Terms for "white man"?

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Henning Garvin wrote:
> /maaNhi-xete/ or "big knife", literally.
> There is another term /wareiNnk/
> I've been told that this use to refer specifically to Germans, and was in
> reference to them always working their farms, and that it translates as
> "little worker", but I am not so certain about that one.

It's interesting to compare Henning's forms with the entries in Miner:

maN'iNxete' 'white person, non-Indian'

He also gives maNaN'hiNxete' 'butcher knife', but doesn't give the
etymology of (contracted) maN'iNxete' even though comparable forms in the
sense 'American' are pretty common, e.g., OP maN'hiNttaNga, Da mi'la
haNska.

wareniN'ka 'worker, wageman (slang for whiteman)'

The final -ka is unusual.  This is uncontracted (n not elided).  The
etymology is implicit, but the association with Germans in particular is
not mentioned.

There's another term that is, I think, older, though also more or less
obsolete in the sense 'whiteman', and that is waxopiN'ni(N) 'spirit,
white person'.  I think this historical form is interesting as an analog
of was^i'c^u(N).  The -xo(o)p- part is cognate with OP xube' 'sacred',
usually distinguished by accent from xu'be 'inebriated' which has a
different etymological source.  (I think I have the accent right here, and
my apologies if not.)  Dorsey actually gives xube' (mostly) ~ xu'be (once)
'sacred' and doesn't attest the inebriated form at all.

Finally, I forgot to mention that Mandan maNs^i' 'whiteman' is also the
name of the Trickster, who is consequently generally called 'Whiteman' in
English discussions of Mandan Trickster stories.  This is the logical
extension of the association of the concepts 'spider', 'trickster', and
'whiteman' that occur elsewhere in the northern plains, e.g., in Cheyenne
(all three) and in Dakota (spider, trickster).  I suspect that in Mandan
the former 'whiteman' term has ousted the former 'trickster' term - a pity
since those terms are interesting, too.  I don't have the Hidatsa temr for
'spider', but the Mandan form is waNxti'riNk [maNxtiniNk] < waNxti'
'rabbit' + riNk diminutive.  I don't know if waNs^i' and waNxti' are close
enough in Mandan to interfere (via fricative symbolism).

Interestingly, Omaha-Ponca ma(N)s^tiN'ge 'rabbit' and Is^ti'niNkhe
'Trickster' are also vaguely similar, though it's really only the s^ti(N)
that they have in common.   Clearly OP maNs^tiN'ge might be a sort of
contracted diminutive of *waNSti' (S for fricative varying in grade),
which is what Mandan has for 'rabbit'.  That is maNs^tiNge could be <
waNs^ti-(r)iNke, the *r suffering the same fate that it suffers in
Winnebago ware'(n)iNk.

JEK