Originally posted by lamented bovine Great series of shots Bob. Just quietly why are they called the Hodooos?
Cheers
Shane
Shane you asked why they are called hoodoos, not what they are so this is the best explaination I could find. hoodoo and voodoo are not the same thing at all. Here is what I found:
Voodoo is a different word and quite a different concept. The word voodoo comes from another African language called Ewe where vodu is the name of a specific demon or tutelary deity. Voodoo passed into American English by way of Louisiana Creole voudou. Very early in America, hoodoo came to mean 'jinx' or 'cast a spell on' as a noun and a verb: "Something hoodooed me out in the swamp last night. I think it was my ex-husband."
They are different words entirely, obviously. But not according to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary. The Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, the authorative compendium of American English, does accept the new research. You know, our knowledge of word borrowing has advanced quite beyond the clichés of Victorian "philology" upon which the Oxford English Dictionary was founded. We now understand that, when two groups speaking utterly different languages mingle and must communicate, the loan of a word is not always in one direction. American aboriginal peoples of the northwest picked up the word hoodoo from English-speaking fur trappers and, like them, used hoodoo to refer to any malignant creature or evil supernatural force. That's how it came to be applied to the curious columns of earth or rock. For they were thought to be evil in the mythologies of many first peoples. But, borrowing works in the other direction as well. For example, in Siksika (Blackfoot) mythology, the strange hoodooesque shapes were giants whom the Great Spirit had turned to stone because of their evil deeds. Deep in the night, the petrified giants could awaken and throw boulders down upon any humans passing nearby. European newcomers to what would become the Canadian and American west heard aboriginal peoples' description of these strange formations and translated certain Siksika words and terms from several Siouan languages like Dakota and Lakota and used the word hoodoo as the translation. In some cases the English word displaced the Siouan word. In other cases the Siouan word remained.
I bet you are sorry you asked.