THE COMMON AND SACRED LANGUAGE OF DAKOTAHS. 155 



divide the year into moons, but weeks are unknown to 

 them. The Dakotahs of the valley of the Minnesota 

 have the following months in the year * : — 



1. Wi-tehi, January ; the hard moon. 



2. Wicata-wi ; February j the racoon moon. 



3. Istawicayazan-wi ? March ; the sore (eye) moon. 



4. Magaokada-wi, April ; the moon in which the geese lay eggs. 



5. Wozupi-wi, May j the planting moon* 



6. Wazustecasa-wi ; June ; the moon when the strawberries are red. 



7. Canpasapa-wi ; July ; the moon when the choke cherries are ripe,. 



8. Wasutou-wi, August ; the harvest moon. 



9. Psinhnaketu-wi ? September j the moon when rice is laid up to dry. 



10. Wi-wazupi, October ; the drying rice moon. 



11. Takiyuha-wi, November j the deer rutting moon. 



12. Tahecapsun-wi, December ; the moon when the deer shed their horns. 



The Dakotahs have a common and a sacred language. 

 The conjuror, the war prophet, and the dreamer employ 

 a language in which words are borrowed from other 

 Indian tongues and dialects ; they make much use of de- 

 scriptive expressions, and use words apart from the ordi- 

 nary signification. The Ojibways abbreviate their sentences 

 and employ many elliptical forms of expression, so much 

 so that half-breeds, quite familiar with the colloquial lan- 

 guage, fail to comprehend a medicine man when in the 

 full flow of excited oratory. 



The American missionaries, in their admirable written 

 Dakotah language, employ five vowels, and twenty-four 

 consonants, -among which are two c's, two g% two h% 

 two &'s, two ns, two s's, two t% and two z's. The repe- 

 tition of the same letter is used to denote a guttural, an 

 aspirate, an emphatic, or a nasal sound. Thus, c is both 

 an aspirate and an emphatic letter ; g like the English g 

 and guttural \ h hke the English h and guttural ; k as in 

 English and emphatic ; n as in English and nasal ; p as 

 in English and emphatic ; s as in English and aspirate ; 



* See Grammar and Dictionary before referred to. 



