Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/410

 390 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs.

Theory that Siouan Gentes-Names are of European Origin.

To produce, from North America, examples of group- names conferred from without, as in the instances of our English villages, may, to some students, seem inadequate evidence. For example, an unconvinced critic may say that the nicknames of Mr. Dorsey's " Siouan gentes " were originally given by white men ; the Sioux^ Dacota, Asini- boin, and other tribes having been long in contact with Europeans. Now it is quite possible that some of the names had this origin, as Mr. Dorsey himself observed. But no critic will go on to urge that the common totemic names which still designate many ^' gentes^^ were imposed by Europeans who came from English villages of " Mice/' ''Cuckoos," "Tater grubs," "Dogs," and so forth. We might as wisely say that our peasantry borrowed these village names from what they had read about totem names in Cooper's novels. To name individuals, or groups, after animals, is certainly a natural tendency of the mind, whether in savage or civilised society.

If we take the famous Mandan tribe, now reckoning descent in the male line, but with undeniable survivals of descent in the female line, we find that the '' gentes" are —

Wolf

Bear

Prairie Chicken

Good Knife

Eagle

Flat-Head

High Village.

Here, out of seven ^' gentes" four names are totemic; one is a name of locality, " High Village," not a possible name in pristine nomadic society. While there are hundreds of such cases, we cannot reasonably regard the manifest nick- names as generally of European origin. Still more does