Jeff - this is a very old form of spelling that the priests used, 17th, 18th and very early 19th C. documents. We had this discussion some time ago on the Nishnawbe site, but in a nutshell - in French, 8 is huit. Roughly sounds like the English word "wheat" only with a brief, almost whistled "ou" or "oo" as in coo, on the front end. Now there's even been great discussion about how to pronounce the number in French - for the record - that's how I was taught to pronounce it, others may say differently. Anyway, the priests did not have letters for the sound they heard so they used the number 8. Most people agree that the sound is a "wa" sound but, again, others may say differently. You see it frequently on the end of a woman's name so k8e is, at least in my opinion, pronounced "coo-way," accent on the last syllable. You will see that word spelled many different ways, including koue and kwe. So, best I can tell you is you may wish to visit the Nishnawbe Archives and look under, I think, 2003 for the discussion. Hope that made sense! Terry