Ethnic Terms

[Anthony Grant]

Regarding Tom Leonard's posting:  white foks were regarded as being
ghost-like by members of quite a few cultures, including several who learned
to their cost that these pale people weren't their ancestors who had
returned.  This is true of some Polynesian groups (the usual term for white
people in Polynesian languages means, or is interpreted as,  'people who've
come over from the skies').

I can well believe that early Dhegiha-speakers called white kaxe because
they were impressed at the kinds of wonderful things they could make, and
that later on, people who hadn't seen some of the technological tricks with
which whites often purposely set out to impress others, though that 'ghost'
was what had been meant, because 'maker' ('craftsman'??) didn't make
immediate sense to them.  It all ties in with the use of the same terms in
some languages for trickster and culture hero and also whiteman (this is the
case, I believe, in Arapaho).   As to 'black bear', the Osage or Ponca form
(I'm not sure which) has been borrowed into Comanche as a normal term for
black bear. Armagost and Wistrand-Robinson's Comanche dictionary gives the
form as wasa'pe with an underlined e.  I don't know US ecology too well:
would black bears have lived away from the original Comanche homeland, I
wonder, so as to necessitate the borrowing of the term?  Do they have blakc
bears in Utah or wherever the Comanches set out from in the 18th century?

This is a fascinating list!  I would have commented on the Helmbrecht paper
except that IJAL's arrival in Britain is so often delayed that I haven't
seen it yet!

Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Leonard <tleonard at prodigy.net>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: Ethnic Terms


> Thought I'd chime in on this one.......
>
> I've heard from more than one Ponca source over the years that the term
for
> "white man" (wa'xe) was derived from wana'xe (spirit or ghost). The folk
> etymology typically given was "Those old folks called them that because
they
> were pale and looked like ghosts....they were afraid of those people when
> they first saw them" (that's a quote from a tape of the late Bessie
> LeClaire).
>
> There does seem to be some correlation. I've noted several names in Ponca
> and Omaha where "wa'xe" was interpreted as "ghost" (e.g. Ma'chu Wa'xe -
> "ghost bear"....very definitely NOT interpreted as "bear maker").
>
> I've seen similar abbreviations in the everyday use of "wa'xe sa'be"
(black
> man). Often it's shortened to "we'a sabe" (very commonly used) or
sometimes
> wa'sabe or waa'sabe. Wa'sabe ("black bear") will sometimes get a chuckle
> from a listener. But when I've questioned it, the response is very often:
> "yeah.....but I knew what he meant". I've asked how come you don't use
> "wa'xe sabe" and, nearly always, the response has been "that's the way
> grandpa used to talk".
>
> Also (from an earlier post) the Ponca word shpa-u-ni is typically
translated
> a "Mexican".
>
> Regards,
> Tom Leonard
>
> > 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
> >
>