asi—the sweat lodge and occasional winter sleeping apartment of the Cherokee and other southern tribes. It was a low built structure of logs covered with earth and from its closeness and the fire usually kept smoldering within was known to the old traders as the “hot house.”
asiyuʻ (abbreviated siyuʻ)—good; the common Cherokee salute; gaʻsiyuʻ, “I am good”; hasiyuʻ, “thou art good”; aʻsiyu, “he (it) is good”; astu, “very good.”
Askwaʻni—a Spaniard. See Aniʻskwaʻni.
astuʻ—very good; astu tsikiʻ, very good, best of all.
Astuʻgataʻga—A Cherokee lieutenant in the Confederate service killed in 1862. The name may be rendered, “Standing in the doorway,” but implies that the man himself is the door or shutter; it has no first person; gataʻga, “he is standing”; stuti, a door or shutter; stuhu, a closed door or passage; stugiʻsti, a key, i. e., something with which to open the door.
asunʻtli, asuntlunʻyu—a footlog or bridge; literally, “log lying across,” from asiʻta, log.
ataʻ—wood; ataʻya, “principal wood,” i. e., oak; cf. Muscogee iti, wood.
Ataʻ-gul kaluʻ—a noted Cherokee chief, recognized by the British government as the head chief or “emperor” of the Nation, about 1760 and later, and commonly known to the whites as the Little Carpenter (Little Cornplanter, by mistake, in Haywood). The name is frequently spelled Atta-kulla-kulla, Ata-kullakulla or Ata-culculla. It may be rendered “Leaning wood,” from ataʻ, “Wood” and gul kalu, a verb implying that something long is leaning, without sufficient support, against some other object; it has no first person form. Bartram describes him as “A man of remarkably small stature, slender and of a delicate frame, the only instance I saw in the Nation; but he is a man of superior abilities.”
Ataʻgwa—a Catawba Indian.
Atahiʻta—abbreviated from Atahitunʻyi, “Place where they shouted,” from gataʻhiuʻ, “I shout,” and yi, locative. Waya gap, on the ridge west of Franklin, Macon county, North Carolina. The map name is probably from the Cherokee wa ya, wolf.