OCR Text |
Show MOONEY] TRIBAL SYNONYMY 183 of Choctaw origin; for instance, the Oanogacole, interpreted " wicked people," the final part being apparently the Choctaw word okln or ogula, " people", which appears also in Pascagoula, Bayou Goula, and Pensacola. Shetimasha, Atakapa, and probably Biloxi, are also Choctaw names, although'the tribes themselves are of other origins. As the Choctaw held much of the Gulf coast and were the principal traders of that region, it was natural that explorers landing among them should adopt their names for the more remote tribes. The name seems to refer to the fact that the tribe occupied a cave country. In the " Choctaw Leksikon" of Allen Wright, 1880, page 87, we find choluk, a noun, signifying a hole, cavity, pit, chasm, etc., and as an adjective signifying hollow. In the manuscript Choctaw dictionary of Cyrus Byington, in the library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, we find chiluk, noun, a hole, cavity, hollow, pit, etc., with a statement that in its usual application it means a cavity or hollow, and not a hole through anything. As an adjective, the same form is given as signifying hollow, having a hole, as iti chUuk, a hollow tree; aboha chiluk, an empty house; chiluk chukoa, to enter a hole. Other noun forms given are chuluk and achiluk in the singular and chilukoa in the plural, all signifying hole, pit, or cavity. Verbal forms are chUukikbi, to make a hole, and chilukba, to open and form a fissure. In agreement with the genius of the Cherokee language the root form of the tribal name takes nominal or verbal prefixes according to its connection with the rest of the sentence, and is declined, or rather conjugated, as follows: SINGULAR- first person, tgi- Tsa/ UUfly I ( am) a Cherokee; second person, hi- Tsa'l& cfl, thou art a Cherokee; third person, a- Tna'l& gl, he is a Cherokee. DUAL- first person, dstirlba'l& tfl, we two are Cherokee; second person, sti- Tm'ltlgij you two are Cherokee; third person, ani'- TWIAtfl, they two are Cherokee. PLURAL- first person, otei- Tta'Ugft, we ( several) are Cherokee; second person, hitsi- Tsa'Uitfly you ( several) are Cherokee; third person, ani'- Tba'ldgt, they ( several) are Cherokee. It will be noticed that the third person dual and plural are alike. Oyata'geWonofl1, etc.- The Iroquois ( Mohawk) form is given by Hewitt as O- yata'- ge'ronoff, of which the root is yatd, cave, o is the assertive prefix, ge is the locative at, and rvnof? is the tribal suffix, equivalent to ( English) ~ Ues or people. The word, which has several dialectic forms, signifies " inhabitants of the cave country," or " cave-country people," rather than " people who dwell in caves," as rendered by Schoolcraft. The same radix yata occurs also in the Iroquois name for the opossum, which is a burrowing animal. As is well known, the Allegheny region is peculiarly a cave country, the caves having been used by the Indians for burial and shelter purposes, as is proved by numerous remains found in them. It is probable that the Iroquois simply translated the name ( Chalaque) current in the South, as we find is the case in the West, where the principal plains tribes are known under translations of the same names in all the different languages. The Wyandot name for the Cherokee, Wataiyo- ronofi', and their Catawba name, Mafiterafi', both seem to refer to coming out of the ground, and may have been originally intended to convey the same idea of cave people. Rickahockan- This name is used by the German explorer, Lederer, in 1670, as the name of the people inhabiting the mountains to the southwest of the Virginia settlements. On his map he puts them in the mountains on the southern head streams of Roanoke river, in western North Carolina. He states that, according to his Indian informants, the Rickahockan lived beyond the mountains in a land of great waves, which he interpreted to mean the sea shore (!), but it is more likely that the Indians were trying to convey, by means of the sign language, the idea of a succession of mountain ridges. The name was probably of Powhatan origin, and is evidently identical with Rechahecrian of the Virginia chronicles of about the same period, the r in the latter form being perhaps a misprint. It may be connected with Righka-hauk, indicated on Smith's map of Virginia, in 1607, as the name of a town within the |