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

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> I still question whether Siouan forms in mawa- are really the direct
> source of de la Vérendrye's Mantanne, which he explicitly labels
> Assiniboine and which is undoubtedly the source of Eng. Mandan. I think
> he would have written the name as Maoua- (or something similar) had the
> native etymon been mawa-. (And remember Mandan maNta 'Missouri River':

Well, Teton for Mandan is MiwataNni, but I shouldn't comment further,
until I get the Plains volumes of the Handbook and review what we said on
the list last time.  I don't know what the Assiniboine term for Mandan is
apart from Verendrye's testimony.  French transcriptions are usually
fairly good, but sometimes they fall shy of the mark.

> is it reasonable to imagine the Assiniboines arriving at the Missouri,
> inquiring of the resident Mandans the name of the river, adding to it
> their locative suffix -n and using it to refer to the Mandans, 'those
> at the Missouri'?)

I don't see why not, even without a visit, but I wonder where the
widespread -wi/a- element comes form.  I'm certainly getting a fair second
hand knowledge of Afgan geography.

> Granted Mendon ~ Mantan may well be of different origin, but the
> earliest Fr. examples we have of them (Mantan- and Mantanne) are nearly
> identical.

However, I think we can see that Mantan(ton) is probably the result of
fairly bad transcription (perhaps combined with trouble in the process of
transmitting the written forms).

A possibility we might want to explore is that the name Mandan - without
-wa/i- is somehow connected to MdonthuN.  Is there any reason why the
Mandans might have been know as 'outlet (or straights) people'?  We'd have
to assume that the name has been transmitted to the the Assiniboine via a
non-Dakota route.

JEK