Word for 'prairie'?

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> I've had one of those layman's questions that is hard to answer.  We
> have an agricultural experimental station in Central Kansas called the
> "Konza Prairie" where they work on varieties of grasses.  They want to
> know how to say 'prairie' in Kaw.  I don't have much I can tell them.
> Does any of your work with Omaha, Ponca or Osage (or other languages)
> yield any insight.

I suppose in a pinch you could use something like "Kaw country."

> I made the point that if you were born, raised and lived all your life
> on the prairie, you might not actually have a name for it.  It's just
> "home".  Similarly, if the world were covered with water, we wouldn't
> have a word for 'ocean'.

True, but I think all of the Dhegiha groups were aware of an environmental
contrast between bottomlands and their adjacent bluffs and then the
flatter lands to the west.

> I also mentioned that there is a word in Quapaw and Kaw that refers
> generally to a flat land without trees, but that it is generally thought
> of as referring to 'flood plain' along a watercourse.

I think that's the original sense of prairie in English, too, e.g., as it
is used in Lewis & Clark.  They refer repeatedly to seeing "a beautiful
(or some other description of) prairie."  From French placenames like
Prairie du Chien I think that prairie must be a French loanword in
English.  Was it maybe something like a "water meadow"?  I suppose this
got gradually extended to refer to all western grasslands, and then
specialized to refer specifically to tall grass grasslands.  At least I
think today that ecologists today oppose prairie and steppe, though steppe
is only used in English with reference to Asia and as a specialist's term.

> Has anyone else encountered a good term describing the broad expanse of
> grasslands we find in the prairie/plains?

I think OP uses ttaNde' in that sense.  I believe this must be a somewhat
irregular correspondence for Dakota thiNta as in Teton.