1896-97-] THE D^N^S OF AMERICA IDENTIFIED WITH THE TUNGUS OF ASIA. 209 



elegance ; but one thing in which they differed from all others, is that 

 they habitually shaved all the head, with the exception of a little tuft 

 which they allowed to grow on the summit of the occiput like the 

 Chinese." 



Brasseur's translations of Hiang-Hiung and Othomi are more than 

 doubtful. The forms remind one of the Hiong-nou and the Hiun-yu of 

 Chinese historians, who fabulously place their invasions of China before 

 the Christian era. Latham and others suppose them to be the Huns» 

 although, by the few words of their language transmitted, they have 

 been adjudged Tartars. The word is Tungusic, for the Tungus call 

 themselves Even and Evenki. Vangia and Feneche were two of their 

 tribes, answering to the Dene Henagi. They seem to have been among 

 the earliest colonists of the chief of the Japanese Islands, for Niphon is 

 a corruption of the Tungusic Even. Seven hundred years before Christ 

 they gave their name to Van in Armenia ; and in the time of Darius, 

 522 B.C., a body of them were the Paeones between Thrace and 

 Macedonia. Herodotus says they were a colony of the Teucri of Asia- 

 Minor. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata of India know the latter 

 as the Tucharas, and they are represented along with the head-shaving 

 Yavanas, who were no lonians but genuine Vuns or Huns. The Tokari 

 fought with the Egyptians, and at times served as mercenaries in the 

 armies of the Rameses. Arrian finds the ancestors of the Takullys or 

 Tsekelnes at Taxila on the Attock, during the Indian campaign of 

 Alexander the Great, and relates that their king Taxiles led 5000 

 Taxiles in the train of the conqueror. Strabo names some of the 

 Turanian tribes that deprived the Greeks of Bactria, and among them 

 mentions the Tochari and the Dahae, to which latter belonged the 

 Aparni or Parni. 



The name Othomi, in Japanese Otomo or Odomo, means the great 

 attendant or follower. Its Canaanitic equivalent, for the family was of 

 this origin, is Eshtemoa, or Eshtemoag, and out of this all the Othomi, 

 Tungus and Dene forms have been evolved. What the Egyptians 

 called the Eshtemoans I do not know, but, on the lips of the Assyrians 

 they were the people of Zamua and Mazamua. This Zamua lay on the 

 Armenian side of Taurus in the vicinity of Dagara and Van, and is 

 mentioned as far back as the time of Assur-nasir-pal in the first part of 

 the ninth century B.C. This was, doubtless, the region called Odom- 

 antis by the classical geographers, who have also an Odomantis in 

 Macedonia and Thrace in the immediate vicinity of the Paeones, and 

 having Mount Orbelus for its centre. This Orbelus was a sacred 

 mountain and was eponymous, for the Armenian Stephen, Archbishop 



