“As If It Were a Person”: The Sally J. Nordan Story. | Home | Kitty Comfort and Joy.

19 Dec 2007

Note.

Written by sally @ 3:45 pm — Section: sally

My staff and I have been enamoured as of late with finding funny names in old censuses, and usually we consider Native American names off-limits — Crazy Sister-in-Law, for example, is just too easy — but today I found this couple, and I think the search is over:

Good Turkey and his wife, Goes on Top.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 3:45 pm and is filed under sally. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Note.”

  1. jay said:
    December 19th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Wait, I thought Turkey Crisp married Miss G.O. Top!

  2. poobou said:
    December 19th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    Are those real names or just people messing with the census bureau?

  3. sally said:
    December 20th, 2007 at 9:14 am

    Those are real names from the U.S. Indian Census Schedules. Good Turkey (Zica Waste) was born in 1856 and he and Goes on Top (Wankankiya Ya) and their son Afraid of Cloud (Mahpiya Kokipa) lived in Montana in June, 1891.

  4. liz said:
    December 20th, 2007 at 11:06 am

    Ha! I also like Afraid of Cloud because what is the story behind that one? I do feel bad he was named for some cowardly act that probably occurred before he could help it.

  5. sally said:
    December 20th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    Afraid of Cloud was only three at the time. Maybe he got to rename himself later on.