Ethnic Terms

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Mark Awakuni-Sweltand wrote:
> I recall that in one of the 1971 Omaha Language classes at the Lincoln
> Indian Center, Elizabeth Stabler suggested the word "waxe" for
> whiteman might have something to do with the white guy's propensity
> for "making things." At the time I figured she was linking "waxe" to
> "gaxe, paxe..." to make, I make, etc.

I believe wa + gaghe would normally contract to wa(a)'ghe, like dative gi
+ gaghe contracts to giaghe.  This conracting behavior seems to come from
the ga-instrumental stems, but it is regular with gaghe and gaNze, too.

The only problem would be that Dorsey writes wa'qe, i.e., with the letter
(q) that represents the voiceless fricative.  The issue is somewhat
confused by the fact that Dorsey wrote q : x for x : gamma (or gh), i.e.,
with the use of x reversed.  And LaFlesche just wrote x for both.

On the other hand, speakers all come up with the 'makes things' or 'maker'
explanation, and something like this may apply to one one of the Winnebago
forms ('worker') and maybe the IO form, too.  Maybe Dorsey misheard the
fricative in the word and just wrote it consistently wrong.

Something that gives me pause here is the way the Ponca nuxe clan gets
reanalyzed as 'ice' (naNghe?) though comparative evidence suggests the
name here is an old term for 'reddish-yellow bison' attested as a clan
name in other Dhegiha groups.  In other words, people tend to fix things
so that they make sense, even if the sense is an innovation.

JEK