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28 How the Land Longs to Be Loved The earlier names are gone or mistranslated. This is how a tribe becomes known by a name it did not choose. Like the Osage, whose song of a name was transliterated by the French into a flatter chord, to be transliterated by the English from the French till you are left with two dull syllables where there was once a melodious three Wa-zha-zhe to Osage. And yet the land still longs to be loved by names that come slowly with time, that hold our sense of understanding. The older names have this charm and so they last and leak out when the official ear least expects it. Another generation goes searching for them sifting through dust through dictionaries of the obscure and archaic for syllables that still tremble with the older meanings. ...

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