Attn: Dhegihanists.

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 1 May 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> In the Kaw (Kansa) migration story there is reference to a village
> named "maNdaxpaye" (accent on first syllable, secondary accent on
> -pa-). It is referred to as "the name of the village in Mo, at which
> resided the ancestors of the present Osages, Kansas, Omahas and
> Poncas." An Osage cognate of "maNtaxpadhe" is given.
>
> I have two questions about the village name. (1) What does it mean, and (2)
> have any of your consultants ever heard the name or any accounts/stories
> about it? If so, what do they say?

With the stress and a vowel in the second syllable, I can't say that I
have any ideas.

The most likely possibilities are:

maN'de 'bow' (wrong vowel)
maNde' 'boat' (wrong vowel)
maN'the 'under, within' (wrong consonant and vowel)

+

xpadhe 'to discard, drop; lose; be lost' (some of these require dative
inflection)

The vowel in the second syllable is the problem.  If the a is part of
xpadhe, axpadhe, then one could get e + a => a in a contraction, cf. OP
maNd ugdhiN 'sit in a boat', but in Kaw the underlying d would still
become j^ before the underlying e, right?

Another mechanism for changing e to a would involve ablaut, which
definitely occurs with maN'the before postposiitons in OP, cf.,
maN'tha=tta, maN'tha=di, maNtha=ha, etc., but never, so far as I know,
with nouns in compoundings like verb incorporation.

I also couldn't find any trace of (?)naxpadhe 'lose spontaneously or by
heat', etc.

Having eliminated everything on morphological ground I might venture,
however, that maNde'-xpadhe 'they abandoned the boats' has a certain
amount of logical consistency with the story implied.

JEK