wild cats etc

[Anthony Grant]

Dear all:

I assume Lewis and Clark referred to skunks as pole cats/polecats because both animals emit vile odo(u)rs and are rather vicious - in shortt they share some salient if disagrreable characteristics.  

Yes, Bruce, Michigan is indeed the Wolverine State.  (I knew that Ohio was the Buckeye State but it took me a long time to find out that buckeye is what we Brits normally call horse chestnut).

As to little people -  it's not Siouan per se, but I happen to know that 'little people' (discussed in extenso by Elsie Clews parsons in her 'Notes on the Caddo')  are called /yahyahsacci'/ in Caddo, which is itself a diminutive, and that a form of this stem, spelt 'yayecha' and suggesting that whites were regarded as other-worldly, occurs in the first recording of Caddo (vfrom c. 1688) as a term for white people, one long since eclipsed by /inkinisih/ from 'English'.    Are there any records of similar metaphors being used for Euroamericans in Siouan languages (as can be found in some Oceanic languages for example)?  I know about the usual tropes - 'long knives', derivations of Ojibweised French forms for 'the English', etc.  

Anthony Grant
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