butterfly

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> I'd like to know which way the borrowing went. If it's a natural pun in
> Dhegihan, could southern U.S. English slang have borrowed the meaning
> from bilingual Quapaw or Osage speakers?

I think it's clear it comes from English.  The similarity of Dhegiha nikka
'person' and mikka 'raccoon' is made humorous by the existence of the
English epithet coon.  I don't know if the latter really comes from
raccoon, but it's an obvious assumption.  The whole things grows out of
the tendency to refer to African Americans as 'black whitemen', whatever
the local term for 'whiteman' is.  That term, of course, is seldom
color-based.  Color categorization seems to be imported from European
patterns.