Caddo ethnic terms

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Anthony Grant wrote:

> Dear all: Given the greater proxoimity of Mexicans (of whatever oriign) to
> where the Caddos lived, I suspect that it was easy enough for Caddos to
> regard them as the prototypical whiote men, soimply because they'd se more
> Mexicans than any other white people.  The fact that mexico was still a
> Spanish colony doesn't really affect this, since it was more a question of
> wherther Spanish (etc) people living in mexico identified themselves as
> being 'Mexican' which might be important.  Lots of whites who had property
> and salaves in the West Indies called themselves West Indians in the 18th
> century.
>
> And kanush means Frenchman in Chitimacha, for what it's worth.  They had
> 'espani for 'Spaniard', 'inkinish for 'English' and yah (< ja ) for
> 'German'.

Given the prevalence of something like kanush for 'Frenchman' in the Texas
Plains area and the difficulty in the terminological and contract
chronology of getting from from Mexicanos for all Euroamericans but
primarily (presumably) the Spanish in Mexico and then primarily the
French, and finally just the French, I wonder if kanush doesn't have some
etymology other than Mexicanos?

As far as alternative suggestions.  I don't think Canadians works any
better, for reasons comparable to the problems with Mexicanos (too late,
not quite on target).  It's also a poor fit after the first syllable.

What I do wonder about, now that I think about it, is the s^aglas^a family
of terms, though probably not via this Dakotan version.  In other words,
maybe the term originally was something like zakanas^, and lost its first
syllable.  I think zakanas^ or something like it is found in some
Algonquian languages.  In this case we would be dealing with a term for
the English (originally of French origin) as a generic term for
Euroamericans getting specialized for the French presumably during the
period of French (and later Spanish) control of the Louisiana Territory?
The colonial French continued to handle much of the actual contact and
trading in Louisiana during the period of Spanish control.

JEK