Icira

[emilylevine]

Icira [ Possibly Ičhiȟa]
Trying to find out more about this later Hunkpapa band.

I have read that it was formed from the Bad Bows and one other band---or as many as four other bands. Sitting Bull is identified as belonging to the Icira.
Does the word come from "Ičhi" (together)?
perhaps with the suffix root "-ȟa" [Lakota has no "r" and where one finds one, the usual sound is "ȟ"] which can mean many branches.

So the word would signify a band made up of other bands or pieces of other bands---like those who went to Canada in 1877?

Any thoughts? Am I completely wrong?

[kingsleybray]

Hi Emily

I have thought that Ichiha is the reflexive form of iha, the verb to laugh, jeer. Hence Vestal's translation (NEW SOURCES PLAINS INDIAN HISTORY p. 202) 'Jeerers'. The Riggs DICTIONARY p. 182 has Icihaha as the reflex of iha, with the translation 'to make one's self a laughing stock', as of one who commits adultery. So literaly, it might literally mean 'to jeer at one's own'.

What other info' have you on the composition of the band? In the Robert Higheagle ms (Vestal papers) he identifies Four Horns (also of his nephew Sitting Bull's band) as of the Wakan band. Could the Iciha have been created out of Wakan-Bad Bows intermarriages?

Beware that Vestal and his informant use Ichiha in two senses - the limited one of Sitting Bull's own lodge group/extended family-camp, and a wider sense comprising all of the western or non-treaty bands of the Hunkpapa (Ichiha-Bad Bows proper, Fresh Meat Necklace, Half Breechcloth etc.)

Hope this helps!

Kingsley

[emilylevine]

Thanks Kingsley.
I feel silly, but it's good to have the correct info. Don't know how I missed the New Sources explanation.
Waggoner also identifies Four Horns as Ichiha as well as Red Horn and Black Moon.
Do you know when this band was formed?

[kingsleybray]

Emily

The clearest statement, and it isn't very clear, is in notes Vestal made from interview/s with Joseph White Bull, 1930-32, which is in Box 105, Folder 8, Walter S. Campbell Papers:

"S[itting] B[ull]'s Band, called Bad Bows Band". nb he writes 'Bad Bulls', strikes out Bulls and replaces with 'Bows'. Then the note "sometimes called Icira beacause S. B. was chief of Icira & they joined Bad Bull's [sic] Band. - S. B. became chief".

So-o-o-o, that sounds like the Icira were originally a smaller extended-family group (typically 50-100 people) who originated within another Hunkpapa band (an aggregate of two or more such e-fg's), but who decided to move and join the Bad Bows (Tinazipe sicha) band. White Bull implies that Sitting Bull was already a chief of the Icira when this happened, but even that might be over-stretching the evidence.

The only clue I have to which band the Icira group originally belonged is the Robert P. High Eagle statement that Four Horns was of the Wakan band. I wouldn't like to have to live on the evidence!

Kingsley

[emilylevine]

Interesting, Kingsley. Thank you. Given all the stuff written on SB it's strange that we don't know more. I'll post anything else I find out.
I think I'll contact Ernie LaPointe and see what he knows.
em