126 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



been kept secret under the protection of what god Eome itself 

 has been, lest its enemies should use a like proceeding.' 



Moreover, as man puts himself into communication with 

 spirits through their names, so they know him through his 

 name. In Borneo, they will change the name of a sickly child 

 to deceive the evil spirits that have been tormenting it.^ In 

 South America, among the Abipones and Lenguas, when a man 

 died, his family and neighbours would change their own names^ 

 to cheat Death when he should come to look for them. It is 

 perhaps a falling off from these extreme instances of the inti- 

 macy with which name and object have grown together in the 

 savage mind, to cite the practice of exchanging names in evi- 

 dence of identity of mind and feeling, which was found in the 

 West Indies at the time of Columbus,* and in the South Seas 

 by Captain Cook, who was called Oree, while his friend Oree 

 went by the name of Cookee.^ 



But Cadwallader Colden's account of his new name, is ad- 

 mirable evidence of what there is in a name in the mind of the 

 savage. " The first Time I was among the Mohaioks, I had this 

 Compliment from one of their old Sachems, which he did, by 

 giving me his own Name, Gayenderongue. He had been a 

 notable Warrior ; and he told me, that now I had a Right to 

 assume to myself all the Acts of Yalour he had performed, and 

 that now my Name would echo from Hill to Hill over all the 

 Five Nations." When Colden went back into the same part ten 

 or twelve years later, he found that he was still known by the 

 name he had thus received, and that the old chief had taken 

 another.^ 



Taking a still wider stretch, the power of association grasps 

 not only the spoken word, but its written representative. It 



' Plin., xxviii. 4. Plut., Q. R. Macrob. Sat., iii. 9. See Bayle, art. "Soranus." 



3 St. John, ' Borneo,' vol. i. p. 197. 



3 Dobrizhoffer, 'The Abipones,' E. Tr. ; London, 1822, vol. ii. p. 273. Southey, 

 • History of Brazil ;' London, 1819, vol. iii. p. 394. 



•* ' Letters of Columbus ' (Hakluyt Soo.) ; London, 1847, p. 217. 



5 Cook, First Voy. H., vol. ii. p. 251. Second Voyage; London, 2nd edit., 

 1777, vol. i. p. 167. 



^ Colden, Hist, of the Five Indian Nations of Canada ; London, 1747, part i. 

 p. 10. 



