My full name is Cannon "Ho Aadik Ishi Hidiah" Ross; with my middle name being in my language WICHITA.
Listen to the audio file here to listen to the pronunciation of the first part of my middle name. This word is "BLESSED" and with the complete phrase means "He who is blessed" or "He that blesses others."
My Story.
I am a member of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes - Waco, Tawakoni and Keechi. My Grandfather is James Warden "Kokish So Kits" Ross and his grandfather was Dennis Warden the Chief of the Wichita Tribe in the 1920s. There are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States. At first contact in 1541 our tribe was 200,000 people. Today, we are 3,700 located mostly in the Anadarko, Oklahoma area. Of the four tribes, my family is from the Waco part of the tribe. The tribes lived and controlled the areas between Waco, Texas and Kansas City, Kansas since 800ad. The tribal offices and our reservation is located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. My dad's great grandfather Cho-Cof-Pe (b. ca 1834 Waco, Texas) was forcibly removed from Waco in August of 1859 along with the other members of our tribe and family.
Names are critical when it comes to telling history and the most common mistake in regards to our tribe present in this region of Texas is the misspelling of how Waco is pronounced or spelled in our language. Below is an audio file of one of our elders pronouncing the word Waco as we would pronounce it.
Because ours is an oral language, we use the IPA system or International Phonetic Alphabet when writing. In our oral tradition of saying "WACO" there is not an "A" as we would pronounce it and neither do we use the letter "H".
Our graphic shows the IPA spelling. Have you ever accidentally mispronounced someone's name and were embarrassed or has your name been mispronounced and it kind of bothered you a bit? Please share with others in this area of Texas, so that we can get the foundation of who we are corrected.