iron/ metal [and other loans and calques]

[Rory M Larson]

John wrote:
> Precontact artifacts made from copper occur
> with some frequency in the Midwest.  As far
> as I know they are all ornamental an/or religious,
> i.e., not pots or weapons.  Anyway, copper is
> the most likely original reference of the "metal"
> term set.  Meteoritic iron is another possibility,
> as Bob suggests, and silver and gold were certainly
> worked in Mesoamerica, and if any small samples
> found their way into the Midwest they may or may not
> have been considered as "metal."  Plainly various
> metals acquired later in trade were plainly
> considered so and today the "metal term" is usually
> considered to mean "iron."

I'd agree with John and Bob that copper is most
likely the original reference.  That metal was
mined, worked and traded pretty extensively
throughout the Midwest since late Archaic times--
since about 1000 B.C., if I recall correctly.
The most notable source for it was Upper Michigan's
Keewenaw Peninsula, which is famous for its
outcrops of pure copper.  There certainly must have
been a name for it, and the maNaNzE term is the
only MVS word I know that could possibly be
that name.  Of course, if that was the
only commonly known metal prior to European
contact, it is moot whether the term meant
"copper" or "metal".

I've been doing a project on OP acculturation
terms based largely on the Dorsey dictionary.
Interestingly, the specific term for every
metal except pewter is derived by qualifying
it with a color term:

  silver    maNaNzE-ska       'white metal'
  gold      maNaNzEska-zi     'yellow silver'
  copper    maNaNzE-z^ide     'red metal'
  lead      maNaNzE-tu        'blue metal'
  brass     maNaNzE-zi        'yellow metal'
  iron      maNaNzE-sabe      'black metal'

  pewter    maNaNzE-na'skoNdhe  'melting metal'

I would guess that the first six categories
of metal were distinguished and named in the
18th to early 19th centuries, when the Omahas
and Ponkas were in trading contact with whites.
(Gold was apparently recognized and defined
after and secondarily to silver.)  These
names tell how to recognize the different
metals by sight, which makes sense if you are
accepting them passively as elemental substances
whose origin and function you don't really
understand.  Also, they are grammatically simple,
and could easily reflect a foreign trader with
a limited OP vocabulary attempting to describe
his wares to the locals.  These words are good
Omaha, but syntactically they are also good
French.

The word for 'pewter', on the other hand, likely
was coined in the later 19th century, when the
Omahas (?) were settling down on their reservation
and attempting to learn the ways of the whites.
This word more critically describes something
about the origin or function of the metal, and
the descriptor used is arcane enough and complex
enough to make us almost sure that this term was
coined by a native speaker.

Rory