Minnesota paradox

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 30 Oct 1999, Bruce Ingham wrote:
> I have been reading all the correspondence with great interest especially about
> the river names.  Can anyone clear up for me the 'Minnesota paradox'.  Riggs
> says that it meant 'broiled water or smoky water' which should be shota, but
> that it got changed to sota at some point.  I have never understood all this.
> Does it come via another Siouan language to English, like Nebraska coming via
> Omaha for River Platte (equivalent to Mni Blaska or Bdaska).  Any ideas.

As far as I know, the only Siouan language other than Dakotan that could
have been spoken to any extent in in Minnesota in historical times would
be perhaps Winnebago, which doesn't have any fricative shifting to speak
of.  I think Assiniboine and Stoney do have some fricative shifting, but
wouldn't be likely to be the sources.

Only Dakotan has mniN "Minne" for 'water/river'; all other Mississippi
Valley languages have niN or some obvious derivative of that, e.g.,
Ioway-Otoe n~iN.

The pattern of calling large streams 'waters' is general to at least
Mississippi Valley Siouan and Pawnee.  Smaller streams use words for
'creek' or (literally)  'branch', not always cognate.  Large streams often
share the same name (in calqued form) across several languages, though a
stream need not always have the same name in every language.  Dorsey says
the Ponka call the Platte 'Big River'.  The Omaha, Pawnee, and most
southerly Siouan groups seem to call it 'Flat River'. Northerly groups,
including the Cheyenne and Sioux call it 'Shell River'. For the Dakota it
seems to be a creek, while the Pawnee and southerly Siouan groups call it
a water.

The Missouri is called NiN' S^u'de 'Smokey Water' by the Chiwere and
Dhegiha groups.  The White River is NiN' i'gas^ude 'Water stricken smokey
with it' in Omaha and there's historical evidence that a similar name was
used by the Ioway, though the exact name is unclear.

I seem to recall some discussion of these river names in Mathews' paper on
Proto-Siouan continuants in IJAL.