He is not responsible for any misuse I have made of his explanation. Northern Iroquoian Culture patterns. The Algonquian languages attest two widespread names applied to various Iroquoian tribes or to the Iroquois as a group. In Fox, Menominee, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and perhaps Illinois this word is also used to refer to an unidentified species of snake, but this is probably an extension in the use of the ethnic name rather than its source. In fact, it is the other way around, though the apparent imputation of Siouan or Iroquoian characteristics to the snake is not necessarily any more flattering than the imputation of the snake's qualities to Sioux or Iroquois.
Enmity usually brings out an appreciation for the enemy's worst qualities.
The term, though, merely indicates foreigners, with a diminutive suffix that may express enmity, or may simply distinguish the Lesser Enemy Foreigners in the West from the Greater Enemy Foreigners in the East. Trends in Linguistics, Documentation 3. The second term for Iroquois is cognate with the term for Sioux in the western dialects, but here applies to the Iroquois, as well as to some snake. Somewhere I have read that the snake is the Massasauga Rattler, though this may not apply in all languages using the term as a snake name. Since this species prefers wetlands in the East, perhaps the reference is less to its habits of hunting than to the early Dakota possession of the wild rice wetlands.