MANDAN redux (was Re: Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre)

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> Item no. 9. on the list of eastern Sioux village names of Le Sueur
> (1699-1702) is Mantanton. The -ton is Sioux -thuN 'village', and the
> balance appears identical to MANDAN. Le Sueur apparently glosses the
> name (or describes the group) twice, as 'N[ation] de la Grosse Roche'
> and as 'village d'un grand lac qui se decharge dans un petit'. DeMallie,
> the author of the HNAI article, doesn't give a retranscription of the
> name.

I have a citation in my comments on the names recommending Hodge 1907-10:
I, 819, which is The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.

I think this is intended to render MdonthuN = Mdo't(e) + thuNwaN.  The
word mdo'te appears in Riggs glossed 'the mouth or junction of one river
with another (a name commonly applied to the country about Fort Snelling,
or the mouth of the Saint Peters; also the name appropriated to the
establisment of the Fur Company at the junction of the river, written
Mendota); the outlet of a lake.  T. iyoh.loke."  I can't find the expected
Teton cognate *blote in Buechel, but iyoxloke, cited by Riggs, does
appear.  Williamson has under 'mouth', 'the mouth of the river, iyoxdoke,
mdote', so it looks like Santee also has iyoxdoke cf. iyoxloke.

If you consider Mendota in contracted form as Mendon, you can easily see
the basis for Mantanton.  Pursuing the obvious question, I don't see that
this helps us understand the term Mandan, which is rather different in
form in the original, cf., OP mawadaN.  The similarity of Mendon ~ Mantan
and Mandan is mainly in English.

It's morphologically interesting that mdo'te is initially stressed,
though this is consistent with the contracted form mdon.  Usually C-final
roots that end in e are finally stressed (on the -e), if bisyllabic.  They
do commonly refer to body parts or other inalienable possessions.  In this
case we have a part of a river network.

Historically, this term is also interesting.  As we know from the *pr or
*wr correspondences, we should be looking for OP *nude, Os *toce, Wi
*dooc^ as correspondences.  And we do find these terms, with the meanings
'throat'.  But these are compared to Te lote' 'throat'.  These terms
appear perhaps to mean throat in the sense of the windpipe in at least
some cases.  This is an entirely appropriate gloss for 'mouth of a
stream', cf.  English gullet, French goulet 'narrow entrance to a port'.
So maybe here we actually have a Dakota doublet with *wr ~ *R?  (Bob
Rankin, take note!)  Do we have any others, I wonder?