XXIV BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
HANDBOOK OF INDIAN TRIBES 
At the time of the early exploration and settlement of 
North America there were encountered many Indian 
tribes, varying in customs and speaking diverse languages. 
Lack of knowledge of the aborigines and ignorance of 
their languages led to many curious errors on the part of 
the early explorers and settlers: names were applied to 
the Indians that had no relation whatever to those by 
which they were aboriginally known; sometimes nick- 
names were bestowed, owing perhaps to some personal 
characteristic, fancied or real; sometimes there was 
applied the name given by another tribe, which was often 
opprobrious; frequently an effort was made to employ the 
designation by which a tribal group knew itself, and, as 
such names are often unpronounceable by an alien tongue 
and unrepresentable by a civilized alphabet, the result 
was a sorry corruption, varying as the sounds were 
impressed on English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Rus- 
sian, or Swedish ears, or recorded in various languages, 
only to be as grossly corrupted when the next traveler 
appeared. 
Sometimes, again, bands of a single tribe would receive 
distinctive names, while clans or gentes would be regarded 
as independent autonomous groups, to which separate 
tribal designations were likewise apphed. Consequently, 
in the allusions to the American Indians which are found 
seattered throughout the literature of the first three 
centuries of the New World thousands of tribal names 
are encountered only a small proportion of which are 
recognizable at a glance; therefore, one of the most prac - 
tical and important studies that was undertaken at the 
inception of the work of the Bureau was the classification 
of these names, with the view of their publication as an 
Indian synonymy. As time passed, however, the scope 
of the work was enlarged; for, as the studies of the 
Bureau were prosecuted, a large amount of information 
