Читать книгу The Iowa - D.C. of Washington Thomas Foster - Страница 9

The name by which we know them—that of Ioway—(or Iowa, which is the form the word takes when applied to the State)—is not that for themselves, nor is it a name which belongs to the language of any one Indian tribe; but seems to have been made up, or compounded, by the early French, from the Dakota-Sioux designation for them of Ayu’h’äpä, by taking the first two syllables, Ayu’, and adding to it one of the common Algonquin-French terminations to tribal names in ois, vois, or vais or ouez: all of which terminations appear on the early records compounded with Ayu, or a modification of it, to indicate the Ioway Tribe. In La Harpe’s50 narrative of Le Sueur’s51 mining expedition, in 1700, to the Blue Earth region, in now Minnesota, where the Ioways are first of record referred to, they are written of as “Aya-vois”; in Pennecaud’s52 relation of the same expedition they are the Aiaos or Aiavos, (his MSS53 in the Congressional Library is obscure); in Charlevoix’s54 history, 1722, he gives the name with a characteristic effort at precision, as “Aiouez”; and in Lewis and Clark’s Travels, 1812,55 they appear as “Ayauways.” The French first knew of the Ajowæ through the Dakota-Sioux: (as we will observe hereafter in the gleanings of their early history,) and it is not surprising to me that they should (or that other Indian tribes should) seek to find some easier way of distinguishing the Tribe than to attempt to pronounce the extremely difficult guttural ending of their Sioux designation. The Dakota-Lexicon56 thus gives its meaning:

“Ayu’hpä, n. p. (sleepy ones:) the Ioway Indians.”

The proper name which the Ioway give themselves, acknowledging no other, is Pähutch’æ, Dusty-Heads: sometimes translated, but I think erroneously, Dusty-Noses.57 The prefix pä anciently signified head; and it does yet in some cognate dialects and in combinations, especially in old hereditary proper names; though in modern parlance it is generally confined to nose, but not invariably.

Inquiring into the origin of this name Pähutch’æ, which, whether meaning Dusty-Heads or Dusty-Noses, is quite a singular one for a people to confer upon themselves,

I find recorded a theory to fit each translation. In Schoolcraft’s official Collections, in a paper prepared February 1, 1848, by the Ioway missionaries,58 page 262, volume III, I read of the fanciful and somewhat strained solution, as follows:

When they [the Ioway] separated from the first Indian tribe, or family, to hunt game, their first location was near the mouth of a river, where there were large sand-bars, from which the wind blew quantities of sand or dust upon their faces, from which they were called Pa-hu-chas or Dusty-noses.

Per contra: During November, 1873, when I was at the former Winnebago Agency, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, I mentioned the above theory of the Ioway name to the intelligent Winnebago ex-Chief “Baptiste,” the Half-Breed, who in his youthful wanderings had lived a considerable time on the Missouri amongst the Ioway. He smiled at it, and, in his broken English at first and then through ex-Interpreter Menaige, who was present, said, that the Ioway name meant Dusty, or Dusty Gray, Heads, and that it occurred in this way: Living on the Missouri as they had done in the earliest time: wandering away from it and then wandering back again; they were accustomed to bathe a great deal in its yellow-muddy waters; and that when they dried off after coming out of the water, the sediment of the water remained on their heads making them look dusty and gray; and this was the true reason they became the Pähutch’æ, or Dusty-Head Tribe. Baptiste said this was the accepted theory amongst the old people of the Ioway as to the way Pähutch’æ came to be their name. The Winnebago cognomen for them, which is Wähōtch’ærä, the Gray-Ones, is evidently but a modification of the same Dusty-Head idea: (in the Hōtchank’ærä language hōtch is gray and rähätch, ashes). And such modification is, also, I think the Dakota-Sioux name for them of Äyu´h’äpä, notwithstanding the Dakota-Sioux Lexicon gives it as meaning the Drowsy-Ones, and to doubt such authority may seem presumptuous. But, in these investigations I have noticed, that aboriginal nations, unless there is some special reason to the contrary—for instance a special enmity—(as the Chippeway name for the Sioux of Ōpwan’äk, “those whom we roast,”) all endeavor to translate into their own vernacular the names of neighboring tribes, rather than adopt them bodily: a notable instance of which is, that the name Saulteurs, people of the Sault or Leap or Rapids, is repeated in idea but in different forms by both the Winnebago and the Sioux, the latter terming them Hähä’towa and the former Ræh’ätchē’rä, both meaning, alike, “The Falls Dwellers.” Sometimes, in these dialectical translations, the original meaning of the tribal name was correctly rendered, and sometimes not: the early French in fact, made frequent failures. Now, the Sioux were well acquainted with the Ioway. They were, at the advent of the whites, their allies and neighbors, living as the Ioway did in 1700, on the borders of Iowa and Minnesota, about the headwaters of the Blue Earth and Des Moines rivers:59 though they soon wandered from there to the Missouri again. The Dakota must have known the name they called themselves, and the reason for it: and what more likely than that they should endeavor to render the idea it conveyed literally into their own language? May not the Sioux name for them, therefore, have been originally Äyu’h’äpä, deduced thus: Ä is the preposition on or upon; yu “as a prefix to adjectives and sometimes to nouns, it sometimes forms verbs, and means to make or cause to be” (Dakota-Lexicon); h’ä, is an adjective, meaning, (says the Lexicon) “gray or mixed, as black and white, the black appearing under the white, as in the badger;” and pä, signifying head. This combination would be literally, “upon—to cause—graymixed—the head:” which is exactly the idea that the Ioway themselves and the Winnebago also seek to convey by their respective names Pähutch’æ, the Dusty-Heads, and Wähōtch’ærä, the Gray, (through dust?) People.