Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/260

 252 T. W. DAVENPORT. dozens of departures in. the vocabulary aforesaid, but I will mention only one, as it shows a want of discrimination which pervades the whole work. The Chinook word for water is given as "chuck," but the pure word is "tsuck," which is less harsh to any sensitive ear. I do not recall any English word beginning with those consonants though thousands of them end with that combination. The drifting or differentiating tendency is common to all peoples and all times, and can fully account for the diversity of aboriginal tongues in America, though the various tribes were derived from the same parent stock. This drifting tend- ency is well attested by one instance in the Willamette Valley, where a stream in Polk County, originally named by French trappers "La Creole," slid into "Rickreall" in less than ten years. I lived one year upon the Missouri border, in a part of the country formerly occupied by the Otoe Indians, and while there learned from an employee of the agency of the abortive attempt there made, to copy the Indian names given to the streams in that region. The Otoe name for water is "ne" and to this is added another name of a descriptive character. Their name for the great river flowing through their country, the Missouri, is Nee-sho-cho, meaning smoky water. The Nod-a-way was called " ne-od-a-wa, " signifying log across the water. Nishnabotny is short for "Nee-ish-ne- bot-na," crooked water; and Nebraska is changed from "Ne- blas-ka," or shallow water, descriptive of the Platte. The spelling for these names as given on the old maps of seventy years ago was enough to give a hog the lock jaw. This differentiating tendency, as viewed from the causes heretofore mentioned, was very much aggravated by changes which brought marked divergences in tribal character. Bees swarm and emigrate for want of room, and when an Indian tribe became too numerous to subsist upon the spontaneous productions near about them, a part drew off to an unoccupied region, thus relieving the congestion at home, but with this difference as to the bees. The retiring swarm is homogeneous with that remaining, and therefore no differentiation results