Fair enough. I was just wondering . . .
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Deities & Demigods: American Indian Mythos (or, Who the Heck is Qagwaaz?)
- Thread starter Fifth Element
- Start date
Fair enough. I was just wondering . . .
Fifth Element
Legend
Already checked, no luck there.
From site: worlds atlantis Native American Heros
Qagwaaz - Dakota
Qagwaaz is a powerful warrior who wanders the plains alone, capturing wild horses and hunting buffalo solely for the sport of it.
He is a welcome guest in the camps of all the plains tribes, where he enjoys challenging the resident warriors to contests of prowess and skill. In such contests, Qagwaaz relies only upon a wooden club and his great strength so that he does not injure his opponents too severely.
After such contests, Qagwaaz enjoys feasting and impressing the women with his stories and songs. Should a village be attacked while he is visiting, Qagwaaz is the first into battle. He is considered the ideal for all warriors to emulate.
Qagwaaz - Dakota
Qagwaaz is a powerful warrior who wanders the plains alone, capturing wild horses and hunting buffalo solely for the sport of it.
He is a welcome guest in the camps of all the plains tribes, where he enjoys challenging the resident warriors to contests of prowess and skill. In such contests, Qagwaaz relies only upon a wooden club and his great strength so that he does not injure his opponents too severely.
After such contests, Qagwaaz enjoys feasting and impressing the women with his stories and songs. Should a village be attacked while he is visiting, Qagwaaz is the first into battle. He is considered the ideal for all warriors to emulate.
Fifth Element
Legend
Thanks for trying. This text is basically paraphrasing the entry in Deities & Demigods though, just like all other mentions of Qagwaaz on the internet I've seen.
Mean Eyed Cat
Explorer
While my degree in Cultural Anthropology focused on the Plateau Indians of the NW, I did do a little bit of research on the Lakota Indians (mostly by researching various trade routes). Now I know Deities & Demigods cites Dakota, but Lakota is very closely related to Dakota -- basically different dialects of the same language.
By doing a cursory glance through two books, Beginning Lakhota (from the University of Colorado) and Lakota Myth (by Elaine A. Jahner) I noticed a couple of things. First, the letter "q" is never used. "K" is always used for the velar sound in words. Now I know that's a matter of semantics (since both "q" and "k" make the same sound) but the fact that when writing various words and they never use the letter "q", well, that kinda says something.
Second, I never came across the double vowels "aa". Again, this is semantics as, linguistically, there are various ligatures used for this long vowel sound.
So, I took the word Qagwaaz, and reconstructed it as Kagwaaz or Kagwaz (technically, I think it would be "Kagwæz" but its been years since I took Linguistics, so I can't remember). Either way, I couldn't find anything that matched it in either book.
Of course, in Lakota Myth, the character that gets mentioned a lot is Iktomi - a trickster. And many of the other characters have been anglicized: Buffalo Woman, Stone Boy, etc. I didn't really come across anybody that was "a powerful warrior who wanders the plains alone, capturing wild horses and hunting buffalo solely for the sport of it." But thats not saying the story does not exist. Every culture has tons of folk stories and myths. And many of them become forgotten in various books
So my best guess, and again this is just from a cursory review, I think Votan is right -- somebody just made him up. Maybe he was somebody's D&D character? Like many people, I tried to find the name through the internet and its association to American Indian lore. But like everybody else, it just kept pointing me back to the Deities and Demigods book.
It would be nice if somebody had a relationship with one of the authors of the book -- James M. Ward or Robert J. Kuntz. Maybe they could ask one of them where they got Qagwaaz from?
By doing a cursory glance through two books, Beginning Lakhota (from the University of Colorado) and Lakota Myth (by Elaine A. Jahner) I noticed a couple of things. First, the letter "q" is never used. "K" is always used for the velar sound in words. Now I know that's a matter of semantics (since both "q" and "k" make the same sound) but the fact that when writing various words and they never use the letter "q", well, that kinda says something.
Second, I never came across the double vowels "aa". Again, this is semantics as, linguistically, there are various ligatures used for this long vowel sound.
So, I took the word Qagwaaz, and reconstructed it as Kagwaaz or Kagwaz (technically, I think it would be "Kagwæz" but its been years since I took Linguistics, so I can't remember). Either way, I couldn't find anything that matched it in either book.
Of course, in Lakota Myth, the character that gets mentioned a lot is Iktomi - a trickster. And many of the other characters have been anglicized: Buffalo Woman, Stone Boy, etc. I didn't really come across anybody that was "a powerful warrior who wanders the plains alone, capturing wild horses and hunting buffalo solely for the sport of it." But thats not saying the story does not exist. Every culture has tons of folk stories and myths. And many of them become forgotten in various books
So my best guess, and again this is just from a cursory review, I think Votan is right -- somebody just made him up. Maybe he was somebody's D&D character? Like many people, I tried to find the name through the internet and its association to American Indian lore. But like everybody else, it just kept pointing me back to the Deities and Demigods book.
It would be nice if somebody had a relationship with one of the authors of the book -- James M. Ward or Robert J. Kuntz. Maybe they could ask one of them where they got Qagwaaz from?
Raven Crowking
First Post
I could find nothing in any reference book I own.
Fifth Element
Legend
I tried the same thing (tried about a half-dozen spelling variations), and like you, had no luck.
I'm still holding out hope that this is not the case. If it were, I believe it would be the only case in the book of adding something completely made up into a real-world mythos.
Raven Crowking
First Post
I sent Jim Ward a query, and am downloading a pdf of the Handbook of American Indians (F.W. Hodge, 1965) to check. Hopefully, one of these approaches will supply an answer!
RC
RC