Little People

[Koontz John E]

Assuming that the coyotes are now quiet - which they are not; I hear them
nightly from my living room yipping up a storm in the open space - is
anyone interested in discussing terms for 'the little people'?  I was just
looking some up, and found them about as opaque a lot of terms as any I've
seen.

The simplest was OP ni'da, apparently a simple root, which is defined in
passing in Fletcher & LaFlesche as 'imp', but in Osage refers to
'elephant' by way of use to refer to the beast implied by the bones often
found sticking out of banks.

Peter LeClaire, one of Howard's sources on Ponca culture, mentions
mong-thu-jah-the-gah 'In the mountain {the Big Horns?} the dwarves [are]
found and dreaded as it [they?] leads them away at nights and last [they
are ensorceled] until morning."  The best I could make of that was
maN=dhaN uj^aN=dhe egaN meaning, perhaps, 'like beautifully made
arrowheads'.

Mrs. Stabler offers niashiNga nushiaha, in which I am totally baffled by
nushiaha.

Then we have those Ioway-Otoe forms that were mentioned once already, I
think:  hompathroji and humpathroxje, from Jimm Good Tracks.

JEK