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

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> HNAI 13.363 has Assiniboine mayátana, mayátani. I don't think Mantanne
> is a likely transcription of either of those.  ...

> Is A. -y- in such an environment a regular reflex of other Siouan -w- ?

No, y is a bit of a surprise here.  It would reflect *r, while w is *w.

> HNAI 17.444 says that Lakhota intervocalic -y- and -w- are pronounced
> weakly, if at all. That gets us to mátana, but we still have the first
> -n- in Mandan to account for.

I don't think it's impossible for aya to appear as a: - long a - in fast,
i.e., not careful, speech.  In fact, that's what is meant by -y- being
pronounced weakly in intervocalic position.  To get to /man/, note that
the resulting a: is nasal - it's after m - and that ma:N would be
naturally transcribed man before t, even by a Francophone.  Actually,
especially by a Francophone.

I expect that the surprising y for w substitution is to be accounted for
by the tendency of awa and aya to reduce to a: (aa).  Presented with a
reduced form, a speaker not familiar with the underlying form might
reconstitute the wrong underlying form.

> As far as Teton forms go, there are the Fr.-Eng. vars. in -l (ca. 1800),
> e.g., Mandal, again without -w- or -y-, which I assume show Teton
> influence.

It could also reflect Cree or Ojibway influence, since all three dialect
continuums have considerable dialect variation in "r" forms (y, r, l, n,
d, etc.).

> The Mandans were centered at the confluence of the Heart River and the
> Missouri which would accord pretty well with Le Sueur's gloss of
> Mantanton 'village d'un grand lac qui se decharge dans un petit'. And
> Hayden (1862 p.426) has "The Mandans, or Mi-ah'ta-nes [h dot above, e
> with macron] 'people on the bank' (of the river), as they call
> themselves": note the similarity to A. mayátana.

If it's a question of a lake discharging into another, I'd lay odds on
Minnesota.  And, while I'm not familiar with the junction of the Heart and
the Missouri, I'd expect that to be a small(er) discharging into a
large(r).  I'm also bothered by finding one somewhat distant western group
with several villages (not to mention the Hidatsa villages) included as a
unit in a list of villages otherwise somewhat localized in Minnesota.  It
seems something of a non sequitur.

This reminds me somewhat of the two "Santees," one the Dakotan Santees and
the other the southeastern group - Catawban, I assume.

JEK