banjo, hoodoo, voodoo, pickaninny, exhaust the list of words of non-English origin that have been familiarized through their use by the negroes. The word jazz, naming a kind of dance and music made familiar and popular of recent years, is commonly said to be of negro, that is of African origin. But the chain of evidence is not complete, and it seems more probable that jazz is merely an old English dialectal word suddenly brought into prominence. Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, records jass in the sense of violent motion, also the sound produced by a heavy blow, meanings which sufficiently describe jazz music and dancing. Against the supposition of African origin is the further fact that jazz is not an old and familiar word in negro dialect use.

Scarcely longer than this list of supposedly non-English words from negro English is the number of English words that have special associations with negro life in America, such as cake-walk, aunt and uncle, mammy, buck, colored, colored person, coon, darkey and even of these some are facetious or now archaic. Negro sections of cities have sometimes received distinctive names, as the Jungle, Africa, Egypt, the Levee, by extension from the Levee at New Orleans where negroes congregate, Frog Town, Frog Hollow. The eponymous name for a negro Pullman porter is George. So far as language goes, however, there is very little evidence to show that the negroes are a special class in America, that they have developed a special idiom of their own or are addressed in a special idiom by their white fellow-citizens. The word tote, of unknown origin, has become characteristically Southern, by reason of its general use there, as in "I toted you (as they say in Virginia) up to Richmond," Paulding, Letters from the South (1817), I, 54, but there is no evidence that it is of negro origin. It is mentioned as early as 1781 by President Witherspoon as being a Southernism. Webster, in the dictionary of 1828, describes tote as "a word used in slaveholding countries; said to have been introduced by the blacks." The earliest citation in Thornton is for 1667, in a passage which localizes the word in Virginia, but does not use it in connection with negroes. His next citation is for 1816, after which examples are numerous. The word is probably a native dialect word,

brought to the southern states by the earliest settlers, which has persisted only in the colloquial speech, but as Thornton's examples show, as abundantly in the speech of the whites as in that of the blacks. A noun toat occurs in Seba Smith's My Thirty Years, p. 158, "Mr. Van Buren would eat up the whole toat of 'em," apparently the whole load of them.

Words borrowed from the Indian languages of North America have usually been names of natural places or objects, such as moccasin, tomahawk, wigwam, teepee, wickieup, succotash, hickory, squaw, squash, sachem, papoose, persimmon, wampum. The word Indian appears in the names of a number of plants, though Indian corn has long since been known simply as corn, thus causing a sharper differentiation between corn and wheat in America than obtains in England. The same applies to the word meal, which in America means corn meal, but which may be used in England for flour and in the phrase wheatmeal. The use of the word Indian in connection with corn meal still survives in the name of Indian pudding, which is Indian only in the sense that it is made of corn meal. Other popular names of plants containing the adjective Indian are Indian turnip for the root of the Jack in the Pulpit, Indian hemp, Indian paint-pot, Indian tobacco. The association of tobacco and the smoking of tobacco with Indians is one of the disappearing traditions of American life. Formerly a cigar store, that is a place where cigars and tobacco were sold, was not complete without a big wooden Indian standing in front for a sign. Now the wooden Indian has gone the way of his human predecessor, has gone the way of the barber's pole, the tavern sign, and other symbols of an older civilization. The tradition still survives, however, in the phrase, dumb as a wooden Indian.

During the Great War, the word napoo, napu was current among the soldiers. It meant ended, finished, killed, as in "There's a pretty big crowd of ours still lying na-poo-ed out there," C. A. Smith, New Words Self Defined, p. 125, where other citations also are given. The explanation of this word usually given is that it is a corruption of French Il n'y a plus. It is possible, however, that the word may be

Indian in origin and that it was taken to Europe by the American army. "A man killed was nepoed," says Quick, Vandemark's Folly, p. 177, "a word which many new settlers in Wisconsin got from the Indians." This bit of "frontier argot," he adds, "was rather common in the West in the fifties. The reappearance in the same sense of napoo for death in the armies of the Allies in France is a little surprising." It is to be sure not proved that napoo is a reappearance, but this is as probable an explanation as that which derives the word from Il n'y a plus. The probable derivation of the United States army toast How! Here's how! from an Indian word has already been discussed. For how as an Indian greeting, see the Century Dictionary under this word.

An Indian word meaning fitting, proper, good, and in general having the sense of approval, seems formerly to have been current but is now lost. It occurs in the New Haven Records, p. 24 (1639), in the account of the trial of an Indian, named Nepaupuck. When he was asked "if he would nott confess yt he deserved to dye, he answered, it is weregin." The word is used in an epitaph on the tombstone of an Indian named Uncas, printed in Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections, p. 298. According to Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, under wauregan, the author of this epitaph was Dr. Elisha Tracy. It is as follows:

"For beauty, wit, for sterling sense,

For temper mild, for eloquence,

For courage bold, for things waureegan,

He was the glory of Mohegan."

Another Indian epitaph is given by Thatcher, Indian Biography, (1832), I, 294:

"Here lies the body of Sunseeto,

Own son to Uncas, grandson to Oneko,

Who were the famous sachems of Moheagan;

But now they are all dead, I think it is Werheegen."

A footnote explains Werheegen as "the Mohegan term for All is well, or Good-news." The word survives as a place name in Wauregan, a village in Windham County, Conn.

More interesting than these concrete words are phrases of more general meaning which have been adopted into current English from certain features of Indian life. Among these are on the warpath, the pipe of peace, or calumet of peace, to bury the hatchet, to hold a pow-wow, Indian summer, Indian yell, to yell like a wild Indian, mugwump, pale face, brave (a noun), firewater, run the gauntlet (not originally Indian but now usually thought of as an Indian method of punishment and torture), Indian file, Indian giving (the giving of gifts afterwards. recalled), happy hunting grounds, Great Spirit, medicine man, war paint, war dance, to scalp (figuratively), to have a person's scalp, to be out for scalps, a ticket-scalper (one who buys and sells tickets, especially railway tickets at less than the regular rates), scalp locks, to sit around the council fire.

The following is a list of all the words of Indian origin, exclusive of personal, place and other proper names, commented on in Hodge's Handbook of American Indians, that have had at some time or other greater or less currency as English words. Many of them are plant, fish and animal names, and though unknown to most persons, they frequently survive actively in limited localities. Some of the words have several different English forms.