Europeans at Jamestown misunderstand meaning of Native American languages. Pocahontas only a nickname. Caddos name Texas.
First Europeans Greeted by Unfamiliar Words
The first Europeans that came to the New World had a vast wilderness to contend with. Inhabiting America at that time was an innumerable assortment of native populations who spoke languages unlike anything the whites had ever heard before. Within these new languages Europeans settling around Jamestown, Virginia heard such words as Werowances, Matoaka, and Powhatan. In the southwest Europeans were welcomed by the Caddos, in present-day Texas, with the word tejas, their traditional expression of greeting.
Waterways Named After Native Tribes
Numerous bands and tribes of Native Americans inhabited the countryside around and beyond Jamestown, Virginia when the first European emigrants arrived. Captain John Smith notes in his The Description of Virginia that Native Americans gave individual waterways the name of the tribe residing on or near it.
Algonquian Word For Leader Misunderstood
The English established Jamestown of the James River. On that same side were many areas occupied by the Werowances , according to Smith's writings. However, another source tells us that within the vast number of Native American tribes that made up the Algonquian group the word Werowance refers to leaders. The word means men who are rich or wise.
A similar misrepresentation of names occurred in the case of Wahunsonacock, leader of the extended Powhatan Confederacy. The English colonists who established Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, found it far too difficult to pronounce this Indian leader's name and were soon referring to him by the name of his tribe, Powhatan. Thus he has come down through the historical centuries as Chief Powhatan.
Europeans Get Pocahontas' Name Wrong
Powhantan's daughter also was dubbed by a name that was not her official Indian name. Powhantan's young daughter Matoaka, apparently had the nickname of Pocahontas, meaning a playful one. Like the misnaming of her father, Matoaka lives in recorded history as the famous Pocahontas.
It is of little wonder that numerous Native American names were not only mispronounced by the Europeans and sometimes misnamed. The English were in a strange land, unlike anything they had known previously. That they came as close as they did in grasping as much of the numerous native languages is astounding.
Also astonishing is that Europeans, actually being the invading parties, retained so many of the native names of areas and waterways all across America.
Texas Named for Caddo Greeting
By tradition, the first Caddo village in Texas, Tall-Timber-on-the-Hill, was located near present-day Caddo Lake on the Louisiana-Texas border.
By the time of the first meeting with white men the Caddo were more of an agricultural society rather than one bent on constant war. Caddos were a remarkably amiable group; at least amiable with whites in the first year of contact. The Caddos' civilized tendencies, in comparison to other more barbaric Texas tribes, was appreciated by the French and Spanish who encountered them. Unfortunately, this civilized tendency made it easier for the whites to destroy them either by warfare or disease from white contact.
French and Spanish Visit Texas
The Caddos had no constant contact with white men until the French began extending the fur trade in to their lands during the eighteenth century. However, in 1691, Domingo Teran do los Rios led an expedition northward from Mexico, reaching the Caddos' temple mound site near present-day Alto, Texas. These Spaniards were welcomed by the Caddos who repeatedly gave them their traditional greeting of tejas. The word meant friends but the Spanish misunderstood it to be the name of the area or the people themselves. The Spanish authorities bequeathed the area with this Caddo word Tejas. Years later it was changed to Texas.
Sources:
Fehrenbach, T. R. Lone Stare: A History of Texas and the Texans. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1968.
Hoxie, Frederick E., Editor. Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life from Paleo-Indians to the Present. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1996.
Smith, Captain John. The Description of Virginia.
Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. Facts on File Publications, New York, NY and Oxford, England, 1988.
Woodhead, Henry: Series Editor. The European Challenge: The American Indians. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1992.
