What is the American-Indian meaning of Minne?

Answer 1

You are probably thinking of the name "Minnehaha" in the Longfellow poem "Hiawatha". Longfellow got many of his native words confused and thought that Minnehaha might mean "laughing water" in Dakota - it really means waterfall or rapids, but since he invented the character I guess he could make it mean anything he wanted. The general term for water in the Sioux dialects is mini, which is probably what Longfellow meant.

The name Minneapolis is an extremely odd mix of the Dakota word for water with Greek polis (city).

In the Algonquian languages, however, the element min or minne means fruit or food, particularly small items such as maize, wild rice, berries, nuts: minnechaug = "berry land".