Accordingly there is a notable paucity in names, especially
for themselves, among the Indian tribes, while the descriptive
designations applied to a given group by neighboring tribes are often
diverse.
The principles controlling nomenclature in its inchoate stages are
illustrated among the Siouan peoples. So far as their own tongues were
concerned, the stock was nameless, and could not be designated save
through integral parts. Even the great Dakota confederacy, one of the most
extensive and powerful aboriginal organizations, bore no better
designation than a term probably applied originally to associated tribes
in a descriptive way and perhaps used as a greeting or countersign,
although there was an alternative proper descriptive term.--"Seven
Council-fires"--apparently of considerable antiquity, since it seems to
have been originally applied before the separation of the Asiniboin.(19)
In like manner the cegiha, {~LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED T~}{~LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O~}iwe're, and Hotcangara groups, and perhaps
the Niya, were without denotive designations for themselves, merely
styling themselves "Local People," "Men," "Inhabitants," or, still more
ambitiously, "People of the Parent Speech," in terms which are variously
rendered by different interpreters; they were lords in their own domain,
and felt no need for special title. Different Dakota tribes went so far as
to claim that their respective habitats marked the middle of the world, so
that each insisted on precedence as the leading tribe,(20) and it was the
boast of the Mandan that they were the original people of the earth.
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