1 80 On some alleged specimens of Indian Onomatopoeia. 



Owl {JStryx Virginiana). " Kah hah he' sha, the Screech Owl " ought 

 not however to be separately counted as an ' onomatopoeic primitive,' 

 for it is merely the diminutive of the name which Dr. Wilson writes 

 "^c/A kau bail* a small owl which repeats the crj gah kaii,'''' — perhaps 

 the Long-eared Owl {S. otus). So also, " Oo-oo-m.e-see^'' another 

 ' screech owl,' is a regularly formed diminutive, — ' the little Oo-oo^ — 

 denoting probably the Gray Screech Owl {&. ncevia). 



" Aund a gosh' kwan^ the crow " and " Gah gau ge shin, the raven," 

 are both derivatives, in the dialect of the Saginaw Chip^^ewas, from 

 the primitives ahn daig and ka gd gi. The former is perhaps onoma- 

 topoeic ; the latter, obviously so. 



'■'■ Tchin dees, the blue jay," and ^''Denddai, the bull-frog," are 

 counted as two specimens. The former (in Chippewa proper, dain 

 da' see or tin dese), is a diminutive of the latter; and the jay is the 

 " bull-frog bird." So, of the two names of ' the gull,' one ' gah yaush 

 ko shan ' is a derivative of the other, gai ashk (or, as Dr. Wilson 

 writes it, kuh yanshk), the more common Chippewa form, which may 

 or may not be onomatopoeic. 



The first specimen in the list (and the first which is borrowed by 

 Mr. Farrar,) is 



" /Shi sheeh, the duck." In the Massachusetts language. Cotton 

 wrote this name ' se sep.'' It has the same sound in the Cree, ' see' seep.'' 

 In Chippewa, both sjbilants are aspirated, ^ shee sheeh'' or, as Dr. Wil- 

 son has it, ' shi sheeh!' The root, seep or sheeh enters into the compo- 

 sition of the names of several species of water-birds or divers. In 

 the Labrador dialect one species of duck is called masheshep [i. e. 

 ' great sheeh '] ; Cotton gives qunusseps [evidently compounded of 

 qunni 'long' and sep'], as one name for 'duck:' in the Chippewa, muk 

 ud a chih (from muk ud a, ' dark ' or ' black,' and sheeh), is the name 

 of the ' black duck,' and was the title of a famous warrior of that 

 nation, on the Upper Mississippi, some fifty years ago ; and in the 

 same language, the cormorant is called ka-ga-gi-v)e sheh, or ' raven- 

 like duck;' &c. Shee' -sheeh, or se-sep, is the frequentative or inten- 

 sive form ; and, in some of the western Algonkin dialects, this receives 

 one or more additional syllables, as in the Shawnee, see' see' hah ; Sag- 

 anaw-Chippewa, shi shee' he an, — both which fonns are unmistakably 

 verbals. The root, sep, signifies primarily, to extend, to stretch out, 

 and secondly, to dive. (Eliot wrote ' se sep a' eu^ ' he stretches him- 

 self) The Massachusetts '■sesep^ the Cree see^ seep, the Chippewa 



* " Noctua lucifugans cucuhat in tenebris."— Auct. Philomela. 



