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The mint
of words was in the hands of the old women of the tribe, and
whatever term they stamped with their approval and put in
circulation was immediately accepted without a murmur by high and
low alike, and spread like wildfire through every camp and
settlement of the tribe. You would be astonished, says the same
missionary, to see how meekly the whole nation acquiesces in the
decision of a withered old hag, and how completely the old familiar
words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either
through force of habit or forgetfulness. In the seven years that
Dobrizhoffer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar
was changed thrice, and the words for crocodile, thorn, and the
slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied
vicissitudes. As a result of this habit, the vocabularies of the
missionaries teemed with erasures, old words having constantly to be
struck out as obsolete and new ones inserted in their place. In many
tribes of British New Guinea the names of persons are also the names
of common things.


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