Some
comments after browsing the tribonyms in the new Concise
Dictionary of Nakoda (Assiniboine) by Vincent Collette.
Three
translations are given for "Gros Ventres":
(1) Ȟaȟátųwą or "Falls Village"—the
Gros Ventres were often called "Fall Indians" in the past, as were
the Hidatsa.
(2) Tóga which is literally
"Enemy" (cf. Lakota tȟóka). The word for Crow is given as Kąǧí Tóga ("Raven Enemy"),
however the dictionary gives no indication that the tóga element is used when referring to any other enemy tribe.
(3) Šahíya Wašíju which is composed of the
word for Cree (Šahíya) plus the word
for white people (Wašíju).
The
Hidatsa are not called Falls Indians, but rather Ȟewáktųkta. This looks like
a native Dakotan word but I don't know what it means.
The
dictionary has no separate entry for Omaha, but it does for something called
the Omáha wacíbi or "Omaha dance".
The
word for Metis is Sakná, which is
said to come from the "s anglais" part of French les anglais. This is curious
since I thought the Metis were mostly mixed Cree and French, but I admittedly don't know much about their history. I wonder whether
this word came via a Lakota form *Saglá,
or if the Assiniboines already automatically equated foreign *l as *n because
of the many obvious Assiniboine-Lakota cognates.
The
Stoney are called Tóhąn Nakóda or
"Far-away Assiniboine". I really
don't know how culturally manifest the divide is between Stoney and Assiniboine... at
least as far as the people are
concerned (the Stoney language is very
different—and a fun contrast compared to L/Dakota). "Assiniboine" itself
literally means "Stone Sioux" in Ojibwe, and you sometimes see the Stoney referred to as
"Stoney Assiniboine".
The entries for L/Dakota Sioux are a little puzzling: the Lakota are
given as Lakóta which might be a recent
loan since *l is natively not found in the language. Weird that it has the "t" (cf. the endonym Nakóda). There is an entry for Oglala (Ókalala), which also has that *l but is
peculiar besides—the Dakotan languages have a little half-schwa sound in
between those consonant clusters so that words like mni, gleška, and oglala get rendered into English as
minne[sota], ogallala, galeshka. But
would that have happened if it were loaned from Lakota into Assiniboine? Nor do I know why the word has a <k>
which at least in older, conservative Assiniboine is an aspirated /kʰ/. Maybe it was borrowed via French or Cree or Michif...
I dunno. No other Teton subgroup has its
own entry.
There is an entry for "Seven council fires" given
as Šagówį océti. This is equivalent to Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the L/Dakota name for the Sioux Confederacy, but
the Assiniboine entry doesn't specify if it refers to the
Sioux or anyone in particular—it's even glossed in lowercase. But I'm more curious why the noun-adjective
order has been reversed here. Constituent
order isn't very free in Dakotan languages, and Assiniboine ordinarily goes noun-adj the same as Lakota. I believe, however, that Lakota reverses this
order in the special ceremonial dialect spoken by priests, so maybe something
like that is going on here.
Cree is Šahíya. There is no separate word given to refer to
the Ojibwe. Instead if you look up
"Saulteaux" you get the entry Iʼášijana
~ Iʼášija ~ Iʼásija ~ Iyášija ~ Iyásija, which is a more general term
translated as "person of Dakota, Chippewa, Saulteaux, French, German, Ukrainian,
or Russian descent". This literally
means "bad talker"—with "bad" also translated "hard,
difficult" or "unpleasant" (so it's the "babbler/βάρβαρος/mlecchá/nātowēwa"
word).
It seems strange that the Assiniboine wouldn't have a
separate term for the Plains Ojibwe, as the two of them together with the
Plains Cree constituted the "Iron Confederacy" in the 19th
century. The Handbook of North American Indians tells me that Šahíya can refer to both to the Cree and
the Plains Ojibwe.
The Flathead are the Pámnaska,
and the Nez Perces are the Pasú Oȟnóga
~ Póğe Oȟnóga ~ Póȟnoga. These mean exactly
what you might guess: "flat head" and "pierced nose"—but what's
interesting is that neither kind of body-modification can be securely
attributed to either people. The Cayuse are
given as Šųk'į́kceya or literally
"horse or pony of little value"—there's probably some backstory to
this dating from the early horse trade, but I'm just happy to see the Cayuse get
mentioned.
The word for United States of America is Cągúsam.
I saw this word a few months ago in the Nakon-i'a wo! Nakoda coursebook, and for a moment I wondered if it
wasn't derived from "Uncle Sam" but with an initial *č somehow... but
no, it just literally means "over the border".
I might edit this post if I notice any
interesting differences/similarities between these names and the names from the New Lakota Dictionary.
