Quapaw (Okáxpa) Language Dictionary

⚠️ The official Quapaw Nation language dictionary is not yet available online. Read more about our work on the in-progress dictionary below.

Introduction

An official Quapaw language dictionary is not yet published, but it is one of the primary goals of our department. Our department is still in its infancy, but we are working tirelessly to compile an accurate and encompassing lexicon. Creating a dictionary is a tedious and long process, and it requires a considerable amount of research, discussion, and cross-analysis.

Our goal as a department is to have a first edition available within the next few years, but we do not yet have a definitive publish date. There is still much work to be done, and we want to make sure it is done right. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the Supernaw family's online language archive, which contains audio files of first-language Quapaw speakers.

Dictionary Sources

This dictionary is an evolving body of work; even though our language has been dormant for many decades, there are a handful of researchers and archivists who have and continue to document and analyze it. We cross-reference and verify dictionary entries utilizing many bodies of work as cited in the sections below:

Written Works

The initials in brackets are placeholders for cited works¹ authored by the following individuals:

1 Note that the reliability and accuracy of these sources varies; some sources are relied upon more than others. Click here for more information.

Source Reliability

Click any of the dropdowns below to expand notes on each source's reliability and accuracy. You may click anywhere outside of this pop-up dialog to close it.

Albert Samuel Gatschet
A portrait of Albert Samuel Gatschet.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Dr. Albert Louis Samuel Gatschet (1832-1907) was a Swiss-American linguist and ethnologist who documented and analyzed hundreds of indigenous languages across the United States. He is considered a pioneer in both of these fields and spent most of his life conducting mass surveys of colonial America's indigenous languages. His notes should be considered reliable, although we take into consideration that his notations are archaic and sometimes unclear compared to modern IPA standards.
Frank Thomas Siebert Jr.
A portrait of Frank Thomas Siebert Jr.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Frank Thomas Siebert Jr. (1912-1998) was an American pathologist who abandoned his study of medicine to document and analyze Algonquian languages. He eventually compiled a dictionary in the Penobscot language. He briefly stayed with the Quapaws in November of 1940 and authored a single article on the subject. His article on Quapaw is not entirely accurate, which the author himself states in its footnote; therefore, we rely on his article for cross-referencing only.
George Izard
A portrait of George Izard.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
George Izard was a senior Army officer and the second governor of the Arkansas Territory from 1825 to 1828. He took an interest in Native languages during his tenure as governor and compiled a Quapaw vocabulary containing 226 entries. These entries are reliable, with very few noted exceptions.
James Owen Dorsey
A portrait of James Owen Dorsey.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
James Owen Dorsey (1848-1895) was an American ethnologist and linguist who spent most of his professional life documenting the language and culture of the Dhegiha tribes: Quapaw, Omaha, Ponca, Osage, and Kanza (Kaw). His primary focus of study was the Omaha language, although he spent time with the Quapaws in the later portion of his life. Dorsey’s works related to our tribe spans a number of topics: folklore, mythology, history, linguistic notes, vocabulary lists, personal names, and names for other tribes. He is the de facto source for the majority of our language work.
Lewis F. Hadley Lewis F. Hadley was a linguist and missionary who lived in Indian Territory (what is now Arkansas) during the late 1800s. His work is extremely unreliable. Most aspects of Hadley’s system of spelling fail to accurately represent the pronunciation of Quapaw. There is no consistency with vowels and consonants, in addition to a lack of understanding of the basic Dhegiha language concepts and sounds. Hadley's work is referred to minimally in our language work.
Dr. Robert L. Rankin
A black-and-white photograph of linguist Dr. Robert L. Rankin.
Dr. Robert L. Rankin (1939-2014) was an American linguist and lecturer at the University of Kansas. He spent most of his life studying and documenting Siouan languages. In 1973, he came to Oklahoma to visit the Quapaw and work with the few remaining speakers. This field work, combined with the previously-noted historic documentation, allowed Rankin to compile the most complete and accurate body of written works regarding Okáxpa. He worked on his Quapaw dictionary (compiled from his own field work and from the work of the aforementioned researchers) until his death in 2014.

List authored by Billy Supernaw Proctor and Tehya Buffalo.

Audio Recordings

In addition to written sources, our dictionary is largely compiled from numerous recorded interviews with the following Okáxpa speakers:

Dhegiha References

When tackling a continuity error or similar problem in our language work, we often cross-reference our own information with Quapaw's neighbors in the Dhegiha language family: Osage, Omaha, Kanza (Kaw), and Ponca. Our five tribes were once a united people, so our languages share many similarities. The Dhegiha sources our department utilizes most frequently are as follows:

Dictionary Technology

We are writing our dictionary with the assistance of the following technologies: