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A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
CONTENTS
Preface / vii
Acknowledgments / ix
List of Abbreviations / xii
Sound Key / xvii
PART ONE
Introduction
1. Background and History / 3
2. Sounds and Alphabet / 13
3. Major Sound Changes / 19
4. Grammatical Overview / 29
5. Organization of the Dictionary / 53
PART TWO
English to Skiri Pawnee / 63
PART THREE
Skiri Pawnee to English / 349
APPENDICES
1. Illustrative Skiri Verb Conjugations / 531
2. Verb Roots with Irregular Dual or Plural Agents / 539
3. Kinship Terminology / 541
References / 547
v
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A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
Preface
The Skiri language was spoken in and around the area of Pawnee County in northcentral Oklahoma. It is the site of the former Pawnee Reservation, where the four
Pawnee bands settled after the federal government relocated them from Nebraska to
Indian Territory in 1874—76. The town of Pawnee is the county seat and still serves, as
it has for over a century, as the locus of Pawnee social, economic, and political life. To
the east of the Pawnee city limits is the Pawnee Reserve, a remnant of their reservation,
on which are located tribal government buildings, Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, a
modern health center, a round house for community events, and a tribal police station,
in addition to the abandoned stone buildings that once formed the Pawnee Indian
School.
When I began my study of Pawnee (both the South Band and Skiri dialects) in 1965,
there were perhaps as many as 250 speakers. Today the language is no longer spoken.
Many Skiris still remember words, expressions, and basic sentences in their language, but
the last truly fluent speaker of it was Lula Nora Pratt, who collaborated with me for
more than fifteen years, until she passed away in 2001.
This dictionary represents part of the results of our work together. It comprises
approximately half of the total lexical entries in my larger Skiri dictionary database,
which is a compendium of data collected over a period of four decades and supplemented
by historical recordings. I had at first intended the present dictionary as a much simpler
and smaller work that would be primarily for use by language learners, especially those
taking Skiri language classes, and by individuals who are maintaining such tribal
traditions as song and prayer. However, during the developmental stage of the
dictionary, I and the project’s technical editor, William Anderson, gradually expanded
both the number and complexities of entries so that the dictionary would also serve
linguists and other scholars who might want to utilize it as a language reference work.
The result is an “intermediate” dictionary–one that has basic lexical and grammatical
information on some 5,000 entry headwords that will provide ample data to meet the
needs of most users, including students and scholars–pending completion of the fuller
Skiri dictionary that will present a thorough reference work with more information in
the entries as well as sound recordings.
The present dictionary, in addition to being the first published one of a Caddoan
language, is the initial volume of a two-volume set that describes the Skiri language. It
will be followed by a second volume that describes Skiri grammatical structure and that
offers significantly more detailed grammatical information than does the sketch of
Pawnee phonology and morphology included in the Introduction to the present volume.
vii
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Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
1
Background and History
Throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Pawnees lived
along major tributaries of the Missouri River in central Nebraska and northern
Kansas. Historically they were one of the largest and most prominent peoples on the
Plains, numbering some ten thousand or more individuals during the period of early
contact with Europeans. From the end of the eighteenth century to the present, four
divisions, generally designated bands, have been recognized. Northernmost were the
Skiris, who spoke one dialect of the Pawnee language and formed a virtually separate
tribe. Until the early nineteenth century the Skiris lived along the north bank of the
Loup River, at one time in perhaps as many as thirteen villages, but by the early
historical period in a single village. To the south of them, generally on the south bank
of the Platte River, but ranging as far south as the Republican River in Kansas, lived
the Chawis, the Kitkahahkis, and the Pitahawiratas, each of whom usually comprised
a single village. The latter three groups, today generally designated the South Band
Pawnees, spoke a dialect of the language distinct from that of the Skiris.
In the mid 1870s the tribe was relocated to what was then Indian Territory, now
the state of Oklahoma, and occupied a reservation that covered primarily what is
now Pawnee County. Today most Pawnees still reside there, in or around the town
of Pawnee, the county seat. The Pawnee Nation is their official designation as a social
and political entity, and tribal offices are located on reserve land adjacent to the
eastern boundary of the town.
Pawnee is a member of the northern branch of the Caddoan language family that
also includes the Arikara, Kitsai, and Wichita languages. The two Pawnee dialects are
most closely related to Arikara, which has sometimes been considered a dialect of
Pawnee, but it and the Pawnee dialects are, in fact, mutually unintelligible. Skiri and
South Band Pawnee speech, in contrast, are mutually intelligible. Today no fluent
speakers of either Pawnee dialect remain, although there are still individuals who
know some of their heritage language.
A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee, comprising approximately 4,500 entries, presents
the basic vocabulary of the language. It has been designed to serve as a resource both
for students learning the language and for other users who want to look up words for
spelling, pronunciation, meaning, or reference–the information essential to any
elementary bilingual reference work. The volume has been developed from a larger
Skiri Dictionary Database (SDD), compiled by Parks, that comprises an archive of all
known Skiri lexical material. The SDD has approximately ten thousand entries, each
3
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Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
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BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
with an array of grammatical and paradigmatic forms, historical citations, lexical
cross-referencing and analysis, and glosses with textual and elicited examples, as well
as sound recordings and images.
Table 1. Variant Names of Pawnee Subdivisions
Pawnee Name and
Variant English
English Translation
Contemporary
English Name
Historical English Names
Ckíri ‘Wolf’
Skiri
Skidi
Panimahas, Loups, Loup
Pawnees, Wolf Pawnees
Cawií®i (no trans.)
Chawi
Chaui, Tsawi
Grand Pawnees
Kítkahaahki ‘Little
Earth Lodge Village’
Kitkahahki
Kitkehahki, Kitkahaki
Republican Pawnees
Piitahaawíraata ‘Man
Going East’
Pitahawirata
Pitahauirat,
Pitahauerat
Tappage Pawnees, Noisy
Pawnees
Spellings
Previous Studies of the Pawnee Language
The present volume is the first published dictionary of either Pawnee dialect. The
only other extant Pawnee dictionary is an unpublished manuscript glossary compiled
in the late-nineteenth century by John B. Dunbar (1911), son of John Dunbar, the
Presbyterian missionary who, with Samuel Allis, began work among the Pawnees in
1836. For more than a decade, the elder Dunbar lived and proselytized among the
South Bands, while Allis resided with the Skiris for a longer period. During their
residence with the tribes the two missionaries learned to speak the Pawnee language.
Dunbar’s son, John B. Dunbar, born in 1841, may have learned to speak Pawnee
as a child, or perhaps later in life studied it when he was a professor of Latin and
Greek languages at Washburn College, Topeka, Kansas. The younger Dunbar wrote
articles on Pawnee culture and made two notable linguistic contributions. One is a
grammatical sketch of Pawnee that appears as an appendix in the second edition of
Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales (Grinnell 1893:409—37). The other is an
unpublished 136-page handwritten manuscript entitled “Pawnee-English Vocabulary”
(Dunbar 1911), a glossary of the South Band dialect, arranged Pawnee-to-English,
with occasional citations of specifically Skiri words. Although the actual completion
date of the manuscript is unknown, it was transmitted to the Bureau of American
Ethnology Archives (now the National Anthropological Archives), Smithsonian
Institution, in 1911. In the same archive is a carefully typed copy of the original that
was formerly in the possession of George A. Dorsey. Although the younger Dunbar’s
orthography for writing Pawnee is best characterized as roughly phonetic, it is
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Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
5
relatively easy to interpret, and consequently both manuscripts are valuable sources
of lexical and grammatical data from the late-nineteenth century.
In 1902 George A. Dorsey (Curator of Anthropology, Field Columbian
Museum) and James R. Murie, a mixed-blood Skiri, began a long-term collaborative
study of Pawnee culture that focused on mythology, religion, and social organization,
but also included language. Their work together lasted nearly a decade, and one of
their many projects during the first decade of the twentieth century was recording on
wax cylinders a collection of narratives from Roaming Scout, an elderly monolingual
Skiri priest (Parks and DeMallie 1992; DeMallie and Parks 2002).2 Murie subsequently
transcribed the Skiri texts and provided putatively literal English translations of
them. Later, Dorsey emended a typed copy of the Skiri transcriptions. From 1985 to
1992 Parks and Nora Pratt collaborated to develop a modern, readable edition of
Roaming Scout’s narratives–in the process, retranscribing the Skiri text and
preparing entirely new translations. Those texts have been a major source of lexical
data for this dictionary and the SDD, especially by providing older, specialized
vocabulary.
In 1910 Murie became a field researcher for the Bureau of American Ethnology,
and over a five-year period he recorded in minute detail surviving Pawnee ceremonies. His documentary work included transcriptions and translations of a large
collection of doctors’ songs, mostly in the South Band dialect, but including some in
Skiri. Beginning in 1914 Murie also began a collaboration with Clark Wissler
(American Museum of Natural History) to document Pawnee ceremonialism,
building on Murie’s previous work with Dorsey. For this study, too, Murie soundrecorded the songs integral to Skiri religious ceremonies. The culmination of those
two projects–that for the Bureau of American Ethnology and that with Wissler–
was the two-volume Ceremonies of the Pawnee that includes all the linguistic material
recorded by Murie (Parks 1981). This publication has also been an important source
for Skiri lexical material.
Gene Weltfish, a student of Franz Boas in the late 1920s, was the first
professional anthropologist with linguistic training to document Pawnee. From her
work with South Band speakers she published an analyzed text with a short
grammatical sketch of Pawnee (1936) and a bilingual collection of narratives (1937),
both important works that represent the speech of monolingual Pawnees in the early
twentieth century. An equally invaluable language resource is her set of phonetic
retranscriptions and literal translations of many of the Roaming Scout narratives into
the South Band dialect (1929) and her retranscriptions of Pawnee linguistic forms,
particularly song lyrics, in Ceremonies of the Pawnee (Parks 1981). Additional Pawnee
vocabulary is scattered throughout her other publications (e.g., Weltfish 1965), all of
which, but especially the collection of texts, have provided important contributions
to this dictionary.
2. The Skiris recognized a dichotomy between priests, who were religious leaders and knew
the rituals of village sacred bundles, and doctors, who were healers (Parks 1981:7—18).
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BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
History of the Present Project
The SDD comprises material that was recorded in the course of two periods of field
work with elderly Skiri speakers. During the first period, 1965—1970, while I was a
graduate student, I worked primarily with speakers of South Band Pawnee in order to
record the necessary materials to write a grammar of the language (Parks 1972, 1976).
However, during those years I also recorded lexical material from six Skiri
speakers–two women and four men–and sound-recorded eleven texts from two of
the men, both of whom had been blind from childhood, and one of whom was
monolingual. During that period, however, I did not transcribe or translate the texts.
By 1985, when I began the second phase of my field work, all of the elderly
speakers with whom I had worked in the 1960s had passed away. Consequently,
during this period I collaborated with the one remaining fluent Skiri Pawnee speaker,
Nora Pratt, who had an exceptional knowledge of the language and was a recognized
source of cultural knowledge. Nora grew up in a monolingual home, and, throughout
most of her adult life, her mother, Lucy Tilden, who was monolingual, lived with
her. Since Nora’s husband, Adam Pratt, was also a speaker of Pawnee (South Band
dialect), the language was used in the household on a daily basis until Lucy died in
1970 at the age of 103 and Adam passed away in 1984.
When Nora and I began what turned out to be a seventeen-year collaboration,
the primary purpose of our work was to retranscribe and translate the Roaming
Scout texts. We worked on them intermittently until 1992, when we were finally
satisfied with the transcriptions and translations.
Subsequently, we focused attention on compiling a Skiri dictionary. At first, the
goal was to produce a printed reference work, but by the mid 1990s multimedia
technology was becoming available and, at the same time, I realized the need for a
relational database that could adequately accommodate complex dictionary entries.
To that end a team at the American Indian Studies Research Institute (AISRI), Indiana
University, created a multimedia dictionary database application (Indiana Dictionary
Database, or IDD) designed for the creation of a linguistic archive that would serve as
the source of bilingual dictionaries to be delivered in a variety of formats, printed, on
compact disks, and on the worldwide web.
Once development of IDD was well underway and it was possible to incorporate
audio recordings into the database, it became necessary to record systematically all of
the lexical material in the SDD in order to preserve a sound record of Skiri paralleling
the printed one. The recordings were made on digital tape between 1996 and 2001,
and the individual words (or tokens) were saved as sound files for importation into
the SDD.
In the late 1990s we also compiled an inventory of basic paradigms for 150 verbs.
The paradigms include all personal pronominal forms in singular, dual, and plural
numbers in each of the thirteen modes in Skiri.
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BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Skiri Contributors
There have been numerous contributors to the Skiri documentary project. Foremost
among them is Nora Pratt, with whom I collaborated for four weeks in 1977—78 and
from 1985 until her death in 2001. During the earlier, shorter, period she and I transcribed and translated the Skiri texts of Sam Allen and Harry Mad Bear that I had
recorded in 1966. Then after 1985 I spent, on average, two months a year, and often
more, in Pawnee, where we worked on a daily basis. During the early course of that
work I came to appreciate what a truly remarkable knowledge of Skiri language and
culture Nora possessed, and how the project would have been impossible without
her.
Lula Nora Pratt (Ctiisaaru® Karu® ‘She Is Indeed A Princess’, 1908—2001)
Lula Nora Pratt was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma.3 Both of her parents came from
leading Skiri families. Her father was Ezra Tilden (childhood name Aakawikaahat
‘Jumped Off His Horse At The Pipe Dance’, later Piiraski Riisaaru® ‘Boy Chief’), a
direct descendent of Brave Chief (Riisaaru® Raraahikuucu), a nineteenth-century
hereditary Skiri chief. Nora’s father would have assumed that position himself, after
Ezra’s father, who also took the name Brave Chief, passed away, but Ezra preferred
that his brother John Moses accept the position. Nora’s mother was Lucy Washington Tilden (Caktaawiirawicpari®)4, a sister of Lizzie Washington (Cuupiriktaakaa
‘White Star Woman’),5 who in the early twentieth century was a Ghost Dance
prophetess, a prominent hand game leader, and owner of one of the two Morning
Star bundles (Lesser 1933:263; Parks 1981:35).
During Nora’s childhood the Tilden home was a focus of Skiri social activity,
where older Skiri doctors and prominent men would come with their families to visit
and stay for days at a time. In the 1930s, after the two old Skiri roundhouses were
torn down to make way for present Pawnee Lake,6 Nora’s first husband, Linford
Smith, built a new round house on Ezra Tilden’s land north of town, on the same
land where Nora lived her entire life. This new roundhouse, like the ones it replaced,
became the hub of Skiri social and ceremonial life for over two decades, until it
burned down in the 1950s.
3. Her baby name was Ctaaraahwiruucu® ‘Rounded Mound Of Corn Woman’, given to her
by her aunt Lizzie Washington, who dreamed that before Nora was born she would be a girl and
should have this name.
4. Translation unknown. The name, which derives from a tribal sacred bundle, seems to
mean ‘Carries Them Behind To Different Points’, suggesting a ritual act performed by the keeper
of the bundle or its priest.
5. Also known as Mrs. Washington and, more commonly, Old Lady Washington.
6. During the late—nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, each tribe had a roundhouse–a
round wooden structure–for public social and religious events. The first of those two round
houses was on Lizzie Washington’s land, the later one on Mrs. Good Eagle’s land.
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BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Throughout her adult life Nora and her second husband, Adam Pratt
(Raraahikucteesaaru ‘Chiefly Brave’), a Kitkahahki, were social leaders always actively
involved in tribal community events. Adam, who had a prodigious knowledge of
Pawnee songs and a strong voice, was for decades one of the leading Pawnee singers,
always taking a leading role at the drum during dances, handgames, and other
activities, as well as frequently singing at other tribes’ social events. Nora’s Skiri
name, She Is Indeed A Princess, signifies that she has all the personal traits of a female
family member (wife or daughter) of a chief: humility, generosity, and a strong sense
of social responsibility. And, indeed, Nora was distinguished by all of those traits.
While Adam would assist the “menfolk” when they butchered beeves for meals at
dances and other social events, Nora would contribute food and cooking utensils for
the meals and take a leading role in the cooking, activities that she continued into her
early nineties. Throughout her adult life she was active in several Pawnee women’s
social organizations–the Pocahontas Club, the American War Mothers (Pawnee
Chapter), the Star Club–and always gave support, both personal and financial, to
tribal and other community social activities. In short, Nora and Adam, like many of
their generation, had a strong, admirable sense of social responsibility and always
participated in and supported community events in every way they could.
Throughout our collaboration, Nora demonstrated the same traits that governed
the rest of her life. By the time we began our project in 1985, she was unquestionably
the most knowledgeable speaker of either Pawnee dialect, a member of the last
generation that was comfortable with the older form of Pawnee speech and who had
a sufficient understanding of nineteenth-century Pawnee culture and thought to be
able to effortlessly translate religious and other cultural concepts into comprehensible
English. Similarly, she was conscious of semantic changes in vocabulary and would
draw attention to words that had older, now obsolete or archaic, meanings in
contrast to newer, contemporary ones. When I began my work in 1965, she knew an
older form of Pawnee than did many individuals a generation older than she, a
knowledge and facility, of course, that were nurtured by her home and social
environments and by a fierce pride in being a full-blood Skiri. We worked together
daily when I was in Pawnee, starting in the morning and continuing until evening,
Nora insisting on persevering even on days when she clearly did not feel well. Our
goal to document Skiri speech was profoundly significant for her, and was one to
which she dedicated herself until shortly before she passed away.
William Samuel Allen (Taawahcaakihari® ‘Young Cedar’, 1874—1966)
When I first began my study of Pawnee in 1965, I worked primarily with Dolly
Moore, a Pitahawirata. Occasionally at noon she would suggest that we go to her
son’s house in Pawnee to visit or have lunch. Wilson Moore (Raraacikstahureesaaru
‘He Holds Chiefly Thoughts’), her son, was married to Virginia Gourd, who at the
time was in her thirties and took care of her relative, Sam Allen, who was a
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A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
9
monolingual Skiri then in his nineties. Virginia, who spoke Skiri, was able to
communicate and interact with him, but since none of the other family members
spoke the language, they were unable to converse or socialize with him. Sam had lost
his eyesight during childhood, and consequently, in old age, he was socially isolated,
generally whiling away the day sitting in his bedroom. Occasionally, however, an
older Pawnee speaker would come to visit, and, when the visitor was a male, the two
would generally spend most of their time in Sam’s bedroom telling each other
traditional stories, often for hours.
During my first summer in Pawnee Sam recorded four long stories, both of
which are notable for their attention to minute detail and for stylistic repetition.
Again, they represent a Skiri speech and narrative style uninfluenced by English, as
spoken by a monolingual elder in the mid-twentieth century who, because of
language and physical limitations, was isolated from the changing society about him.
Despite those social handicaps, Sam’s texts are valuable contributions to Skiri
language preservation and to this dictionary.
Harry Mad Bear (formerly Kaakaa® Turaahii ‘Good Crow’, later Ti®aakaciksuuku® ‘He Has (Good) Thoughts For People’, 1894—1972)
Also blind since his youth, when he developed glaucoma, Harry Mad Bear was
elderly when I met him. He lived alone and generally spent most of each day sitting
on the porch of his house across the road from the Pawnee Baptist Church. Despite
blindness, he spoke good English and was a very trusting, open individual who
enjoyed visitors. Whenever I came to see Harry, he seemed delighted to have the
company and evinced interest in the language project. Several times he mentioned
that he remembered James Murie doing similar work when he was young.
Harry’s grandfather and father, both of whom carried, in sequence, the name
Mad Bear (Kuruks Tiicariis), had been prominent Skiri doctors, and so Harry had
grown up in a conservative household in which he acquired a large repertoire of
traditional narratives. His knowledge of those stories, like Sam Allen’s, was
undoubtedly due in part to the social isolation imposed by blindness, but he clearly
relished the opportunity to narrate a story, in contrast to Sam, whose recitations
were characterized by little affect. Over the course of several visits, Harry recorded a
total of nine stories for me, clearly only a few of the ones he knew. He liked to
record each one first in Skiri and then retell it in English, and finally he wanted the
Skiri version replayed so he could listen to his performance, most of the time
expressing approval with a smiling nod: “Yeh, that’s right; I told it real good.” And he
did. His collection of narratives, after I later transcribed and translated them,
demonstrated that he was not only a fluent first-language speaker of Skiri but an
accomplished raconteur whose stories represent an interesting variety of genres, two
of which had not been previously documented for Pawnee. His stories have proved
invaluable for this project.
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Henry Roberts (Riitahkac Tiwiitit ‘Sitting Eagle’, 1888—1976)
Henry Roberts was a son of Rush Roberts (Riitahkackarahaaru® ‘Proud Eagle’), a
prominent Skiri who in his youth had served with the Pawnee Scouts under Luther
North when the Pawnees still lived in Nebraska. When I met Henry in 1965, he was
an eighty-two-year-old gentleman, somewhat formal in manner, who had retired
from government service in the Southwest nearly two decades earlier and had
returned with his wife Rose Denomie (a Chippewa) to live in Pawnee. A graduate of
Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, Henry spoke a formal register of English, in
addition to being fluent in Skiri. Shortly after I first arrived in Pawnee, he and I spent
several mornings recording vocabulary and verb paradigms, but I soon became
immersed in work with South Band speakers and could not continue recording Skiri
material. Fortunately, we recorded a sufficient corpus of lexical and paradigmatic data
to compare his speech with that of other Skiris.
Gerty Clark (Cituriku ‘Has The Village Woman’, 1893—1975)
Gerty Clark was Nora Pratt's aunt, and thus in the generation that immediately
preceded Nora's. She married Tom Clark, a Walapai man, and for most of her adult
life the couple lived in Anadarko, rarely returning to Pawnee. When I first met Gerty
in October 1973, she and her husband had returned to live in Pawnee and, despite
experiencing failing health, she was quite willing to help me develop a beginning Skiri
lexical file. We worked together over a period of several weeks; and, despite the
difficulty at times of recalling vocabulary as a result of not having spoken the
language for decades, she made many lexical contributions, and her speech was
informative for its distinctive Skiri characteristics.
Albin Leading Fox (Kiwaku® Rahiraskaawarii ‘Fox Roaming The World In The
Lead’, 1904—1994)
During October 1973 I worked with Albin Leading Fox over a period of several
mornings. A knowledgeable Skiri speaker, he, too, contributed vocabulary to the
dictionary database.
Anna Mary Barker Moore (Ctaawakuriwaa ‘Kind Speech Woman’, 1895—1978)
On several mornings in October 1973 I reviewed Skiri lexical items with Mary
Moore, who had been married to Colonel Moore (Raruhcakuhkarahaaru ‘His Proud
Sun’, Pitahawirata), previously the husband of Dollie Moore. She, too, contributed
vocabulary to the project.
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Historical Sources
Most historical sources presenting Skiri linguistic material are limited to short
vocabularies, usually representing a single semantic domain. The exception is the
Roaming Scout text collection, which has been a unique and invaluable resource for
the Skiri Dictionary Database and this dictionary.
Roaming Scout (Kirikiirisu® Rakaawarii ‘Scout Roaming The World’ 7, ca. 1845—
1914)
Roaming Scout was born into a chief’s family in traditional Skiri territory circa 1845,
when the semisedentary Skiri lifestyle, which for centuries had alternated between
horticulture and hunting, was experiencing gradual, but soon to be profound, changes
brought about by the incorporation of the Plains region into the new United States
and by an ever-expanding Euro-American population. In 1857, when Roaming Scout
was ten, the Pawnee tribe signed the Treaty of Table Creek, whereby they
relinquished their freedom to travel throughout their traditional hunting territory
and ceded most of their lands. The Skiris now became dependents of the U.S.
government: they moved to a small reservation on the Loup River in east-central
Nebraska, and were encouraged to settle in agricultural communities in an early
attempt to acculturate them.
Nevertheless, during the mid-nineteenth century, traditional Skiri culture
continued as a viable lifeway. Roaming Scout’s childhood and youth, to judge from
his autobiography, were typical of traditional Pawnee life, but as he grew older he
lived through the years of upheaval that ultimately resulted in the Skiris’ lifestyle
succumbing to that of Euro-Americans. Significantly, the new lifestyle was one to
which he never fully adapted. When he was young, Roaming Scout evinced a strong
interest in Skiri religion and ritual activity, and in the narratives that he recorded for
Dorsey and Murie, religion and ritual are the dominant themes. Religion was, indeed,
the paramount force throughout his life and apparently created for him a world in
which he insulated himself from the overwhelming alien culture that was progressively engulfing him and his people. By the end of the nineteenth century he was the
foremost Skiri religious leader by virtue of his being priest of the Evening Star
bundle, the leading Skiri religious shrine.
During that fin de siècle period Roaming Scout resolved to collaborate with two
anthropologists who wanted to record traditional Skiri life. His intermediary,
translator, and companion in both endeavors was Murie, who was presumably a
relative and the foremost Pawnee interpreter during that period. Roaming Scout’s
first experience was working with Alice C. Fletcher, who in the 1890s began a
projected long-term study of Pawnee ceremonialism, beginning with the Hako
7. This name is based on the verb stem kaawarii, which means ‘going around inside, roaming
inside (an enclosed space)’, but in personal names has the metaphorical meaning ‘roaming under
the vault of the Heavens’, i.e., ‘roaming in the world’.
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(Calumet, or Pipe, Dance), for which Murie was crucial. During her studies she
recorded verbatim interviews with Roaming Scout, as translated by Murie, on
religious and other topics.
Roaming Scout’s second collaboration, which extended for almost a decade, was
with Dorsey and Murie. It was a collaboration that Roaming Scout interpreted, as he
interpreted every object and event in the world, as divinely motivated by the
Heavens. Thus, he believed that their work and what he was recording were divinely
inspired, motivating him to tell his collaborators everything that he knew in order to
preserve an accurate, authentic record of his people’s past. In many ways his greatest
contribution is the seven hours of recorded narration recorded in 1906. Those
narratives cover a broad range of topics–an autobiography; a detailed account of the
annual round of Skiri life, including discussions of kinship and social relations; a
sequence of stories illustrating various ethical concepts; extensive descriptions of Skiri
religious and medical beliefs–that provide an intellectual perspective on native
culture rarely encountered in the literature on native North America. No less
important, though, is the linguistic value of the texts: they document late-nineteenthcentury Skiri speech and narrative style before influence from English, and they
comprise a rich source of vocabulary. This dictionary, as well as the Skiri Dictionary
Database, have thus been significantly enriched because of Roaming Scout’s
perspicacity and desire to create a documentary record of Skiri life.
Other Sources
Supplementary sources are the following:
•
•
•
the field notes of Alexander Lesser (1929—35) and Gene Weltfish (1929—35), which
provide transcriptions of Skiri kinship terms;
the ethnobotanical data recorded by Melvin R. Gilmore (1919) in the second
decade of the twentieth century, which provide Pawnee plant names; and
the manuscript glossary of John B. Dunbar (1911) discussed above.
(For a discussion of other historical word lists, see Parks 2001:81—82.)
In addition to the preceding historical resources, the Arikara Dictionary Database
(Parks 1999) provided Arikara vocabulary that had not been previously attested in
Skiri and that was systematically checked with Nora Pratt for Skiri cognates.
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Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
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Organization of the Dictionary
The dictionary is divided into two major sections: in the first, entries are arranged
English-to-Skiri, and in the second, they are arranged Skiri-to-English. The English-toSkiri section appears first since most users will not be Skiri speakers and will
presumably use that section more than the Skiri-to-English one. Nevertheless, in
order to maximize ease of use of the dictionary for diverse purposes, entries in both
sections contain the same information.
General Conventions for Citing Skiri Forms
In both the English-to-Skiri and the Skiri-to-English sections, Skiri entry forms are
cited as follows:
•
Verbs. The entry forms of verbs are uninflected stems that do not occur as
independent words. They require inflectional prefixes and suffixes, which then
undergo the phonological processes that create well-formed words. Two
conventions used in citing verb stems should be noted:
•
Stems that require a preverb–that is, that have one of the preverbs
(ir-/a-, ut-, uur-) as an integral part of the stem but are positionally
separated from it–are cited with the preverb appearing in
parentheses immediately after the stem base form, as in tii (ut...) ‘be
tame; be accustomed to’. Even though preverbs are placed after the
stem base for citation in entries, the user must remember that in
word formation the preverb comes before the stem (that is, in
positions 13 and 18; see table 7).
•
There is a small number of verb stems based on Ø (ut...) ‘to be (in a
condition)’ and Ø (ir...) ‘to be one’s’ that have a zero (or null) base.
The preverbs of these stems (here ut- and ir-) then behave like
descriptive verbs in that in non-subordinate forms with singular or
dual subjects the vowel of the preverb reduplicates as specified in the
Stem-Final Vocalic Reduplication Rule (p. 49). If a subject plural
prefix follows the preverb, its vowel reduplicates following the same
rule. Thus, in kutatii®i ‘it is mine’ (< ku- POSS + ta- IND.1/2.A + t1.A + ir- POSS.1/2.A + Ø ‘be one’s’ + -Ø PERF), the vowel i of the
53
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ORGANIZATION OF THE DICTIONARY
preverb ir- is reduplicated to ii®i; and in kutatiraa®at ‘it is ours’ (<
ku- POSS + ta- IND.1/2.A + t- 1.A + ir- POSS.1/2.A + raak- 1/2.P +
Ø ‘to be one’s’ + -Ø PERF), the vowel aa of the subject plural prefix
raak- is reduplicated to aa®a since it is the last overt constituent in
the surface form. (The loss of the r of the preverb and change of k of
the plural prefix to t in word-final position are regular phonological
processes.)
•
Nouns. In entries, nouns are given in their independent forms; that is, all nouns
that require one of the nominal suffixes (-u® NOM, -hiri® INST/LOC, -kat LOC, and
-ru LOC) to occur as an independent word have those suffixes on the entry headword. For example, the noun paksu® ‘head’ always has the nominal suffix -u®
NOM when it occurs as an independent (non-instrumental, non-locative) word;
but when it is incorporated into a verb or occurs preceding another morpheme in
compounds, the suffix -u® does not occur, as in the following examples:
tatpaksiitit ‘I nodded’ < ta- IND.1/2.A + t- 1.A + paks- ‘head’ + iitik ‘nod’ +
-Ø PERF
pakskiisu® ‘skull’ < paks- ‘head’ + kiis- ‘bone’ + -u® NOM
Although most Skiri nouns have an independent form, there is a relatively small set
of dependent noun roots (N-DEP) that do not have an independent form but only
occur preceding another stem in a compound. The entry heads of dependent noun
roots are cited with a dash after the stem-final syllable. An example of a dependent
noun root and two derived words based on it is the following:
asaa- ‘horse; dog’ in asaaki ‘dog’ (< asaa- + -kis DIM), asaapahat ‘roan horse’
(< asaa- + pahat ‘be red’), asiicapaat ‘mare’ (< asaa- + icapaak ‘woman’); cf.
independent form aruusa® ‘horse’
•
Locatives. There are two types of locative elements: those that occur as verb
stems and inflect as verbs (locative verbs); and those that occur as locative
morphemes in verbal derivation, where they add locative information to a verb
root or a derived stem. Locatives that do not occur as independent verb stems but
only appear in derived forms are cited with a dash at the end of the form. An
example of the latter is the following:
iis- ‘out of sight’: iisat ‘go out of sight, disappear over’ (< iis- + at ‘go’);
hirasiisat ‘go out of sight in the lead’
•
Other word classes. Members of other word classes, such as adverbs, adjectives
(which are a subclass of nouns), and numerals are cited in their independent
forms.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE DICTIONARY
55
English-to-Skiri Entries
Figure 1 illustrates a typical English-to-Skiri entry. The English entry word (usually
a single English term) is given in boldface at the very beginning of the entry (in the
sample entry in figure 1, the English entry word is stop). Often more than one Skiri
word can translate a given English word. Thus, in the sample entry in figure 1,
English stop corresponds to two different Skiri verbs: awi®uusik (uur...) and cawiirik
(uur...). Each alternate Skiri translation begins a separate Skiri subentry within the
entry. Each subentry has up to three parts (numbered I, II, and III in the sample
entry in figure 1, and discussed immediately below).
Figure 1. Structure of an English-to-Skiri verb entry
Part I: The first part of a subentry (see fig. 2) comprises basic information that is
arranged in the following order:
•
Equivalent Skiri word or stem that is a translation of the English entry. Like
the entry word, it is set off in boldface type (wiitik in fig. 2). (See the section
“General Conventions for Citing Skiri Forms” above for practices used in
representing the equivalent Skiri form–for example, the convention that
preverbs required by a stem are cited after the stem, as for the preverb uur- in the
first subentry in figure 1, even though in actual usage they come before it.)
•
Phonetic rendition of the preceding Skiri term is set off in square brackets and is
presented with small bullets marking syllable breaks in the stem or word to assist
the user in proper pronunciation.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE DICTIONARY
•
Grammatical class abbreviation of the entry; that is, one of the abbreviations
for what are usually designated parts of speech, such as noun (N), verb (V), and
adverb (ADV). These abbreviations are cited in small capital letters (see
Abbreviations, p. xiii) that are followed by either a dash for dependent elements
or by a verb class based on the subordinate form of a verb (that is, its subordinate
suffix or lack of one). Thus in figure 2, wiitik is an intransitive verb (VI) of class 4,
hence cited as VI (4) (see pp. 32, 45-47 above for discussion of verb classes).
•
Grammatical forms, if they are irregular or for some other reason require
specification, are included in many entries. Such grammatical forms are usually
ones for a dual or plural agent or the distributive, and are placed immediately
after the grammatical class abbreviation and are enclosed in curly brackets ({ }).
The abbreviation for the grammatical form being cited is given first, followed by
the Skiri form itself. Thus the Skiri verb in figure 2 has an irregular distributive
form wiiruutik.
•
Full English gloss of the preceding Skiri word or stem, often comprising a set of
English equivalents that illustrate the semantic range of the Skiri word. Sometimes Skiri words have multiple meanings, and those separate meanings are set off
by numbering the glosses. Phrases clarifying usage are frequently added to
glosses; these explanatory phrases are italicized since they are not part of the gloss
itself (e.g., as an airplane or a flock of birds in the fourth gloss of the subentry in
fig. 2).
•
The derivation or etymology of a word or stem, when known, is cited between
angled brackets. First the Skiri form is analyzed into its constituent elements. In
this analysis, two types of boundaries are indicated: constituent morphemes
within a stem are separated by a hyphen (-), and major constituents within the
full Skiri form are separated by a plus sign (+). Following the analyzed Skiri
form is a literal English translation of the stem or word’s underlying meaning. If
the underlying morphemic constituency or literal translation has not been
determined, no derivation or underlying meaning is given. Sometimes, when
relevant, cognate forms that occur in South Band Pawnee (SB), Arikara (Ar.),
Kitsai (Ki.), or Wichita (Wi.) are cited.
Part II: The second part of a subentry (fig. 3) is either a set of inflected forms
illustrating fully formed verbs that are independent words or, if the entry form itself
is a dependent form (noun or locative), a set of derived stems illustrating usage of that
dependent form.
•
Inflected forms. For verbs there are five basic inflected forms (standard verbal
paradigmatic forms) that are listed: (1) first person agent (for active, descriptive,
and locative verbs) or first person patient (for passive verbs), in the indicative
mode, perfective aspect; (2) third person agent or patient, indicative mode,
perfective aspect; (3) third person agent, indicative mode, imperfective aspect; (4)
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A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee
Douglas R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt
University of Nebraska Press
57
third person agent, gerundial mode (i.e., subordinate absolutive mode), usually
perfective aspect; and (5) third person agent, indicative mode, intentive aspect.
Certain verb classes do not allow some of these forms and thus are lacking here.
Occasionally there is an additional inflected form, set off by a bullet, that
illustrates a plural, distributive, or other grammatical form specific to the entry.
Figure 2. Skiri subentry structure (in a Skiri-to-English entry): Part I, basic information
•
Derived stems. When the entry head is a dependent form that is not itself subject
to inflection but serves as a constituent in deriving new stems, the illustrative
forms given are several examples of derived stems that include the dependent
entry form.
Figure 3. Skiri subentry structure (in a Skiri-to-English entry): Part II, paradigmatic forms and
examples
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