Word for 'prairie'?

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Henning Garvin wrote:
> In HoChunk:
>
> 'hoska / mooska' refer to an opening.  It is sometimes glossed as prairie,
> but I have the sense it refers more to a natural opening in a forest.

Maybe a "glade"?  Or you see "clearing" without any implication of
"cleared land."  In a way I've been assuming that the original sense of
prairie was "an open area along a stream."

> 'maNaNx' is a clear field.  Implies a broader expanse that is totally clear.
> Maybe this would be the more appropriate term for prairie.

Both mooska and maNaNx have a certain resemblance to the Algonquian set
Alan mentioned:

> Some Algonquian languages have a word based on a root (*mas^kw- ?)
> meaning 'grass', e.g., Fox mas^kote:wi, Ojibway mas^kode.

I've always wondered about the Winnebago mo vs. maN contrast.  This looks
like a place where m and n before nasal vowels falls down.  I'd wondered
if moo was an orthographic variant of maNaN, but it sounds like this was
too facile an assumption by far.