04-07-03 @ 6:24 am EDT

I wish I could say for certain. But I'm starting to think it, and I think that's very interesting considering my own interest in their mythology.

My mom's a genealogy freak, at least as much as she can be; she tends to keep track of things that other people send her. Last night she was sent a list of names, merely with the question, "Can you make any sense of these?" There was very little else to go on. Most were French names as my family on my mom's side is French-Canadian. One of the names on the list stuck out because of its sheer unpronounceability. That name was Ouaouagoukoue.

YOU try pronouncing it.

It drew my attention because of the ending of the name. Of course we both knew immediately it must be Indian, but we had no clue which tribe. It could be anything from Ojibwa to Ottawa to Menominee to Iroquois to...you get the picture. It's a known fact I have a tiny trace of Iroquois in my distant past, but I don't care much for it as I'm not much interested in the Iroquois. From what I've heard they could be pretty bloodthirsty. I know that holds of almost any tribe at certain times, but the Iroquois were definitely NOT in good standing with the Ojibwa.

Anyway, though, like I was saying, the ending of the name--"koue"--drew my attention. I told Ma it sounded oddly like the Ojibwa suffix "-kway" or "-quay," meaning "woman." It was a perfectly logical guess that the name should end with the suffix for a woman, as I figured it must be a woman's surname. I told Ma this was ONLY a wild guess and it could be 100% wrong...she sent along the tentative info anyway. With my name attached... >_< ...so I could end up looking like a total fool if I'm wrong.

We went looking at Google though to see if we could find anything. I was still skeptical, but Ma managed to find a very few records of a WOMAN with the surname Ouaouagoukoue. ! She was married to a man with a French name...in the St. Ignace/Michilimackinac region.

!!!!

Maybe my guess wasn't so very far off after all...? I still can't say with any certainty, though I wish I could. The tiny bit of info we found online was intriguing, but not definitive.

This is what we learned.

A man named John Baptiste Reaume Rheaume, son of Rene Reaume Rheaume and Marie Chevreau, and brother of Robert Joseph Reaume Rheaume, was born in 1675 and married a woman named Symphorose Ouaouagoukoue June 1st, 1720, in St. Ignace, Michilimackinac, MI. No information is given for Symphorose aside from that; John Baptiste, however, was an interpreter who resided in Green Bay. As a son they had Jean Baptiste Reaume. In 1754, Jean Baptiste married Marie Joseph Matchiougakouat. Jean Baptiste was also an interpreter who lived in Green Bay. Marie Joseph was of the Folle Avoine Tribe (the Menominee, from what we can tell). Apparently, the two had no children...and there the trail ended.

(Update--I just found a match for the name Matchiougakouat in baptismal records. According to these, parents named Jean Baptiste Reaume and Machiouagakouat, no first name given (seemingly an alternate spelling) had a son, also named Jean Baptiste Reaume, baptized on August 15, 1754--the same year the Reaume and Matchiougakouat above were married. Having a child baptized the same year they were married?? I looked further and it turns out that the baby was eleven months old and the parents were married the next day. ! Also, a Marie Matchiougakouat (same name as the spouse of Jean Baptiste Reaume), 20 years old, was baptized August 15, 1754--the day after the child's baptism described above. Coincidence?)

Questions had been asked on a "Metis" message board ("Metis" is a word for those of partly Indian, partly European descent) about the name Ouaouagoukoue. Guesses were made that it was Algonquin or Miami. I lean toward Algonquin myself as the Ojibwa and Ottawa are Algonquin tribes, and shared similar tongues. I'm not saying the name itself is Ojibwa; it could also be Ottawa or Potawatomi. The three tribes shared a very similar tongue; the differences between the three branches were like the differences between American English, British English, and Australian English.

After Ma went to bed I tried looking some more, but the results were almost nil. I tried searching for Ouaouagoukoue at Canadiana.org, which has archives of very old Canadian texts; no luck. I did a search for just plain koue then and came up with some hits, almost all of them pertaining to native tribes. There were two promising results. One possibility was that the word is in fact the suffix "-kway," as I got from this passage from Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings Around Lake Superior by JG Kohl:

But the names of the two maidens seemed to the young man very ominous, and gave him much to think of. For one was called Matchi-Kouč (the wicked), and the other Ochki-Kouč (the good).

He saw at once the meaning of this, and formed an unfavourable opinion of Matchi-Kouč. During the feast he always turned to Ochki-Kouč, and declared himself ready to marry her. But the king and the others made it a special condition that he must marry both at once. (pg. 94)

Of course if you're a frequent reader of either this journal or Manitou Island, you should know by now that "Matchi," aka "Mitchi," is a word meaning "bad," and "-kway" means "woman"; hence "Matchi-Kouč" literally means "Bad Woman."

The other result, and the most frequent one, was that "koue" was an Iroquois word meaning something like either "Hail there!" or else some kind of lament. (There was a story that the word koue even formed part of the word "Iroquois," but this was mostly written off as fancy.) I admittedly didn't pay much attention to this result as it was so frequent and didn't seem to make sense in the context of a surname. "Chichi-koue" came up several times--I THINK it's the name of some kind of Iroquois or Huron dance--but most of the texts were French (couldn't copy and paste them at Babel Fish because they are page images, not HTML) and the term brought no hits at Google.

*le sigh*

Shortly before logging off I sat and tried to come up with alternate spellings for Ouaouagoukoue, as "koue," if indeed it's the suffix -kway, sounds like an antiquated spelling. After logging back on I tried plugging in the different spelling guesses at Google but got no results. Eh, it was worth a shot.

But from comparing "koue" and "-kway," and looking over the spelling of the first part of the name, it seems to me the rough pronunciation of Ouaouagoukoue might be something like "Wa-wa-gu-kway." AGAIN, I COULD BE WAY OFF! I don't claim to be some sort of Indian scholar, I'm just wildly guessing. If I had somebody who might know that I could ask, I definitely would, and would swallow my pride and admit I'm wrong if I am. For the time being though, since nobody seems to know, not even for sure on the Metis board, I'm going to pronounce Symphorose's surname "Wawagukway." And it seems to me that the Ojibwa suffix makes much more sense as part of a name than an Iroquois word meaning "Hail there!"

I admit that I would be VERY thrilled to learn I have an Algonquin ancestor! Especially an Ojibwa. I just wish I knew for certain!

From the looks of it I already have an Iroquois and most likely a Menominee, now. Interesting.

Well, this entry has gotten me very confused...I told you genealogy isn't my thing, I'd rather just have somebody tell me who everybody is and if there is an Ojibwa in my family or not...so I have to go now. Tar...