The names by which most ‘tribes’ are generally known are usually not those which they use for themselves: often they are derived from the more-or-less disparaging terms their neighbors used to describe them to early European traders and explorers. (For a rough equivalent, imagine visitors from another planet arriving in England, asking who lived across the channel, and being given the answer ‘Bloody Frogs’.)
From The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson.
[First posted by NewMexiKen November 12, 2003.]