What do the gut say?

Ed "Chief Wahoo" McDaniel will always be recognized as one of the most influential Native American wrestlers of all time. McDaniel was originally a football player. While playing football for the Oklahoma Sooners (in college), he kicked a 91-yard punt, the 6th longest punt in NCAA history. McDaniel was drafted by the Houston Oilers (who are now the Tennessee Titans) and played there in 1960. After lasting only one season with the Oilers, he went on to play with the Denver Broncos from 1961 to 1963, the New York Jets from 1964 to 1965, and the Miami Dolphins from 1966 to 1968. McDaniel started his career in pro wrestling while still in football. He would wrestle in the off-seasons, and play football during football season. After retiring from football in 1968, his wrestling career became full-time. Wahoo was a top draw wherever he went, wrestling for the Capitol Wrestling Corporation (the company that would evolve into World Wrestling Entertainment), Georgia Championship Wrestling, Southwest Sports (Fritz Von Erich's World Class Championship Wrestling), the Minnesota Boxing & Wrestling Club (Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association), Joe Blanchard's Southwest Championship Wrestling, Paul Boesch's Houston Wrestling, and the Japanese group known as International Wrestling Enterprises (which is where he won his first and only World heavyweight championship). He spent the most amount of time, however, wrestling for Jim Crockett Promotions out of Charlotte, N.C. (a member of the worldwide sanctioning body known as the National Wrestling Alliance), where he held the company's 'NWA' U.S. title five times (which ties him for the record with Ric Flair). McDaniel also held the company's 'NWA' World tag team championship four times with three different partners (Rufus R. Jones, Paul Jones, and Mark Youngblood) and was a four time Mid-Atlantic heavyweight champion. In addition he was the last holder of the 'NWA' National title (which came over from Championship Wrestling from Georgia, Inc. after Crockett got the coveted time slot on Ted Turner's TBS). McDaniel also competed over the years for Eddie Graham's Championship Wrestling for Florida (an NWA member), where he held the 'NWA' Southern heavyweight title (the top title in the promotion)...he won the belt the last time beating "Superstar" Billy Graham in a tournament before dropping it a month later to then-rookie sensation Lex Luger. McDaniel's last stint in a national promotion was the faltering AWA, which was seen on ESPN by that point. McDaniel, also the company's booker (head writer) left the promotion after an injury storyline in which the Destruction Crew, who were at the time the AWA World tag team champions and the top team in the promotion, detached his retina. McDaniel, after a brief stint with Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling, kept competing in the Carolinas and made his last national TV wrestling appearance at the WCW Slamboree 1995 pay-per-view, where he was inducted into the WCW Hall Of Fame along with "Big" John Studd (John Minton, Sr.), Angelo Poffo, Dusty Rhodes (Virgil Runnells, Jr.), and "The Dean Of Wrestling" Gordon Solie. McDaniel's health started to deteriorate in the mid 1990s, and he eventually lost both kidneys. He was awaiting a kidney transplant when he died from complications from diabetes and renal failure. He was 63.

Dear Cecil:

Did Indians ever really say "how" in formal greeting?

— Keath G., Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Dear Keath:

Not exactly, but you've hit on one of those rare bits of frontier rubbish that actually has some basis in fact. There is no such thing as a universal Indian greeting — the original inhabitants of North America spoke some 500 different languages — but we do find variants of "how" in the native speech of many Plains Indians tribes, who spoke versions of a major language called Siouan. The Tetons said "howo" and "ho," the Dakota had "hao" and "ho," and the Omaha had "hau" (and maybe "ho" too, but I didn't find it in my Omaha dictionary.)

The precise meaning of these words varies with the ethnographer who recorded them, but from my reading of various ancient Native American tales (rendered in the original, of course) I deduce that they served as a sort of all-purpose introductory adverb or interjection along the lines of "well," "hey," "so," or "now," as in, "Now see here, white-eyes …" You can imagine how ignorant pioneers who heard this at the beginning of every Indian soliloquy might come to regard it as a greeting, just as there are Anglo employers in the barrio who think the Spanish words for "yes, boss" are "tu madre." At any rate, the word eventually found its way into the public consciousness. Plains tribes also provided the basis for other popular beliefs about Indians, such as the idea that all chiefs wear elaborate feathered headdresses.

— Cecil Adams