Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 17 Dec 13 - 02:37 AM

The usual Dakota version begins with the line "Hanhepi wakan kin!"

It is in at least two hymnals, "Okodakiciye Wakan Odowan Qa Okna Ahiyayapi Kta Ho Kin/Hymnal with Tunes and Chants According to the Use of the Episcopal Church in the Missions among the Dakotas" (hymn #15) and "Wakan Cekiye Odowan: Hymns in Dakota and English for use in Niobrara Deanery", also hymn #15. Unfortunately, I don't have those hymnals and thus can't type you out the rest of the text.

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: maeve
Date: 12 Dec 13 - 05:55 PM

Pastor Kitto,

I found a few links that may be helpful, but all seem to be Lakota so you may need to make some changes. At least you can listen and ask your neighbors for help.

Silent Night sung in Lakota (youtube)


Silent Night sung in Lakota- A Bead People Christmas

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Dec 13 - 03:59 PM

Try getting in touch with the University of Minnesota and ask there.

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Dec 13 - 07:38 PM

Hi,
My name is Pastor Beatrice Kitto
My husband Rev. Alan Kitto Sr. and I are co-pastors at a United Methodist church here in Lincoln, NE. The church is called Sacred Winds UMC, which serves different Native tribes, including Dakota, Lakota, Winnebago,Omaha as well as other tribes. My question is to you, do you have the Silent Night carole in the Dakota language. Your help in the matter would be much appreciated. Thank you in advanced. Beatrice Kitto
e-mail address: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 18 Nov 10 - 03:57 AM

Thanks, Monique, that's a good book, but Mandarin Chinese it is NOT. I cannot imagine why Amazon bills it that way (and continues to bill it that way a month after I posted my review of it). The publisher's website doesn't make that claim, but on the other hand it doesn't make any claims at all, just redirects you to Amazon.

Haruo

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Monique
Date: 17 Nov 10 - 06:23 AM

Mandarin Chinese edition" of a 1911 Dakota hymnal

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 16 Nov 10 - 02:42 PM

I had not seen the 1842 hymnal before; it was the first hymnal in the Dakota language. It does not, as you note, contain any music, just texts, and among the texts I do not find "Wakantanka taku nitawa", which is the text usually sung to the tune Lacquiparle. (The usual English translation is a two-stanza paraphrase, by Philip Frazier, from the seven-stanza original, beginning "Many and great, O God, are thy works"; this text was written by Joseph Renville, and the tune was either composed by him or adapted by him from a preexisting anonymous Dakota melody. There is also a seven-stanza translation by Sidney Byrd, beginning "Great Spirit God, the things which are thine". In a footnote to his version of the hymn in the New Century Hymnal, Byrd cites his forebears as recounting that "This hymn was sung by 38 Dakota Indian prisoners of war as they went to the gallows at Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, in the largest mass execution in American history."

It appears that the book I found at the Seattle Public Library is the 1868 Dakota Odowan, a predecessor of the classic 1879 hymnal of the same name (where the tune Lacquiparle first appeared in print).

Haruo

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Sep 10 - 05:11 PM

Your thread title caught my attention because, as a Minnesotan, I am aware of Lac qui Parle—the lake, that is—actually a reservoir. I even went fishing once in the Minnesota River right below the dam. (It was a waste of time. All I caught were bullheads, known elsewhere as mudcats!) I understand there was a lake by that name there before the dam was built.

There is also a Lac qui Parle County, Lac qui Parle State Park, and a Lac qui Parle River.

And there is a Renville County and a town of Renville, in Minnesota—but before this thread, I didn't know anything about Joseph Renville, for whom they were named.

Google Books has two viewable books by him:

Dakota Dowanpi Kin: Hymns in the Dakota or Sioux Language (Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1842)—but, alas, I don't think that book contains the hymn LACQUIPARLE; at least it is not identified as such. There are Dakota lyrics only in that book, no musical notation, although sometimes the hymns are identified with an English title.

See also Wicoicage Wowapi, Qa Odowan Wakan: The Book of Genesis and a Part of the Psalms by Joseph Renville (Cincinnati: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1842).

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 10:59 PM

I posted a few page scans (including the indexes of tunes and first lines) in my hymnblog, here.

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 04:00 AM

I misinformed y'all about Nakota: this refers not to Yankton, which is a Dakota dialect, but to Assiniboine. See Siouan languages for a general description of the family.

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 03:54 AM

Dakota language (Wikipedia)

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 03:53 AM

There are three main dialects/languages (depending on how you define these rather subjective terms), which linguists refer to, often, as D-Dakota, N-Dakota and L-Dakota. Lakota (or L-Dakota) is the largest one in the west, and D in the east, and then N I think is the Yankton Sioux. D-Dakota is also called Eastern, Santee, or Woodland Sioux, and L-Dakota is also called Plains or Teton Sioux. (The term "Sioux" itself is not of Sioux origin, it's a diminutive ending in Ojibwa (aka Chippewa), in which the term for the Sioux translates, not too diplomatically, as "Little Snakes".) Dakota/Nakota/Lakota, which is the general term of self-reference for these people, means "Friends/Allies", not "Baby Serpents". It's the same word, but depending on the local form of the language the first sound varies as noted. At the time of Renville's hymnodic activity, the Lakota did not yet have Christian hymnists. He was Dakota.

Here is the text of the "Dakota Hymn" by Joseph Renville, first published 1842; I think there may be a few missing diacritics:

Wakantanka taku nitawa
tankaya qaota;
mahpiya kin eyahnake ca,
makakin he duowanca.
Mniowanca sbeya wanke cin,
hena ovakihi.

There are a couple of English translations in the (UCC, 1995) New Century Hymnal, as well as an anecdote about the hymn's prominence in the history of the Dakota people (where it played a role in a way analogous to that of "Amazing Grace" in the history of the Cherokee). I'll try to transcribe these, that is, I'll try to remember to do so next time I have my NCH at hand.

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: open mike
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:39 AM

I would be interested in knowing the relationship between Dakota and Lakota which is sometimes used to describe Sioux...perhaps Lakota refers to the language of those people?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakota
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakota_people
http://www.native-languages.org/dakota.htm

Subject: RE: Joseph Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:36 AM

Would a Joe clone be kind enough to change the Hymnary.org link above from http://www.hymnary.org/node/7446 (incorrect/nonexistent) to http://www.hymnary.org/node/7447 (correct/extant). thx

Subject: Renville / Lacquiparle / Dakota Odowan
From: Haruo
Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:04 AM

Today at the Seattle Public Library I found an undated (but pre-1930, as it was already in their collection in that year) copy of Dakota Odowan, the main hymnal in the Dakota (i.e. eastern, woodlands or Santee Sioux) language. The copy I found is not of the classic 1879 edition, since it doesn't mention Joseph Renville (d. 1846), the father of Christian hymnody in Dakota, nor does it contain his most lasting song, Wakantanka taku nitawa (usually anglicized as "Many and great, O God, are thy works" or a modernization thereof), set to the classic Dakota hymn tune LACQUIPARLE. I was a bit surprised to see that Renville is never mentioned in all the billions of words in the Mudcat database (nor is Dakota Odowan), and that the song in question is mentioned only in a couple of lists of Girl Scout songs [and here], where it is called "Dakota Hymn (Lacquiparle)", and once by me in a favorite hymns thread (here). So I thought I'd give it its own thread as a place to add information on Dakota hymnody in general as well as on this tune, this text, and this trapper.

I also started a thread on it at Hymnary.org, since the resources, associations and resources of hymnnuts and those of folkies are often complementary but distinct, and this sort of topic area is in the intersection. Maybe someone here has some idea what the "Mandarin Chinese edition" of a 1911 Dakota hymnal could be... ;-)

Haruo