish Indian identity legally was to go for the Cherokee roll.
To confuse matters more. Wa Tha Ka be means side of a hill in osage and omaha both of the degiha souix language group. The b is pronounced somewhere between b and p and is written both ways.FYI In osage sapa means black and ni means water.Sapa ni=blackwater
Hello FCollins, welcome. Thanks for that info, interesting. Tutelo for water is “moni” I believe. The word Saponi is said to be a corruption of ‘monisicapano’ which does seem kind of a stretch, though that long word is till supposed to mean “black water” in some people’s opinion.
I’m trying to figure out what’s the closest living language to Tutelo. I know some others, Biloxi and something else are closer than Dakota, but I wonder if Dakota is the closest that’s still alive.
Not a big stretch. Ni for water in some souix is prefaced by Min as in MinneTonka [big water} Mo is not far off.
Hello I’d look at Chickasaw since both of those consonant/sounds are found in the Muskogean languages, there is a chief that had a similar sounding name. Chickasaws owned east TN prior to dislocations etc. BTA, Tom.
I still would like to think it’s a Saponi name since the lady was from Virginia and she’s married into a surname common among Saponi families.
We have heard we had ancestors who were in Lawrence County, Tn., as well, for a short while. But I am not sure it is correct yet.
Do you know of any other family of “Brown’s” there? A David Brown, and three families of “John Brown’s”? There was John Brown Sr & Jr, and a third simply “John Brown”.
thanks —
vance hawkins
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