The Quiocpeton according to Pierre-Charles Le Sueur

[kingsleybray]

hreinn, it's time to put you out of your misery! Le Sueur did record a Sioux of the East village with a name which seems to be related to the later Oglala band name Oyuhpe. It is anyway derived from the verb yuhpa, to throw down or to close.

I have found on Google Books an 18th century French dictionary or encyclopedia, DICTIONNAIRE UNIVERSEL DE LA FRANCE, ANCIENNE ET MODERNE, ET DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, by Pere Sangrain, J. Sangrain, et Pierre Prault (Paris, 1726), which includes new details from the explorations of the trader Pierre-Charles Le Sueur. This important French observer was active in the Dakota or Sioux country on the upper Mississippi valley from 1683-1695, and again in 1700-1701. In collaboration with French cartographers Franquelin, in 1697, and G. De L'Isle, in 1702, he made some important maps which plotted over twenty tribal divisions in modern Minnesota. The dictionary contains data not previously known to me. Here, in my rough-and-ready translation, is what the Dictionnaire has to say about the Quiocpeton.

Read more: amertribes.proboards.com/thread/2043/yanktons-pierre-charles-le-sueur?page=1&scrollTo=16265#ixzz2ymQb62Sd

QUIOCPETON, Nation contained [or enclosed, Nation renfermee]; one of the nations of the Sioux of the East, situated on a tongue of land which closes the outlet of the River of Mendeouacton from Lac du Buade. Its name is derived from its situation.

[kingsleybray]

Lac du Buade is today's Mille Lacs Lake, the River of Mendeouacton is modern Rum river, which runs out of the lake, and the distinctive tongue of land described encloses the modern lakeside community of Vineland Bay. There is an important archeaological village site at Vineland Bay, immediately north of the outlet, with remains dating from the late 17th century - but also extending back many centuries before that. There can be no doubt that in its contact era manifestation it corresponds to Le Sueur's Quiocpeton.

Just what Quiocpeton (a) represents and (b) means is open to debate. But a case surely can be made that it reflects a Dakota term like Ki-yuhpa-ton. The -ton bit means a village, of course. Ki- in this sense I suggest refers to one's own (cf. Ki-yuksa, to break one's own), while the verb yuhpa means to throw something down. Lakotas use it in the sense of closing a door (i.e. dropping the doorflap on a tipi or sweat lodge), and I suggest this is the sense to which Le Sueur refers; the headland he describes appears to close off - to contain or enclose - the outlet of the lake.

Is there a historic connection to the Oglala band name Oyuhpe (Thrown Down), or is it coincidental? The two villages immediately neighbouring Quiocpetom in le Sueur's day were Mdewakanton and Matanton, which combined during the 18th c. to create the Mdewakanton tribe. So Quiocpeton probably has some connection with them. But just to the west of Vineland Bay, linked by historic Chippewa canoe routes (obviously pioneered by their Dakota predecessors), is the Platte river on which Le Sueur mapped the Ouiatspouitons: according to Hyde and Robinson, the ancestral Oglala. Last year Oglala historian Wilmer Mesteth emphasised to me that the ancestral Oglala "can be traced back to the D-Dakota and the Mdewakanton." Connections?

[historyisalive]

Hello,

I had always heard rum river was Mde Wakan ton (Like a spirit lake or Holy lake)

Maybe instead of Quiocpeton  it is Ouiopeton   translating to Wahpeton.  The old french writings always had O's where we put W's at the beginging of Dakota names and places. 

I would have to see the original  journal and maps to give a better opinion, but this is what I have read before.

It is worth delving into, I always thought we should know more on these early sites.