182 On some alleged specimens of Indian Onomatopoeia. 



wrote nunk-omp (= light male, or young male) for ' boy,' or stripling. 

 The modern Chippewa has nearly the same form of the animate verb- 

 adjective, )io-1ce-see^ which, by intensive reduplication, becomes no-no- 

 ke-see, ' he is very tender, or light.' So, in the old Alnaki, we find 

 nan-nank-es-es-oo \j=. no-7igk-es es-ti], ' il est leger ' (Rasles), In a Chip- 

 pewa Vocabulary published by Schoolcraft [History, &c. of the Indian 

 Tribes, v. 599), I find " no no' Icaio s'e, the humming bird." With the 

 double augment, as Dr. Wilson wrote it {jio-no-no-eaus-ee), the name 

 becomes a superlative, and denotes " an exceedingly light, or slight, or 

 delicate creature," — as if we should say, ' the tiny-tavmiest little crea- 

 ture.' 



If we prosecuted our examination through the whole list of names, 

 we should find that not more than one-fourth of them could be fairly 

 set down as onomatopoeic. And if this is true of a few carefully 

 selected specimens, gleaned from three dialects, how much less is 

 likely to be the proportion of such names, in the whole vocabulary 

 of any one tribe? 



It may be safely afiirmed, that by far the greater number of names 

 of animate beings are 7iot, in any Algonkin language, onomatopoeic 

 primitives, but are descriptive derivatives from predicative roots ; 

 that some names of birds, reptiles and insects are ap>parently formed 

 by imitation of natural sounds, but that the species so named are 

 generally those which are more often heard than seen, and conse- 

 quently more easily indentified by their cries, or by sound, than by 

 peculiarities of form, color, or habit ;* and finally, that it is yet 

 doubtful if any Indian name of a quadruped can be shown to be 

 purely onomatopoeic. 



Of many animal-names, the composition or derivation is sufficiently 

 obvious. Of others, the form of word or observation of changes 

 which it has undergone in passing from dialect to dialect, enables us 

 to say confidently that they are compounds or derivatives, and not 

 primitives formed by imitation. 



How utterly unfounded is Mr. Farrar's assertion of the universality 

 of onomatopoeia in the vocabularies of savage nations, may be shown 

 by a few examples taken for the most part from eastern Algonkin 

 dialects. 



* Thoreau, ia an account of a canoe-voyage up the Penobscot, remarked that his 

 guide (an Abnaki Indian) " sometimes could not tell the name of some small bird which 

 [Thoreau himself] heard and knew, but he said, "I tell all the birds about here, — 

 this country; camU tell littlum noise, hut I see 'em, then I can tell." — Maine Woods, 

 p. 112. 



