What does the word “Washoe” mean?
As is the case with the names most Indian tribes called themselves, “Washoe” means simply “the People,” and was also used to describe the area they lived in. If you stop to think about it, this isn’t too strange. After all, the term “Americans” simply means “people who live in a region called America.” Often, when the white man came, he either created a name from a mispronounciation of the native name of a tribe, or frequently adopted another name used by a neighboring tribe (who spoke another language) to describe the tribe in question. Many times, the invaders weren’t sure if a newly encountered tribe was hostile or not, so they often asked a neighboring tribe they were already friendly with rather than asking the tribal members in question. For example, the Lakota were known as “khota” (which meant “friends” or “allies”) to neighboring tribes they were on good terms with, and the la, da, and na prefixes specified regions of residence of particular bands, so the generally accepted me
