Michael Two Horses" <twohorse@u.arizona.edu>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 20:46:40 -0000
Subject: [nafps_again] Re: Cherokee/Tsalagi
Found this: "Tsalagi? The word Cherokee or Tsalagi is actually a Choctaw word for "cave-land-people". The Delawares called the tribe the same thing, but their word is "Tallageni", the root of
Allegheny. Cherokee is the way the invaders chose to pronounce Tsalagi. The Cherokee language itself does not use the ch sound or the r sound as they appear in English." This is what Tom Holm (my
diss committee chair, who is Cherokee and Creek) told me it meant as well.
Lately it seems that in order to give themselves more credence a lot of members of the Wanabi and Iwishiwas Tribes are using the more complex versions of the names of the tribes of which they're
pretending to be members.
Personally, I say Sioux to non-Natives 'cause saying Lakota or Dakota confuses them (particularly Dakota...they think I'm related
to a Dodge pickup...), and Lakota or Dakota to other 'Skins 'cause they know what that means. I don't run around calling White people "wasicu" either, which seems to be another popular epithet
among the Wanabis and Iwishiwases...along with the use of NobleSpeak (TM) or TontoSpeak(TM)...
I also make my students all spell the word "Sioux" each semester. They get 3 tries...one interesting thing is when we talk in courses about how different peoples got the names they're called by today, for instance, how the Ojibway/Chippewas (Anishinaabe) got named by the Huron (Wendat), then how our name came from the Anish word "nadonesiouweg" (people who act like snakes) and got shortened by the French (who felt it needed an x on the end for some reason), then how we named the Cheyenne (Tsistsistas) from the Lakota words "ša hiena" (speak differently)...
mth
