Notes on the Iroquois / or, Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Etymology.

Asked several Oneidas to pronounce the name for the Oneida stone. They gave it as follows:

O-ni-o-ta-aug.
O-ne-u-ta-aug.
O-ne-yo-ta-aug.

The terminal syllable, aug, seems to be a local particle, but carries also with its antecedent ta, the idea of life or existence, people or inhabitants.

Onia is a stone. The meaning clearly is, People of the (or who have sprung from the) Place of the Stone.

Adirondack, Jourdain, pronounces Lod-a-lon-dak, putting l’s for r’s and a’s. It means a people who eat trees—an expression ironically used for those who eat bark of trees.

For Cherokees, he gives We-au-dah.

For Delawares, Lu-na-to-gun.

What a mass of fog philologists are fighting with, who mistake, as the eminent Vater and Adelung have, in some cases done, the different names of the same tribes of American Indians for different tribes.