There are special reasons for the indefiniteness of Indian nomenclature: The aborigines were at the time of discovery, and indeed most of them remain today, in the prescriptorial stage of culture, i.e., the stage in which ideas are crystallized, not by means of arbitrary symbols, but by means of arbitrary associations,(18) and in this stage names are connotive or descriptive, rather than denotive as in the scriptorial stage. Moreover, among the Indians, as among all other prescriptorial peoples, the ego is paramount, and all things are described, much more largely than among cultured peoples, with reference to the describer and the position which he occupies—Self and Here, and, if need be, Now and Thus, are the fundamental elements of primitive conception and description, and these elements are implied and exemplified, rather than expressed, in thought and utterance. Accordingly there is a notable paucity in names, especially for themselves, among the Indian tribes, while the descriptive designations applied to a given group by neighboring tribes are often diverse. The principles controlling nomenclature in its inchoate stages are illustrated among the Siouan peoples. So far as their own tongues were concerned, the stock was nameless, and could not be designated save through integral parts. Even the great Dakota confederacy, one of the most extensive and powerful aboriginal organizations, bore no better designation than a term probably applied originally to associated tribes in a descriptive way and perhaps used as a greeting or countersign, although there was an alternative proper descriptive term.—"Seven Council-fires"—apparently of considerable antiquity, since it seems to have been originally applied before the separation of the Asiniboin.(19) In like manner the ¢egiha, ʇɔiwe’re, and Hotcañgara groups, and perhaps the Niya, were without denotive designations for themselves, merely styling themselves "Local People," "Men," "Inhabitants," or, still more ambitiously, "People of the Parent Speech," in terms which are variously rendered by different interpreters; they were lords in their own domain, and felt no need for special title. Different Dakota tribes went so far as to claim that their respective habitats marked the middle of the world, so that each insisted on precedence as the leading tribe,(20) and it was the boast of the Mandan that they were the original people of the earth.(21) In the more carefully studied confederacies the constituent groups generally bore designations apparently used for convenient distinction in the confederation; sometimes they were purely descriptive, as in the case of the Sisseton, Wahpeton, Sans Arcs, Blackfeet, Oto, and several others; again they referred to the federate organization (probably, possibly to relative position of habitat), as in the Yankton, Yanktonai, and Huñkpapa; more frequently they referred to geographic or topographic position, e.g.,