184 MYTHS OF THE CHKKKKEE (eth.as.n.19 



Powliataii territiirv, ami still |jrfserveil in Rui'kaliock, the naiuiMii an Cfitate on Iowit 

 Paniunkey river. AVe have tuo little material of the Powhatan language t() hazard 

 an interpretation, but it may possibly eontain the root of the word for saml, which 

 appears as lekamt, nikaiva, negaw, rigaii'ii, rekina, etc, in various eastern Algoncjuian 

 dialects, whence Rockaway (sand), and Recgawawank (sandy place) . The Pow- 

 hatan form, as given by Strachey, isracawh (sand). Hegives aXsorocoyhook (otter), 

 reihcahahcoik, hidden under a cloud, overcast, rickahone or reihcoan (a comb) , and 

 rickewJi (to divide in halves) . 



Talligeui — As Brinton well says: "No name in the Lenape' legends has given rise to 

 more extensive discussion than this." On Colden's map in his "History of the Five 

 Nations," 1727, we find the "Alleghens" indicated upon Allegheny river. Heckewel- 

 der, who recorded the Delaware tradition in 1819, says: "Those people, as I was told, 

 called themselves Talligeu or Talligewi. Colonel John Gibson, however, a gentleman 

 whi.> has a thorough knowleilge of the Indians, and speaks several of their languages, 

 is of the opinion that they were not called Talligewi, but Alligewi; and it would 

 seem that he is right from the traces of their name which still remain in the country, 

 the Allegheny river and mountains having indubitably been named after them. The 

 Delawares still call the former Alligewi Sipu (the river of the Alligewi)" — Indian 

 Nations, p. 48, ed. 1876. Loskiel, writing on the authority of Zeisberger, says that 

 the Delawares knew the whole country drained by the Ohio under the name of 

 Alligewinengk, meaning "the land in which they arrived from distant places," basing 

 his interpretation upon an etymology compounded from kdii or alii, there, ick-u, to 

 that place, and ewak, they go, with a locative final. Kttwein, another Moravian 

 writer, says the Delawares called "the western country" AUigewenork, meaning a 

 warpath, and called the river Alligewi Sipo. This definition w<5uld make the word 

 come from palliton or alliton, to fight, to make war, ewak, thej'go, and a locative, i. e., 

 "they go there to fight." Trumbull, an authority on Algonquian languages, derives 

 the river name from vulik, good, best, hanne, rapid stream, and sipu, river, of which 

 rendering its Iroquois name, Ohiv, is nearly an equivalent. Rafinesque renders Tal- 

 ligewi as "there found," from talli, there, and some other root, not given (Brinton, 

 Walam Olum, pp. 229-230, 1885). 



It must be noted that the names Ohio and Alligewi (or Allegheny) were not 

 ajiplied by the Indians, as with us, to different parts of the same river, but to the 

 whole stream, or at least the greater portion of it from its head downward. Although 

 Brinton sees no necessary connection between the river name and the traditional 

 tribal name, the statement of Heckewelder, generally a competent authority on Dela- 

 ware matters, makes them identical. 



In the traditional tribal name, Talligewi or Alligewi, v.i is an assertive verbal suf- 

 fix, so that the form properly means "he is a Tallige," or "they are Tallige." This 

 comes very near to Tsa'lilgl', the name by which the Cherokee call themselves, and 

 it may have been an early corruption of that name. In Zeisberger's Delaware dic- 

 tionary, however, we find waloh or icalok, signifying a cave or hole, while in the 

 "Walam Olum" we ha,\'e oligonunk rendered "at the place of caves," the region 

 being further described as a buffalo land on a pleasant plain, where the Lenape', 

 advancing seaward from a less abundant northern region, at last found food ( Walam 

 Olum, i)p. 194-195). Unfortunately, like other aboriginal productions of its kind 

 among the northern tribes, the Lenape chronicle is suggestive rather than complete 

 and connected. With more light it may be that seeming discrepancies would disap- 

 pear and we should find at last that the Cherokee, in ancient times as in the historic 

 period, were always the southern vanguard o{ the Iroqiioian race, always primarily 

 a mountain people, but with their flank resting upon the Ohio and its great tribu- 

 taries, following the trend of the Blue ridge and the Cumberland as they slowly 

 gave way before the pressure from the north until they were finally cut off from the 

 parent stock by the wedge of Algonquian invasion, but always, whether in the north 



