362 YOSEMITE. 
On the Stanislaus and north of it the word is w-zdé-mai-ti; at Little Gap, 
o-sd-mai-ti; in Yosemite itself, u-zd-mai-ti; on the South Fork of the Merced, 
uh-zu-mai-tuh. 
Mr. J. M. Hutchings, in his ‘‘Seenes of Wonder and Curiosity in Cali- 
fornia”, states that the pronunciation on the South Fork is “Yohamite”. 
Now, there is occasionally a kind of cockney in the tribe, who cannot get 
the letter “‘h” right. Different Indians will pronounce the word for “wood” 
su-su-eh, su-suh, hu-hi-eh; also, the word for ‘“‘eye”, hun'-ta, hun'-tum, shun'-ta. 
It may have been an Indian of this sort who pronounced the word that 
way; I never heard it so spoken. 
In other portions of California the Indian names have effected such 
slight lodgment in our atlases that it is seldom worth while to go much out 
of the way to set them right; but there are so many of them preserved in 
Yosemite that it is different. Professor Whitney and Mr. Hutchings, in their 
respective guide-books, state that they derived their catalogues of Indian 
names from white men. The Indians certainly have a right to be heard in 
this department at least; and when they differ from the interpreters every 
right-thinking man will accept the statement of an intelligent aborigine as 
against a score of Americans. The Indian can very seldom give a con- 
nected, philosophical account of his customs and ideas, for which one must 
depend on men who have observed them; but if he does not know the sim- 
ple words of his own language, pray who does? 
Acting on this belief, I employed Choko (a dog), generally known as 
Old Jim, and accounted the wisest aboriginal head in Yosemite, to go with 
me around the valley and point out in detail all the places. He is one of 
the very few original Awani now living; for a California Indian, he is excep- 
tionally frank and communicative, and he is generally considered by Ameri- 
cans as truthful as he is shiftless, a kind of aboriginal Sam Lawson. His 
statements and pronunciations I compared with those of other Indians, that 
the chances of error might be as much reduced as possible. In the follow- 
ing list the signification of the name is given whenever there is any known 
to the Indians. 
Wa-kal’-la (the river). Merced River. 
Kai-al’-a-wa, Kai-al-au’-wa, the mountains just west of E] Capitan. 
