COMMENT ON "THE SIOUX AND THE ATSINA'

by Cyclone Covey , Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem NC

The Sioux and the Atsina
About Dr Cyclone Covey

OUT OF long personal familiarity with Athabascan tribes of Canada and their languages as a government agent, also with East Asian languages, not to mention French of preeminent Pelliot and Pettitot et al., Ethel despite decades' disdain from an uninformed academic establishment, revolutionized precolumbian Athabascan historiography in discerning connection between Buddhist Athabascans and Genghis Khan's annihilation of Xi-Xia Kingdom (renamed Tangut). She went on to challenged Uto-Aztec and Sioux preconceptions, in the same fearlessness, knowledge, and geniud, but would now doubtless modify her 1997 answers to pioneer questions.
Carbon dates show the Red Paint People (Maritime Archaic) several millennia too early to equate with medieval Tibetan warriors who painted their faces red.
Egyptian influence in Burrows Cave reflects not Egyptians but Carthaginian, Numidian, and Neo-Ptolemaic versions of Egyptian religion that pervaded Roman Mauretania, whose peculiar mix of languages recurs on Burrows Stones and was partially creolized in Ohio Valley Algonquin.
The Hui Shan party of 5 Afghan (probably Kushana-Yuchi) Buddhists followed innumeral Buddhists to China. They fled Southern Lian Buddhist persecution. Hendon Harris also though that a multi-racial flight of multi-racial multitude, but our documentary evidence warrants only the 5 individuals, of whom Hui lived long enough to return alone 499 and report ot the restabilized Southern Liang court 502 as if a Fusang ambassador.
Since hordes of Yuchis migrated back east along the Silk Road as their verdant Kushanna empire turned to desert and suffered Persian defeat, it is provocative to place them first and separate in a series of migrations to America. Ethel herself (via Edward Sapir 1936) realized Yuchi was pronounced Uêt on the Silk Road, thus Uto-Aztecs were Yuchi-Aztecs. She herself explained Aztecs as Tu-yü-hun (Azas) merged with North Tibetan Teks. It follows that Yuchis comprised a large component of the Uto-Aztec migration 5th-7th centuries A.D.
Yuchi traditions of an Atlantic crossing confused forgotten antecedents with 18th-20th-century European lore. Yuchis, Aztecs, and much-later Athabascans were all Buddhist, bearing the popular Buddhistjataka Thunderbird symbol (as Ethel elucidated) speaking Asian languages. Korean Yuchis Ethel knew of at Ft. Yukon (yukon, she pointed out is Tibetan for Jade Gate, which lay within Xi-Xia just outside the Great Wall) obviously arrived on the Kamchatka Current past Aleutians like later Dene and Na-Dene. Yuchis reached Florida very late, not first.
Linda Schele et al. etymologized Tollan "Place of Cattail Reeds," unaware of Ethel's etymology or that the dimly remembered origin might have lain in another continent. This points up alternative derivations by proponents unaware of each other. Crees, Assiniboin, Yuroks, and Ojibways (also Chippewas), as Ethel knew, speak Algonquin. Schoolcraft though Chippewa anglicized Ojibway while half-Ojibway W.W. Warren though Ojibway Algonquin for "Roast till puckered up" (treatment of enemies). Neither knew its Chinese sense. Parkman regarded Sioux as abbreviation of French-rendering Nadouessioux, "Enemies", as Cree abbreviates French Kristinaux, French for unanalyzed Cree self-name Kenistenoag, and Huran from Old-French hure, "boar's head" or "bristly head," supposedly referring to outlandish headdresses but perhaps merely signifying "boorish."
Iroquois is not an Iroquois word, and Iroquois did not call themselves that. It has been etymologized not quite satisfactorily from Algonquin, Montagnais, and Basque, with no awareness of Central-Asian sense. Dean R. Snow traced Iroquois tribes to villages on Juniata River of central Pennsylvania. James Edkins, as Ethel knew, found Siouan interlarded with (he thought wholly) Mongol, not yet aware in 1900 of Catawban Algonquin that it interlarded.
Sioux as "Slaves" does appear related to Na-Dene (Mongol) speaking Slaves on the Mackenzie River. Alignment of Etzina tribes on the Great Plains as in Gansu gives pause. Ethel recognized Mandans as Little Yuchis (and Paiutes "White Yuchis"). Yet Mandans migrated from the Hopewell Ohio Valley up the Missouri and incorporated a Welsh vocabulary in their Siouan. They called themselves People from the land of pheasants (which sounds Asian), dwelt inyert-shaped houses instead of draggable Tungus tepees of neighbor-enemy Sioux (tepee is a Turkish word, Ethel noted, for "cone tent"), and practiced very un-European shoulder suspension in training youth as warriors.
Ethel obliged reevaluation of all we mistook as primitively simple. We cannot yet e.g. explain Caddos or Keres, even though Caddos once occupied a vast swath from Dakotas to the Gulf, and Keres (of present Acoma, etc.)dominated Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde before the Great Drought dispersion.