On some alleged specimens of Indian Onomatopoeia. 185 



Mr. Farrar, in Chapters on Language, (p. 34), has fallen into a worse 

 mistake. In illustration of the assumed fact that, " in some cases the 

 " onomatopoeic instinct is so strong, that it asserts itself side by side 

 '■'■ with the adoption of a name'''' from a foreign language, — he tells 

 us that " the North American Indian will speak of a gun as an ut-to- 

 ^aA-gun, or •:s. paush-ske-zi-^ww.'''' ZTt-to-tah-gun, as Mr. Farrar miglit 

 have learned by a more careful reading of the page of ' Prehistoric 

 Man ' from which the word was borrowed, signifies — not ' a gun,' but 

 ' a bell' 3Ioreover, the final -gmi which Mr. Farrar mistook for an 

 ' adopted ' English name was, as I have pointed out, merely the 

 formative of the instrumentive participial. The Chippewa name for 

 ' gun,' — paush-kiz'-zi-gtiti, literally ' instrument of explosion ' or ' ex- 

 ploding instrument,' — is not more indebted to the English for its last 

 syllable than is (in the same language) op wail gun, ' a tobacco pipe ' 

 [smoking instrument], ne hau gun, ' a bed,' pug gi mau gun, ' a war 

 club ' [striking instrument], or ni mi bagun, ' a water pail.' It would 

 be easy to prove that neither ut-to-tah-gun nor 2^<'f-(sh-Jciz-zi-gini is 

 directly or purely onomatopcsic, but the demonstration is uncalled 

 for. It is plain enough that as illustrations of the exercise of " ouo- 

 matopceic instinct," Mr. Farrar's examples were not well taken. 



