Caddo ethnic terms

[David Costa]

>> 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.

Okay, duty calls again... :-)

I think I might have talked about this with John K. many years ago, but the
"(les) Anglais" term for Englishmen is all over non-Eastern and non-Plains
Algonquian. The great majority of the time it still means 'Englishman', and
*not* 'white person':

Miami /aakalaah$ima/, /aanhkalaah$ima/
Fox /sa:kana:$a/, Sauk /0a:kana:$a/, Kickapoo /0aakanaasa/
Menominee /sa:kana:s/

Ojibwean:

Southwest Ojibwe /zhaaganaash/
Ottawa /zhaagnaash/ 'whiteman, Englishman'
Maniwaki /a:gane:$a:/ & /zha:gana:sh/
Potawatomi /zhagnash/ 'Englishman'

Cree-Montagnais:

Plains Cree /akaya:siw/, Attikamek /e:kare:$$a:w/, Montagnais /ak at li$aw/ &
Naskapi /ka:kiya:sa:w/.

($ = s-hacek, @ = schwa, 0 = theta)

Note that while most of the languages retain a trace of the sibilant in the
French article 'les', the article is missing from the Miami, Maniwaki
Ojibwe, and the various Cree dialect forms.

The odd one out here is Shawnee, which has an old word for 'Englishman'
which can probably be phonemicized as /me:kilesima:na/. This seems to be
taken straight from the English word "Englishman"; I admittedly can't really
explain the initial /m/, unless it's influenced by the initial /m/ of
Shawnee's word for 'white man', /mtekohsiya/ (/tekohsiya/ by the 20th
century). Either way, this is yet another example of Shawnee NOT borrowing
from French when everyone else did.

David