Toidɨkadɨ (Cattail-Eaters) of Stillwater Marsh

Wuzzie George (b. ~1880, d. December 20, 1984) was, by all accounts, a true keeper of traditional knowledge. Over the course of more than three decades, she provided detailed ethnographic information about her people, the Toidɨkadɨ (Cattail-Eaters), for ethnographer Margaret Wheat (1967) and anthropologist and historical linguist Catherine S. Fowler (1992). Wuzzie also had an ongoing working relationship with the intrepid folklorist Sven Liljeblad, as evidenced by this prayer,which she composed for him in Fallon,Nevada, during a time of illness. Liljeblad later carefully transcribed it and gave it a free translation, and the first tier represents his transcription using a slightly modified version of the system he used for Bannock, due, in large part, to the need to accommodate the three consonant grades of the southern dialect area. A colon [:] is used to indicate vowel length, and a single, raised dot [.] indicates fortition (gemination) of voiced consonants. Fortition versus lenition is elsewhere represented as a voicing contrast—voiceless (fortis) versus voiced (lenis), respectively. Stress is marked in this system, providing clues as to clitic versus affix boundaries, which are fully analyzed in tiers two and three, eliminating the need for stress placement, which is completely predictable and regular. Despite the in-depth ethnographic information available, almost no published narrative material exists from this variety. Prayer as a narrative genre has not been widely explored (Fowler and Abel 2000 is a notable exception). Likely for reasons of privacy and cultural sensitivity, prayers do not often appear in documentary corpora. This particular prayer is reprinted from Fowler, George, and Hultkranz (1998) as part of an homage to Liljeblad. The parsing and interlinear analysis are by Thornes.