(1) Tribal synonymy (page 15): Very few Indian tribes are known to us
under the names by which they call themselves. One reason for this
is the fact that the whites have usually heard of a tribe from its
neighbors, speaking other languages, before coming upon the tribe
itself. Many of the popular tribal names were originally nicknames
bestowed by neighboring tribes, frequently referring to some peculiar
custom, and in a large number of cases would be strongly repudiated by
the people designated by them. As a rule each tribe had a different
name in every surrounding Indian language, besides those given by
Spanish, French, Dutch, or English settlers.
Yûñ'wiya'--This word is compounded from yûñwi (person) and ya
(real or principal). The assumption of superiority is much in
evidence in Indian tribal names; thus, the Iroquois, Delawares,
and Pawnee call themselves, respectively, Oñwe-hoñwe, Leni-lenape',
and Tsariksi-tsa'riks, all of which may be rendered "men of men,"
"men surpassing other men," or "real men."
Kitu'hwagi--This word, which can not be analyzed, is derived from
Kitu'hwa, the name of an ancient Cherokee settlement formerly on
Tuckasegee river, just above the present Bryson City, in Swain county,
North Carolina. It is noted in 1730 as one of the "seven mother towns"
of the tribe. Its inhabitants were called Ani'-Kitu'hwagi (people of
Kituhwa), and seem to have exercised a controlling influence over
those of all the towns on the waters of Tuckasegee and the upper
part of Little Tennessee, the whole body being frequently classed
together as Ani'-Kitu'hwagi. The dialect of these towns held a middle
place linguistically between those spoken to the east, on the heads
of Savannah, and to the west, on Hiwassee, Cheowah, and the lower
course of Little Tennessee. In various forms the word was adopted
by the Delawares, Shawano, and other northern Algonquian tribes as a
synonym for Cherokee, probably from the fact that the Kituhwa people
guarded the Cherokee northern frontier. In the form Cuttawa it appears
on the French map of Vaugondy in 1755. From a similarity of spelling,
Schoolcraft incorrectly makes it a synonym for Catawba, while Brinton
incorrectly asserts that it is an Algonquian term, fancifully rendered,
"inhabitants of the great wilderness." Among the western Cherokee it
is now the name of a powerful secret society, which had its origin
shortly before the War of the Rebellion.
Cherokee--This name occurs in fully fifty different spellings. In the
standard recognized form, which dates back at least to 1708, it has
given name to counties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
and Alabama, within the ancient territory of the tribe, and to as many
as twenty other geographic locations within the United States. In
the Eastern or Lower dialect, with which the English settlers first
became familiar, the form is Tsa'ragi', whence we get Cherokee. In
the other dialects the form is Tsa'lagi'. It is evidently foreign
to the tribe, as is frequently the case in tribal names, and in
all probability is of Choctaw origin, having come up from the south
through the medium of the Mobilian trade jargon. It will be noted that
De Soto, whose chroniclers first use the word, in the form Chalaque,
obtained his interpreters from the Gulf coast of Florida. Fontanedo,
writing about the year 1575, mentions other inland tribes known to
the natives of Florida under names which seem to be of Choctaw origin;
for instance, the Canogacole, interpreted "wicked people," the final
part being apparently the Choctaw word okla 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
chiluk, 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 chilukikbi, 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, tsi-Tsa'lagi,
I (am) a Cherokee; second person, hi-Tsa'lagi, thou art a Cherokee;
third person, a-Tsa'lagi, he is a Cherokee. Dual--first person,
âsti-Tsa'lagi, we two are Cherokee; second person, sti-Tsa'lagi,
you two are Cherokee; third person, ani'-Tsa'lagi, they two are
Cherokee. Plural--first person, atsi-Tsa'lagi, we (several) are
Cherokee; second person, hitsi-Tsa'lagi, you (several) are Cherokee;
third person, ani'-Tsa'lagi, they (several) are Cherokee. It will be
noticed that the third person dual and plural are alike.
Oyata'ge`ronoñ', etc.--The Iroquois (Mohawk) form is given by Hewitt
as O-yata'-ge`ronoñ', of which the root is yata', cave, o is the
assertive prefix, ge is the locative at, and ronoñ' is the tribal
suffix, equivalent to (English) -ites 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-ronoñ', and
their Catawba name, Mañterañ', 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 Righkahauk,
indicated on Smith's map of Virginia, in 1607, as the name of a town
within the Powhatan territory, and still preserved in Rockahock,
the name of an estate on lower Pamunkey river. We have too little
material of the Powhatan language to hazard an interpretation,
but it may possibly contain the root of the word for sand, which
appears as lekawa, nikawa, negaw, rigawa, rekwa, etc., in various
eastern Algonquian dialects, whence Rockaway (sand), and Recgawawank
(sandy place). The Powhatan form, as given by Strachey, is racawh
(sand). He gives also rocoyhook (otter), reihcahahcoik, hidden under
a cloud, overcast, rickahone or reihcoan (a comb), and rickewh (to
divide in halves).
Talligewi--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. Heckewelder, 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 who has a thorough knowledge 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 talli or alli,
there, icku, to that place, and ewak, they go, with a locative
final. Ettwein, another Moravian writer, says the Delawares called
"the western country" Alligewenork, meaning a warpath, and called
the river Alligewi Sipo. This definition would make the word come
from palliton or alliton, to fight, to make war, ewak, they go, and a
locative, i. e., "they go there to fight." Trumbull, an authority on
Algonquian languages, derives the river name from wulik, good, best,
hanne, rapid stream, and sipu, river, of which rendering its Iroquois
name, Ohio, is nearly an equivalent. Rafinesque renders Talligewi 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 applied 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 Delaware matters,
makes them identical.
In the traditional tribal name, Talligewi or Alligewi, wi is an
assertive verbal suffix, so that the form properly means "he is a
Tallige," or "they are Tallige." This comes very near to Tsa'lagi',
the name by which the Cherokee call themselves, and it may have
been an early corruption of that name. In Zeisberger's Delaware
dictionary, however, we find waloh or walok, signifying a cave or
hole, while in the "Walam Olum" we have 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,
pp. 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 disappear and we should find at last
that the Cherokee, in ancient times as in the historic period, were
always the southern vanguard of the Iroquoian race, always primarily
a mountain people, but with their flank resting upon the Ohio and
its great tributaries, 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 or in
the south, keeping their distinctive title among the tribes as the
"people of the cave country."
As the Cherokee have occupied a prominent place in history for so long
a period their name appears in many synonyms and diverse spellings. The
following are among the principal of these: