Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN)

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> There would have to be additional proof that these folk built
> their lives around willow trees, or something of the sort.

Ah, I think I agree with this.  But at this point I was just dealing with
a couple of terms for willows.  I can see 'Willow Village' as a reasonable
placename, for whatever reason, but in that case the form in question is
transparently 'Willow Village', and I was only worried about the
constituency of the Hidatsa and Crow terms for 'willow'.  Those terms have
nothing to do with Hidatsa, except that the Hidatsa name 'Willow Village'
was asserted to apply to the original Hisatsa subgroup of what are now
called the Hidatsa generally, and has a couple of phonemes of overlap with
the word Hidatsa.

This is somewhat confusing, of course, because we did come at this via the
meaning of Hidatsa, and for a while I was comparing parts of that term
with the term for 'willow', mainly trying to do an even handed job of
showing that they didn't match at all well.

> Otherwise we just have another case like wadohda-na, which does
> NOT mean 'lovers of sex', baxoje, which does NOT mean either
> 'gray noses' or 'gray snow' and ppado(N)kka, which does NOT mean
> 'stubby heads'.

I agree with all these assertions, in case there's any doubt.  I also
doubt that Hidatsa has anything to do with 'willow' or any part of the
word for 'willow'.

> I think this problem is a little different from etymologizing
> plant and animal names, since plants and animals at least have
> pemanent attributes we can work with.  Even there, etymological
> problems are plenty and acute.

Just to emphasize matters, though this did arise out of a discussion of
the meaning of 'Hidatsa' I see the issue of the internal structure of the
'willow' terms as a separate, more concrete issue.  That's why I changed
the title from 'Etymology of Mandan'.  I realized it no longer applied.

You all can feel free to accept or reject my analysis of the Crow-Hisatsa
'willow' terms as 'yellow (bark) tree' or my conclusion that the term
hidatsa has nothing to do with 'willow' in tandem or separately, of
course, but I'd like to suggest that they are separate issues.