Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/49

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61. More than one translation of a gentile name has often been noted; but in the above lists only one translation is given,—that which the author regards with the most favor. Often, too, different narrators account differently for the origin of the gentile names. Some of the translations are very liberal, and others, again, very brief; but in the paragraphs and notes to which the reader is referred he will find fuller explanations. The Navahoes sometimes, but not invariably, add (as shown in the above lists) a suffix (dĭné‘, ni, or i), signifying people; but in the above translations, to simplify the study, the word "people" is omitted.

62. There are reasons, which the author has set forth in a previous essay and will not now repeat, for believing that most of the Navaho gentes were originally local exogamous groups, and not true gentes according to Morgan's definition.325 There is little doubt that, in the majority of cases if not in all, the names of Navaho gentes, which are not the names of tribes, are simply designations of localities, even where the Legend states to the contrary; as, for instance, when it tells us that certain gentes of the Western immigrants were named from words that women uttered when they first tasted of the magic fountains (pars. 427, 429, 430).

63. On the other hand, there are passages in the Legend which indicate that a few of the Navaho gentes were once totemic, although no evidence of clan totems is known to exist among the Navahoes at the present time, and it is not improbable that a few of the gentile names may be of totemic origin, although they are now accounted for in other ways in the Origin Legend. The passage (par. 419) which tells us that Estsánatlehi gave certain pets to the wanderers from the West, and that these pets accompanied the people on their journey, refers in all probability to the former use of totemic clan symbols, and possibly to a custom of keeping live totemic animals in captivity,—a custom prevalent among the ancient Mexicans and the modern Pueblos, though not among the modern Navahoes. Other indications of a former totemism may be found in the story of the Deer Spring People (par. 442, note 195; see, also, note 173).

64. In reading the fourth chapter of the Origin Legend—"Growth of the Navaho Nation"—one is impressed with the different degrees of willingness, on both sides, with which new gentes are adopted into the nation. In some instances two parties, meeting for the first time, embrace one another and become friends at once (par. 382). The clans from the Pacific coast—the Western immigrants, as they are here called—learn of the existence of