Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri 2

Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri 2

Being a Government scout, Mr. Denig was able to conciliate the Indians

during the expedition of Audubon in 1843, making it possible for the

great Frenchman to collect his wonderful specimens. A very colorful

description of Fort Union was written by Mr. Denig July 30, 1843.

This description is found in Volume II, page 180, of “Audubon and His

Journals.” In it Mr. Denig writes: “Fort Union, the principal and

handsomest trading post on the Missouri River, is situated on the north

side, about 6½ miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone River; the

country around it is beautiful and well chosen for an establishment

of the kind.” Then after describing in detail the structure and

furnishings of the fort, he says: “The principal building in the

establishment, and that of the gentleman in charge, or bourgeois, is

now occupied by Mr. Culbertson, one of the partners of the company,”

and farther on, “Next to this is the office, which is devoted

exclusively to the business of the company. * * * This department is

now under my supervision [viz., E. T. Denig].”

 

During this period Audubon sojourned with him for some time and spoke

of him not only as an agreeable companion but also as a friend who

gave him valuable information and enthusiastic assistance. One of his

frequent companions at Fort Union was the Belgian priest, Father De

Smet. Their correspondence was continued after De Smet had returned to

Belgium. (See Life, Letters and Travels of Father De Smet, Chittenden

and Richardson, 4 vols., New York, 1905.)

 

Several plausible but nevertheless quite unsatisfactory etymologic

interpretations of the name, Assiniboin, have been made by a number

of writers. Among these interpretations are “Stone Roasters,” “Stone

Warriors,” “Stone Eaters,” etc. These are unfortunately historically

improbable. It appears that difficulty arises from a misconception of

the real meaning of the limited or qualified noun it contains, namely,

_boin_. This element appears in literature, dialectically varied,

as _pour_, _pouar_, _poil_, _poual_, _bwân_, _pwan_, _pwât_, etc.

Evidently, it was the name of a group of people, well known to the Cree

and the Chippewa tribes, whom they held in contempt and so applied

this noun, _boin_, _bwân_, _pwât_, etc., to them. The signification of

its root _bwâ_(n) or _pwâ_(t) is “to be powerless, incapable, weak.”

So that _Pwâtak_ or _Bwânŭg_ (animate plurals) is a term of contempt

or derision, meaning “The Weaklings, The Incapable Ones.” This name

was in large measure restricted to the nomadic group of Siouan tribes

in contradistinction from the sedentary or eastern group of Siouan

peoples who were called Nadowesiwŭg, a term appearing in literature

in many variant spellings. The name Dakota in its restricted use is

the appellation of the group of tribes to which the name _Bwânŭg_,

etc., was applied. This fact indicates that the _Assiniboin_, or

_Assinibwânŭg_, were recognized as a kind of Dakota or Nakota peoples.

Nakota is their own name for themselves. The rupture of the Dakota

tribal hegemony thrust some of these peoples northward to the rocky

regions about Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan and Assiniboin

rivers. So it was these who were called Rock or Stone Dakota (i. e.,

_Bwânŭg_). It would thus appear that the rupture occurred after there

were recognized the two groups of Siouan tribes in the past, namely,

the nomadic or western, the Dakota, and the sedentary or eastern, the

_Nadowesiwŭg_ of literature.

 

Traditionally, the Assiniboin people are an offshoot of the Wazikute

gens of the Yanktonai (Ihañkto^nwa^nna) Dakota.

 

Dr. F. V. Hayden in his “Contributions to the Ethnography and Philology

of the Indian Tribes of the Missouri Valley” says that Mr. Denig was

“an intelligent trader, who resided for many years at the junction

of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers as superintendent of Fort

Union, the trading post for the Assiniboins.” Of the vocabulary of

the Assiniboin language, recorded by Mr. Denig, Doctor Hayden wrote

that it is “the most important” one theretofore collected. From the

citation from Mr. Denig’s description of Fort Union in a preceding

paragraph it appears that Doctor Hayden is in error in making Mr. Denig

superintendent of the fort rather than of the office of the American

Fur Co. at that point.

 

In one of his letters Reverend Father Terwecoren wrote that Mr. Denig,

of the St. Louis Fur Co., is “a man of tried probity and veracity.”

 

From references in Audubon, Kurtz, De Smet, Hayden, and Schoolcraft,

and as well from a perusal of this manuscript, it is evident that

Mr. Denig was an exceptional man, and for more than 20 years was a

prominent figure in the fur trade of the upper Missouri River.

 

In this summary report to Governor Stevens Mr. Denig has succinctly

embodied in large measure the culture, the activities, the customs,

and the beliefs of the native tribes who occupied the upper Missouri

River 75 years ago, more than 75 per cent of which has been lost beyond

recovery by contact with the white man. For more than 40 years the

native life with which Mr. Denig was in contact has been largely a

thing of the past, so that it is futile to attempt to recover it from

the remnants of the tribes who formerly traded with Mr. Denig at Fort

Union.

 

In addition to preparing this report to Governor Stevens Mr. Denig also

recorded a Blackfoot Algonquian vocabulary of about 70 words, a Gros

Ventres Siouan vocabulary, and an Assiniboin Siouan vocabulary of more

than 400 words, which was published by Schoolcraft in his fourth volume.

 

From a letter written February 27, 1923, by Dr. Rudolph Denig, of 56

East Fifty-eighth Street, New York, N. Y., the following interesting

biographical matter relating to the ancestry of Mr. Denig is taken:

 

The Denigs, or “Deneges,” trace their descent from one Herald Ericksen,

a chieftain, or “smaa kongen,” of the Danish island of Manoe in the

North Sea, from whose descendant Red Vilmar, about 1460, they derive an

unbroken lineage. They were seafarers, commanding their own vessels,

and engaged in trade in the North and Baltic Seas.

 

About 1570 Thorvald Christiansen changed the tradition of the family by

becoming a tiller of the soil, having obtained possession of a large

farm near Ribe in northern Slesvig, which to this day bears its ancient

name of Volling gaard. Christian Thomsen, 1636-1704, was the first of

the family to take up a learned profession; he studied theology, and

being ordained a minister in the Lutheran Church, he was also the first

biographer of the family, in that he left a kind of genealogy inscribed

on the flyleaves of his Bible.

 

His grandson, Frederick Svensen, took part as corporal in a Danish

auxiliary corps at the age of 17 in Marlborough’s operations in the

Netherlands in the war of the Spanish Succession. Following the

disbanding of his corps he took up his residence in Cologne, and after

a few years he found a permanent home, about 1720, in Biebrich-Mosbach,

opposite Mayence.

 

The two branches of the family at present are the descendants of Philip

George and Johan Peter, both sons of Frederick. Johan Peter emigrated

to America in 1745, leaving among his descendants Edwin Thompson Denig,

the subject of this treatise; Commodore Robert Gracie Denig, United

States Navy, his son; Major Robert Livingston Denig, United States

Marine Corps, a distinguished soldier of the World War, and Dr. Blanche

Denig, a well-known woman physician of Boston.

 

The descendants of Philip George include Dr. Rudolph C. Denig,

professor of clinical ophthalmology in Columbia University, New York,

N. Y.

 

Ethnologically, it may be of more than passing interest to know that

the name Denig was originally Denek(e), then Deneg, which was taken as

a family name by Frederick Svensen at the time he left Denmark in 1709.

Until then the family had followed the old Scandinavian custom of the

son taking his father’s first name with the suffix sen or son as his

family name.

 

The Denigs came to their present name in the following manner: After

the Kalmar War, 1611-1613, conditions in Denmark became critical, and

the Danes were hard pressed for all the necessaries of life, especially

foodstuffs. They were therefore forced to import grain from neighboring

countries. So it happened that Ludvig Thorvaldsen, born in 1590, was

sent by his father, Thorvald Christiansen, to Valen in Westphalia, a

district still renowned for its agriculture, to buy corn.

 

Ludvig went there every fall for three or four successive years.

Eventually the Westphalians nicknamed him Deneke; “Den” meaning Dane,

and the suffix “eke,” like “ike,” “ing,” and “ig,” a diminutive,

derivative, or patronymic. Naturally this surname was not used at home,

but it became useful when occasional trips took members of the family

outside of Denmark.

 

The use of such a nom de guerre has always been popular with

Scandinavian and kindred races like the Friesians. As the supply of

available names did not meet the demand, frequent similarity of names

made it difficult to avoid losing one’s identity.

 

When Frederick Svensen Deneg had settled in Biebrich-Mosbach the name

Deneg had to undergo another change. While in the north the syllable

“eg” is pronounced like “ek,” the Chatto-Franconian dialect around

Mayence pronounces it like “esh.” Automatically, for euphonic reasons

the name was dialectically changed to Denig. In former times such

capricious changes in names were frequently made. In perusing old

chronicles many names are found written in three or four different ways

within one century. An instance to the point is the Frankish name of

King Meroveg, who was also called Merovig, and his descendants were

called Meroveger, Meroviger, and Merovinger, according to dialects

spoken in the different regions of the former Frankish empire. This

parallels the change of Deneg to Denig.

 

Upon his arrival, September 5, 1851, at Fort Union, 3 miles above the

mouth of the Yellowstone River on the Missouri, Mr. Frederick Kurz, the

Swiss artist, of Berne, Switzerland, who had heard some ugly rumors

about Mr. Denig, wrote in his Journal (yet in manuscript): “Bellange

delivered the letter he brought to a small, hard-featured man, wearing

a straw hat, the brim of which was turned up in the back. He was my new

_bourgeois_, Mr. Denig. He impressed me as a rather prosy fellow....

He ordered supper delayed on our account that we might have a better

and more plentiful meal. A bell summoned me to the first table with

Mr. Denig and the clerks. My eyes almost ran over with tears. There

was chocolate, milk, butter, omelet, fresh meat, hot bread—what a

magnificent spread. I changed my opinion at once concerning this new

chief; a hard, niggardly person could not have reconciled himself to

such a hospitable reception in behalf of a subordinate who was a total

stranger to him” (pp. 205-206). Kurz remained with Denig three years.