MCGEE] SIOUAN TRIBAL NOMENCLATURE 167 



The principles controlling nomenclature in its inchoate stages are 

 illustrated among the Siouan peoples. So far as their own tongues were 

 concerned, the stock was nameless, and could not be designated save 

 through integral parts. Even the great Dakota confederacy, one of the 

 most extensive and powerful aboriginal organizations, bore no better 

 designation than a term probably applied originally to associated tribes 

 in a descriptive way and perhaps used as a greeting or countersign, 

 although there was an alternative proper descriptive term — "Seven 

 Council-fires'' — apparently of considerable antiquity, since it seems to 

 have been originally appUed before the separation of the Asiniboiu.' 

 In like manner the (/'egiha, j^oiwe're, and Hotcaugara groups, and per- 

 haps the Niya, were without denoti ve designations for themselves, merely 

 styling themselves " Local People," '• Men," " Inhabitants," or, still more 

 ambitiously, "People of the Parent Speech," in terms which are variously 

 rendered by different interpreters ; they were lords in their own domain, 

 and felt no need for special title. Difl'erent Dakota tribes went so far 

 as to claim that their respective habitats marked the middle of the 

 world, so that each insisted on precedence as the leading tribe,- and 

 it was the boast of the Maudan that they were the original people of 

 the earth.-' In the more carefully studied confederacies the constituent 

 groups generally bore designations apparently used for convenient dis- 

 tinction ill the confederation; sometimes they were purely descriptive, 

 as in the case of the Sisseton, Wahpeton, Sans Arcs, Blackfeet, Oto, and 

 several others; again tliey referred to the federate organization (prob- 

 ably, possibly to relative position of habitat), as in the Yankton, Yauk- 

 tonai, and Hufikpapa; more frefpiently they referred to geographic or 

 topographic position, e. g., Teton, Omaha, Pahe'tsi, Kwapa, etc; while 

 some appear to have had a figurative or symbolic connotation, as Brule, 

 Ogalala, and Ponka. Usually the designations employed by alien jieo- 

 ples were more definite than those used in the group designated, as 

 illustrated by the stock name, Asiniboin, and Iowa. Commonly the 

 alien appellations were terms of reproach; thus Sioux, Biloxi, and 

 Hohe (the Dakota designation for the Asiniboin) are clearly opprobri- 

 ous, while Paskagula might easily be opprobrious among hunters and 

 warriors, and Iowa and Oto appear to be derogatory or contemptitous 

 expressions. The names applied by the whites were sometimes taken 

 from geographic positions, as in the case of Upper Yauktonai and 

 Cape Fear — the geographic names themselves being frequently of 

 Indian origin. Some of the current names represent translations of 

 the aboriginal terms either into English ("Blackfeet," "Two Kettles," 

 "Crow,") or into French ("Sans Arcs," "Brule," "Gros Ventres"); 

 yet most of the names, at least of the prairie tribes, are simply cor- 

 ruptions of the aboriginal terms, though frequently the modification is 

 so complete as to render identification and interpretation difBcult— it 



*Cf. Scboolcraft, "Information," etc, op. cit., pt. ii, 1852, p. 169. Dorsey svas inclined to consider 

 the number as made up without the Asiniboin. 



'Riggs-Dorsey : "Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography," Cent. N. A. Eth., vol. ix, 1893, p. 16i 

 ^Catlin: "Letters and Notes,*' op. cit., p. 80. 



