<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>In a message dated 07/18/2002 1:28:43 PM Mountain Daylight Time, John.Koontz@colorado.edu writes:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Anthony Grant wrote:<BR>
> Maybe this is why terms for 'whiteman' and 'trickster' (and both of<BR>
> these from 'spider') are the same in some Northern Plains languages.<BR>
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It's not quite that simple, since the two cases of 'spider' = 'Trickster'<BR>
that I know of off the top of my head are Cheyenne and Dakotan, and the<BR>
Cheyenne case includes 'whiteman', while the Dakotan case doesn't. On the<BR>
other hand, as far as I can recall Mandan also has 'Trickster' =<BR>
'whiteman', but not 'Trickster' = 'spider'. A further dimension, of<BR>
course, is whether Trickster is called Whiteman in English by persons of<BR>
the group in question.<BR>
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In the Dakotan case the term for 'whiteman' (was^i'c^huN) does, however,<BR>
suggest a category of supernatural beings (s^ic^huN), though the 'steals<BR>
fat' analysis is widely accepted by speakers, and apparently some people<BR>
object to the s^ic^huN analysis, on prescriptive moral grounds ("people,<BR>
and certainly not white people, can't be spirits") or on grounds of logic<BR>
("who would have thought a dumb thing like that?!"). Of course, I'm not<BR>
sure if everyone who has made a contrary argument to me has been a Dakota<BR>
person. I suspect in most cases they haven't been, in fact. Dakotanism<BR>
doesn't seem to be an evangelistic movement except among 'whitepersons'.<BR>
(I didn't mean the 'whitepersons' sarcastically. It's just the plural.)<BR>
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I'm still getting caught up on my mail, but did want to point out that the Crow trickster term Isa'ahkawuattee 'Old Man Coyote' is also used, not for whitemen in general, but for the Catholic priest/Catholic Church. A common explanation is that the early missionaries had things like mirrors and matches that were evidence of magical powers, hence the comparison to Old Man Coyote. Another point of comparison mentioned by some is that Old Man Coyote taught the people how to live properly, and the priest does the same.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Randy<BR>
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