Urth Net
Cutthroat Sioux
↰ answers m.driussi
· by quotation
mantis,
I discovered that Sioux=Cutthroat on an elementary school website, maybe not the most reliable place in the world, but considering how disappointing both the OED and the Britannica are on the subject, I don't know that it's wrong. I'm inclined to think that it's a fact(oid) that Wolfe ran across somewhere that amused or charmed him enough to appropriate it in his usual underhandedly cryptic way.
I guess I'm wrong about Squanto being a Bumppo alias. I have the entire Leatherstocking saga in an omnibus, but cannot face even browsing it. The various introductions refer to Hawkeye and Deerslayer and if Squanto were in there, they would probably mention it.
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Sioux as French for "cutthroat" (er, "cultellarii"?) now =that= is
very interesting, since it ties in =exactly= with the element of "The Tale of the Boy Called Frog" of TBOTNS, wherein the teacher of all these animal Kiplingoids is called, not the expected Baloo the Bear (hmmm), but the Naked One, "who was also called the Savage, or Squanto" (III, ch. 19). This character is the one who taught Frog to plough the fish, leading Frog to plough his twin brother Fish; this name belongs to a Native American Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe who is said to have taught the pilgrims how to plough the fish.
I just read that again...gee, I wish it went on longer. I've always been a sucker for Mowgli. Let's see, I count Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, all the birth-from-a-god stories, Moses, Japanese fairy tales...and Squanto.
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Interesting that the teacher character in both stories (TS and TBCF) is linked to a Native American Indian name.
Would you call Cutthroat a teacher? To me he seems the universal learner. Who does he teach?
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OTOH, since he looks like his throat has been cut, does this mean that we have at long last determined the group that cut him? (One presumes that the "Cutthroat Tribe" got their name for doing unto others rather than self-inflicting, no?)
Well, I think that's taking rather a long jump to a shaky conclusion. It really could be a birthmark, you know, and we'll never know one way or another. I suppose those who argue that he is not from the Great Sleigh could use it as proof that all the tribes we meet are (say) part of the big Algonkian (or Iroquois or Athabascan or whatever) confederation, while he is a Siouan Winnebago (don't laugh, that's the only Sioux group in Illinois), who speaks a different language and has different customs---a native translator thrown off the Sleigh when he is no longer useful. But that's getting awfully both literal and theoretical at the same time, and I don't really buy it. (Though it has some exciting parallels to Fifth Head.)
-alga-