{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/195",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 195,
    "subject": "Cutthroat Sioux",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1997-09-01T17:52:53+00:00",
    "last": "1997-09-02T12:55:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0004-0287@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1997-09-01T17:52:53+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Cutthroat Sioux",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "mantis,\n\nI discovered that Sioux=Cutthroat on an elementary school website, maybe\nnot the most reliable place in the world, but considering how disappointing\nboth the OED and the Britannica are on the subject, I don't know that it's\nwrong. I'm inclined to think that it's a fact(oid) that Wolfe ran across\nsomewhere that amused or charmed him enough to appropriate it in his usual\nunderhandedly cryptic way.\n\nI guess I'm wrong about Squanto being a Bumppo alias. I have the entire\nLeatherstocking saga in an omnibus, but cannot face even browsing it. The\nvarious introductions refer to Hawkeye and Deerslayer and if Squanto were\nin there, they would probably mention it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Sioux as French for \"cutthroat\" (er, \"cultellarii\"?) now =that= is\nvery interesting, since it ties in =exactly= with the element of \"The\nTale of the Boy Called Frog\" of TBOTNS, wherein the teacher of all\nthese animal Kiplingoids is called, not the expected Baloo the Bear\n(hmmm), but the Naked One, \"who was also called the Savage, or Squanto\"\n(III, ch. 19).  This character is the one who taught Frog to plough the\nfish, leading Frog to plough his twin brother Fish; this name belongs\nto a Native American Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe who is said to have\ntaught the pilgrims how to plough the fish."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I just read that again...gee, I wish it went on longer. I've always been a\nsucker for Mowgli. Let's see, I count Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, all\nthe birth-from-a-god stories, Moses, Japanese fairy tales...and Squanto."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Interesting that the teacher character in both stories (TS and TBCF)\nis linked to a Native American Indian name."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Would you call Cutthroat a teacher? To me he seems the universal learner.\nWho does he teach?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "OTOH, since he looks like his throat has been cut, does this mean\nthat we have at long last determined the group that cut him?  (One\npresumes that the \"Cutthroat Tribe\" got their name for doing unto\nothers rather than self-inflicting, no?)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, I think that's taking rather a long jump to a shaky conclusion. It\nreally could be a birthmark, you know, and we'll never know one way or\nanother. I suppose those who argue that he is not from the Great Sleigh\ncould use it as proof that all the tribes we meet are (say) part of the big\nAlgonkian (or Iroquois or Athabascan or whatever) confederation, while he\nis a Siouan Winnebago (don't laugh, that's the only Sioux group in\nIllinois), who speaks a different language and has different customs---a\nnative translator thrown off the Sleigh when he is no longer useful. But\nthat's getting awfully both literal and theoretical at the same time, and I\ndon't really buy it. (Though it has some exciting parallels to Fifth Head.)\n\n-alga-"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0004-0288@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ron Crown",
        "address": "crownrw at slu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-09-02T12:55:32+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) cutthroat Sioux",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0004-0287@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[donning pedantic mask] Not that it makes a great deal of difference to\nanything BUT in the interest of accuracy, I checked in a couple of\nreference sources here and, although the Sioux were known as\n\"cutthroats\" in both spoken and sign language, the word \"Sioux\"\napparently comes from a combination Ojibwa(Chippewa)/French word\n\"nadouessioux\" which means \"little snakes\" or \"adders.\"  Furthermore,\nthe French rendering of the common sign language name was, not too\nsurprisingly, \"coupe-gorges.\"\n\nmantis, did you say that Severian is referred to as a \"cutthroat\"?  Do\nyou have a reference?  I mention it because something else my reference\nsource tells me is that one name given to the Sioux (by the Chippewa)\nmeans \"roasters\" \"from their custom of torturing foes.\"  Two other names\ngiven them by the Comanche and Yakima tribes respectively both mean\n\"beheaders.\"  \n\nNow what can we make of that?  Just another factoid, if that, which has\ngone into the mix?\n\nRon Crown"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}