HOKTIWE

(for L. Rain Prud'homme-Cranford)

 

JEFFERY U. DARENSBOURG[1]

 

This work is a cento, a type of found poetry, composed using David Kaufman's Atakapa Ishakkoy Dictionary as well as Gatschet and Swanton's A Dictionary of the Atakapa Language. I use Kaufman's orthography here, which conforms with contemporary linguistic scholarship. The correct name for the language is "Ishakkoy" ("Human Being Talk"), as "Atakapa" is an exonym and slur historically directed at the tribe by others.[2] The primary original source material was gathered in Lake Charles, Louisiana and environs in the 1880's and 1920's. There is but a small corpus of Ishakkoy, consisting of a few paragraphs of narratives in the Gatschet & Swanton dictionary. There are, however, many example sentences therein that aren't included in those texts, which I extracted on notecards, using these to compose additional texts.

 

Note: All sentences appear as in the Kaufman dictionary, except that some place names have been switched into different sentences. All place names used are found in the published dictionaries of the language.

 

Katkoš koykit:                                                              An eagle is speaking:

"Išak tayš okiăn yukit he mon yalpeyulăt."             Strangers have come and taken our land."

Šokšoš šokšo waņšolkit.                                           Birds are tearing up the young seed plants.

 

Cikip tat.                                                                       A blue heron is poised there.

Naw taw walwalštit.                                                   Many feathers are waving.

Iti hihiwalšat:                                                                I dreamt last night:

 

Wi šaknoms puškin waņankamstit.                          My children are playing outside.

Neš ne(y)kin tlop tat.                                                  A post stands driven into the ground.

Išak išat ha(n) huulăt.                                                  They see a headless man.

 

Cok Taykin išakăt.                                                        He was born near Blackbird River.

Tew Tulkin išakăt.                                                         He was born at Tail of the Lake.

Kui Taykin išakăt.                                                          He was born along Cactus Pear Bayou.[3]

 

Nun tixt mon waņo.                                                    I walk all over the village.

Oce hew šiwtiwkit.                                                     Snakes slither quickly.

Išakkoy tiwxc koyo.                                                    I speak a little Ishakkoy.

 

Okwaņš haņšǎt.                                                          The war is over.

Tik kakáwkin polšwaņkit.                                           On the water an arrow floats.

Itans ockawškit.                                                          A cloud passes over the sun.

 

Šaktelšo.                                                                       I unfold.

Kakáw taw inikit.                                                         The water comes in.

Wi šokatkok akilikišo.                                                  I soak the cloth.

 

Šoktol hew wi ke.                                                        I'm rather lucky.

Wi Nuņ Uškin ket ta.                                                   I live in Bulbancha.[4]

Kultan oktišat.                                                              A long time has passed.

 

Wiš kewtiukšo ya šokyulšo.                                       I smoke and I write.

Cit lawkit.                                                                      The tobacco burns.

Tanstal tolka makawǎt.                                               The paper falls down whirling.

 

Pam inululăt.                                                                 Many footprints they left.

Ha išak lukin tiktat temakip.                                       This fellow goes wading in the mud.

Neš takamš kamkamš.                                                Limbs branch out from the tree.

 

Hoktiwe.                                                                       We are together.

Hatpeo.                                                                         I am ready.

Wi ăm (h)inawš.                                                            Let me drink.

 


Notes

 

[1] Enrolled member and tribal councilperson, Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas. This poem was composed during an Adaptations Residency at A Studio in the Woods, Tulane University, Spring 2020. Hiwew for comments to Christine Baniewicz, Carolyn Dunn, David Kaufman, Justin Southworth, Russell Reed, and Kimberly Gail Weiser. This poem is recited by me in the 2020 short film Hoktiwe: Two Poems in Ishakkoy by Fernando López and myself (https://vimeo.com/452435309), commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans for the exhibition "Make America What America Must Become" (https://www.oc20.cacno.org/).

[2] For more on the status of the language, including notes on the tribe itself, see Darensbourg and Kaufman. Other recent writings in Ishakkoy by tribal member Tanner Menard are discussed in Lief and Darensbourg.

[3] Tew Tul ("Tail of the Lake") is the original name for Lake Charles, Louisiana. Kui Tay refers to a bayou nearby where an important food source, the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa) may be found. The French assigned a name that is an echo of the original, Bayou Guy. In their dictionary Gatschet and Swanton misidentify the waterway as "Bayou des Gayes" (72). My thanks to Robert Caldwell (Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb) for helping with the correct identification.

[4] Nuņ Uš ("big village") is a postcolonial term in Ishakkoy for Bulbancha ("the place of foreign languages"), which is the original, pre-colonial name for what most call "New Orleans." On the name and its spellings, see Hali Dardar, "Bvlbancha," 64 Parishes, Fall 2019, p. 22. For more on Indigenous People in Bulbancha who still use that name, including myself, cf. Laine Kaplan-Levinson, "New Orleans: 300 // Bulbancha: 3000," 20 December 2018, in TriPod: New Orleans At 300, produced by WWNO, podcast, https://www.wwno.org/post/new-orleans-300-bulbancha-3000.

 

Works Cited

Darensbourg, Jeffery U. and David Kaufman. "Ishak Words: Language Renewal Prospects for a Historical Gulf Coast Tribe." In Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture, edited by Nathalie Dajko and Shana Walton, pp. 64-68. UP of Mississippi, 2019.

Gatschet, Albert S. and John R. Swanton. A Dictionary of the Atakapa Language Accompanied by Text Material. Government Printing Office, 1932.

Kaufman, David. Atakapa Ishakkoy Dictionary. Exploration Press, 2019.

Lief, Shane and Jeffery U. Darensbourg. "Popular Music and Indigenous Languages of Louisiana." Proceedings of the Foundation for Endangered Languages 19, 2015, pp. 142‑146.