For Nez Perce, Their Real Names Are Their Real Selves

LEWISTON, Idaho - Pronouncing Nez Perce names means mustering sounds that don't exist in the English language.

Chief Joseph's name, for example, is Hinmatooyalahtqit. The last syllable, qit, is pronounced with a "q" sound that is pulled from way back in the throat.

"We don't have that sound, but it exists in Arabic," said Harold Crook, a linguist from Clarkston, Asotin County, who works for the Nez Perce Tribe.

"It isn't easy to say Indian names, but that's no different from other names in other cultures you learn to say," said Rudy Shebala, a Navajo who married a Nez Perce and gave their children names of both tribes.

`We should have our own names'

Try the names See Le Paau Yeen, Isluumc and Ipsusnute - otherwise known as Clifford Allen of Seattle, Horace Axtell of Lewiston and Jesse Greene of Spalding, Idaho. The sounds in their names may exist in English, but the pronunciation is no less difficult.

Iz-lumps, you say. Is-l'ums, Axtell corrects. Indian names are different in many ways from American names - the way they are given and changed separates the cultures more than pronunciation.

But as evidenced by Allen's business cards and the Bureau of Indian Affairs name change application for Greene, Indian names aren't meant to be spoken by just one culture anymore.

"I think we want to be identified as our own people," says Axtell. "As long as we're Indian, we should have our own names."

For some, taking a traditional name is a way of honoring an ancestor. "The old name is being made to live again. The name becomes alive in another person," Axtell said. For others, it's a simple case of identification.

"Greene is just a word," said Ipsusnute, pronounced Ip-sus-noot, who officially changed his name to his one-word Nez Perce name a year ago. "Ipsusnute is who I am."

Why the names were changed

The reason an Indian once named Hinmatooyalahtqit came to be known as Chief Joseph is tied to the Nez Perces' exposure to non-Indians.

The impact of both Christianity and the negotiating and signing of treaties resulted in some Indians taking "white man" names before the turn of the century.

This can be seen in a partial list of names of the tribal leaders elected to represent the Nez Perces at talks in 1892 and 1893: Archie Lawyer, Harrison Kop Kop Pa Lih Kin, U Tsin Ma Lih Kin, George Moses, Jonah Hays, James Reuben and Thomas Es Ka Win.

Many Nez Perces who converted to Christianity gave up their Indian names when they were given Christian names. Some still hold the belief that the traditional way is wrong.

Michael Thompson of Lapwai, an advanced student of the Nez Perce language, once asked his grandmother, a devout Catholic, why she didn't speak the Indian language in front of his young daughter Sapphire.

"The answer surprised me. She said it wouldn't be right."

The tale of Axtell

Perhaps the more common reason for changing names hinges on the land allotments in the 1890s. Under the Dawes Act of 1887, the federal government allotted Indians parcels of land on reservations and then bought the remaining land for homesteading.

In order for Indians to get allotments, they had to have white-men names, said Axtell.

"They were giving out the allotments, and my grandfather was lined up to get his."

When his grandfather was asked his name, he told the officials Isluumc.

"They said that wouldn't work, you have to have two names."

He left the room and soon came back with another name someone told him he could use.

"Stephen Isluumc," Axtell's grandfather reported to the allotment officials. That still wasn't good enough. The grandfather retreated once more.

"A lady working at the surveyor's office told him, `You must be having trouble. I see you coming in and out of there,' " Axtell said, a chuckle rising in his voice. "`You can have my name,' she told him.

Her name was Axtell. And so Stephen Axtell got an allotment. Then the real laugh comes.

"A while back I got a letter from the Axtell Society somewhere back East inviting me to one of their family reunions. I wrote back that I don't know if I'll fit in - I'm a full-blooded Nez Perce Indian."

Several names in a lifetime

Although other U.S. governmental policies - such as the forbidding of traditional practices in Indian boarding schools - contributed to a loss of culture over the past 100 years, many families never lost sight of their traditional names.

Allen, who lives in Seattle but spends time in Lenore, hands out bright yellow business cards that say See Lu Paau Yeen Enterprises and announce his road-building business. See Lu Paau Yeen, pronounced Seeloopa-awyeen, means shot in the eye and was the name of Allen's grandfather.

His grandfather was known by other names - another difference in Indian and non-Indian names. "We can have several names in a lifetime," Allen said.

Changing names reflects a major turn of events in one's life. Allen's grandfather went through three names in the time of the Nez Perce War of 1877. He was known as White Cloud until the Battle of the Big Hole in Montana, where he suffered a war wound and became Husis Owyeen, or Shot in the Head.

"He fled to Canada, and his eye became disfigured because of a glancing bullet," Allen said, "and so he was then called Shot in the Eye."

When Nez Perces change names, or take a traditional Indian name, they do it with ceremony.

"A name-giving can happen during a celebration, before a pow wow, before ceremony," Shebala explained.

Allen Slickpoo, a Nez Perce elder, was the Shebala family's spokesman for the name-givings of all five kids. The boy or girl going through the ceremony stood encircled with family while Slickpoo explained where the name to be given came from.

"Then he challenged people to come down and say the name correctly," Shebala said. "People came down and if they are incorrect, Allen Slickpoo would send them back. Then someone says it right and (Slickpoo) shakes the hand of the new name person and the hand of the person who said it right."

Shebala's kids have two sets of Indian names. Hahots, Sonsela, Lautiss, Notah Chee and Timina are the names they came home from the hospital with, the names they put on their school papers.

The names mean grizzly bear, meadow between two mountains, flower, Indian leader and heart.

Sonsela, a 15-year-old freshman at Clearwater Valley High School, likes his name, which is sometimes shortened to Sons by friends.

"It's cool, I like it. It's different from a lot of other names, and it's an Indian name."

He and his brothers and sister also have names given in ceremony. Sonsela's is Hemene Toolakasson, or Wolf Standing on Top. Nez Perces believe their ceremonial names reflect their true selves, Shebala said.

"We live in two worlds and we have to have birth certificates and driver's licenses. But ceremonial names are our real names. It is who we are."