46 SIOUAN TRIBES OF THE EAST. [ 



BUREAl' OF 

 ETHNOLOGY 



iires, told in the rarest aud raciest old Englisli. For guides and liimt- 

 ers they eugaged two Saponi Indians from Fort Cbristaima, Saponi, be 

 it remembered, be^ug used as a collective designation for all the Siouan 

 tribes there established. One of the two became sick and returned, but 

 the other, whose name was Bearskin, accompanied them and proved 

 most excellent comj^any, keeping them well supplied with meat all the 

 way to the foothills and back again. This same Bearskin as much 

 deserves a monument as did tlie old Cornish woman, for upon him 

 depends nearly all that we have of the language and folklore of the 

 Saponi tribe. As they advanced slowly westward along the line, cutting- 

 through thickets, wading swamps, and fording rivers, he told them the 

 name of each stream in turn in his own language, with the meaning in 

 English. Sitting around the camp-fire at night he taught them the 

 secrets of the woods and the things of the spirit world. The few words 

 of his language which we thus obtain are unmistakably Siouan, and 

 although we can not be sure that they are really Saponi and not Tutelo, 

 we have the concurrent assertion of every authority from Lederer and 

 Byrd down to old Nikonha, the last of the Tutelo, that the language 

 of both was the same, with no more than a dialectic difference. 



Among the local names which Bearskin gave are Moni seep or "shal- 

 low-water," the ford where the trading path crossed the Roanoke nearly 

 due north of Warrenton, North Carolina; Massa-moni or "paint creek," 

 so called on account of the red ocher which lined its banks, now Island 

 creek, joining the Iloanoke south of Boydtou, Virginia; Yapatsco or 

 Yatapsco, "beaver creek," so called on account of a high beaver dam 

 built across it; Ohimpa-moni, "jumiJiug creek," so named on account of 

 the jumping of the lish there during the spring (probably identical with 

 Grassy creek); Tewawho-mini, or "Tuskarora creek," so called because 

 a Tuskarora had been killed there and his body thrown into the Avater 

 (identical with Aaron creek); and Ilico-oto moni, or " turkey buzzard 

 river," so called from the great numbers of buzzards that roosted in the 

 trees in its neighborhood (now known as Hyco or Hycootee river). In 

 these names the moni or mini is the same word inini, "water" (in Tutelo 

 mani), which appears in the Dakota names Mini-sota "cloudy w^ater," 

 and Mini-haha, "laughing water." Massa, here rendered paint, or 

 ocher, is probably the generic term for mineral or metal, which appears 

 in the Dakota language as ma"za, in Tutelo as mas or ma"s, and in 

 Biloxi as masi. The word for beaver, which is embodied in the name 

 Yapatsco, is yaop in Tutelo, chapa in Dakota, and shape in Osage. In 

 the jSTorth ('arolina records the name is spelled Yapatio, which is prob- 

 ably nearer the true form of Yapatio, " beaver lodge." Merja in Omaha 

 and heeha in Dakota is a buzzard, and fi2n or ti is a house or lodge, so 

 that Ilico-oto-moni would be in Dakota, if used in that language, 

 Hecha-oti-mini, "buzzard lodge water." In Tutelo and Biloxi the word 

 for house iso^i Moni-seep, the name of the ford, appears in the Caro- 

 lina records as Mony Shap. In the Dakota language chopa, and in the 

 cognate Kansa jupshe, signify to ford. Two other words mentioned, 



