The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1890-09 - 1890-10

              The Word Carrier.
VOLUME   XIX.
HELPING   THE   11IGHT,   EXPOSING   THE   WRONG.
Nl'MHEHS  D-IO.
SANTEE AGENCY, NEBRASKA.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1890.
FIFTY CENTS PEE YEAR.
OUlt   PLATFORM.
For Indians we want American Education ! We want American Homes!
We want American Rights'. The result of which is American Citizenship!
And the Gospel is tlie Power of God for
their Salvation.
Although our Santee Mission and
Normal Training Sehool is within
the bounds of the State of Nebraska
we have beeu almost strangers to
the Congregational Churches of the
state. The natural lines of ourwork
have brought us into intimate connection with the churches of South
Dakota who have grown up along
side of our Indian missions. It has
seemed right that we now cultivate
the acquaintance of our Nebraska
neighbors more; and so it became
our privilege to attend the meeting
of tlie Nebraska General Association
at Norfolk, October 22-25. We received a most hearty welcome from
the representatives of the one hundred and sixty-sevenCongregational
Churches of Nebraska, and we promised to visit them again.
Through the exertions of Rev.
John Eastman the Citizen Indians
of Flandrau, 8. D. secured the grant
by the United States of additional
lands in the Sioux Reservation, or
cash instead at one dollar and a
quarter per acre. All of them have
chosen the cash instead of thelands,
and forty thousand dollars will be
distributed among them. Mr. Eastman is now pressing upon them the
wisdom of using the cash to buy land
adjoining tlieir Flandrau farms,and
many have secured options on the
farms around them. A large Government School is to be established
at Flandrau, and this is urged as
an argument why they should establish themselves permanently and
strongly at Flandrau rather than
scattering to other points,or spending their cash for temporary advantage only. The Flandrau community has in time past responded
to the good sense of Mr. Eastman's
advice, and have honored themselves in so doing. It is quite a
critical time now. With short crops
and pressing need it will be simply
heroic if they do carry out the program Mr. Eastman has made for
them.       	
THE GENTILE SYSTEM  OP THE
NAVAJO INDIANS.
There is little doubt that in the
majority of cases the names of Navajo gentes,which are not the names
of tribes, are simply designations
of localities. We do not arrive at
this conclusion from the teachings
of the legend alone, but from the
meanings of the names themselves,
so often unquestionably local. Indeed, in some cases, wnere we feel
certain of a local origin for the appellation of a gens, the legend presents a different origin, as in the
cases of the western immigrants
who are said to be named from women who, in turn, were known by
words they uttered when they first
tasted of the different magic fountains. Where the legend positively
states that a gens was named after
a locality where it lived, we have little reason to doubt its truth, even
though the interpretation ofthe
name may not be above criticism.
We are told in the above story
not only that many of the gentes
originated in localities whose names
they bear, that often they had lived
so long in these localities that the
memory of man ran not to the contrary, that they believed themselves
created in these localities, but we
I are told that after they had become
i incorporated with the Navajo nation
they often continued to live more
or less apart down td a very recent
clay.   Even when they lived in close
proximity to one another in the
j valley of the San Juan, they did
not mingle houses and farms' promiscuously,  but members of the
same gens held somewhat together.
Members of each and every gens
may now be found scattered all over
I the Navajo country, and chiefs seem
Uo  exercise only  local  authority;
: yet if you ask a Navajo what people any particular chief controls, he
will invariably give you the name
: of the gens, and not of the modern
local group, to whieh such chief belongs.   I have some reasons for believing that to this day, much as
the gentes are scattered, some of
them are still more prevalent than
others in^certain localities.   How-
; ever, leaving all uncertainties aside,
we have facts enough to warrant us
in  concluding that most of these
gentes were originally,  and until
quite recently,  local   exogamous
groups, and not true gentes, according to Morgan's definition.   Whenever, as mentioned in the tradition,
from an alien race a new accession
came, it received, as a rule, the name
' of the tribe or pueblo from which
it  was derived,  as   if  the  whole
; people thereof was regarded as an
exogamous group.    In   few  cases
I (paragraphs 15, 50, 51) do we find
any regard paid to former gentes of
the new arrivals.
Of tribes allied in language to
the Navajos and Apaches,—that is,
Athabascan tribes,—among the
nearest, geographically, are those
of the Siletz Agency in Oregon.
They are now collected on a govern-
| ment reservation, and are divided
j into a series of exogamous (dans
j (gentes we may call them), but each
j clan represents a different village
j in the Rogue River valley occupied
; by the Siletz Indians within the
memory of men now living, and
bears the name of the village from
whence it came. As now no man
may marry within his own clan, so
in former days no man might marry within his own village; he was
obliged to seek his wife elsewhere.
In short, the village was an exogamous group, such as the Navajo
gens seems to have been. The
names of the Siletz villages bear a
general formative resemblance to
the names of the Navajo gentes,but
only in one instance do I find a close
similarity; this is in the name of
the village of Tutuni, which has
much the same sound and quite
the same meaning as that of the
Navajo gens Qo'tsoni, or People of
the Great Water. Having in view
only such resemblances between
these two branches of the same
Athabascan stock, it is easy for us
to suppose that they had at no distant day similar clan organization.
But a difficulty seems to arise when
we learn that they have different
laws with regard to the line of de
scent. Amongthe Navajosthe child
belongs to the gens of his mother;
among the Siletz Indians, lie belongs to that of his father. There
are some ethnologists wdio maintain
that the change from mother-right
to father-right involves a great advance in civilization or in social
organization, and a great dapse of
time. There are others who consider
the change a facile one, and cite
instances where they have known
it to occur. Among the Navajos it
seems to involve no change at all,
if we may judge from the legend in
which, as I will presently point out,
descents in both lines seems to. be
recognized as determining consanguinity. If we have among the
Navajos evidence of the extistence
of both father-right and mother-
right,and among the Rogue Biver Indians evidence of father-right and
no evidence to show that some regard is not paid to mother-right,
the argument in favor of a former
identity of laws regulating descent
and a similar origin of gentes,
among these two tribes, will not
appear unreasonable.
Although the names of the Navajo gentes are not now totemic, the
legend seems to indicate that some
of them once were; and although
I have not discovered the existence
of clan totems among the Navajos
to-day, there are passages in the
legend, and there are customs now
existing among the people, which
can be well explained by assuming
that such totems once existed. The
original gentes of the immigrants
from the Pacific shore had, says the
legend (paragraph 27) no names
when the goddess Estsanatlehi sent
them forth on tlieir eastward journey ; later they acquired names apparently of local origin like the older
Navajo clan names. But when they
set out on their journey each clan
was provided with a different pet,
a bear, a puma, a deer,a snake, and
a porcupine (paragraph 29). The
Navajo word (lin),wdiich in this connection I translate as "pet," means
a domestic animal of any kind, of
late years especially a horse; it also
means an animal fetich or personal
animal totem. In the myth ofthe
Mountain Chant,a Navajo youth is
made to address his deer mask as
"cili'V'my pet.i I might, then, have
given the translation of this word
as totem, and thus have avoided
all argument at the expense of the
reader's enlightenment. Again,
when these clans had received local
names, the pets were set free.
These passages, and others in the
legend, allude in all likelihood, to
the former use of totemic clan-symbols, probably to the existence of
totemic clan-names, and possibly
to a custom, not now practised by
the Navajos, of keeping in captivity live totemic animals,—a custom
common to the ancient Mexicans
and the modern Pueblos. The story
of the Deer Spring People affords,
perhaps, the best evidence in favor of totemic names to be fonnd
in the legend. It is related that
a portion of the Bitter Water People (Co'citcini), becoming weary of
travel, remained at a place called
Deer Spring, where they became
afterwards known as Pi"bico'cine,
1 The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony. Fifth
Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1889, pp. 395, 466.
or Deer Spring People; that here
the deer was desired to depart, but
refused to do so,and remained with
the people who stopped behind at
the spring, and that what finally
became of him is not known. Assuming that the immigrants from
the west had once totemic names,
we explain this part of the tale by
saying that it was people of the
deer gens who stayed behind, and
naturally gave tlieir name to the
spring where they remained, that in
the course of time they became
the People of the Deer Spring, and
that, as they still retain tlieir old
totemic name in a changed form, the
story-teller is constrained to say that
the fate of the deer is not known. On
the same assumption, an explanation similar in part to the above may
be given for the origin of filenames
of some gentes not derived from the
western immigrants, such as the
Maico'cine, or Coyote People,who
were picked up by immigrants en
route.
Another circumstance which may
be regarded as pointing to a former
clan totemism is the existence among
the Navajosof certain taboos ; these
are chiefly fish and natatorial birds.
When we read, in the legend, that
before they joined the Navajos the
Tse'tiani lived on ducks and snakes
(paragraph 4), we need not suppose
that this is said with a view to commiserate them on the inferiority of
tlieir diet, but meiely, perhaps, to
showthat theynad not the same taboo as the original gentes, and that,
whatever other things they may
have had in common with the latter,
they differed in this particular.
It is held by Morgan and others
that modern gentes are but divisions
of parent gentes win ch a re now repi e-
sented by the phratries; in other
words, that gentes have arisen by
aprocess of segmentation. According to the legend, some such segmentation has taken place to a
limited extent among the Navajos
(paragraphs 83, SB, 39), but in the
majority of instances phratries are
formed by the aggregation of gentes,
a process exactly opposite to that
described by Morgan. We do not
rely on the legend alone for evidence of this; it requires no argument to show that at least the gentes derived from alien tribes must
be additions to the phratry from
without. Morgan finds that among
the tribes which he has studied
the phratry bears the name of
one of its gentes,—the gens which
is supposed to have suffered division. The Navajos give no formal
name to their phratries ; yet I find
a tendency among them, when
speaking of their phratral affiliation, to refer more frequently to
some one gens—usually the most
ancient or most numerous — than
to any other in the phratry. It is
easy to believe that this tendency
might in time culminate in the permanent selection of a name for a
phratry.
Washington Matthews.
Dr. Chas. A. Eastman visited
Santee on his wny to Pine Ridge to
his position as Government physician there. His talks to the students
were very helpful, and gave them a
clearer idea of the value and importance of bodily training.