Ohio History Journal

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ORIGIN OF INDIAN NAMES OF CERTAIN STATES

ORIGIN OF INDIAN NAMES OF CERTAIN STATES

AND RIVERS.

 

BY WILLIAM E. CONNELLEY,

Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Explanations of the origin of certain Indian names are

varied and conflicting. The writer submits the following authori-

tative statements relative to the derivation and meaning of the

names of the states of Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio and

Kentucky, and the rivers Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri and Neosha:

 

IOWA.

The Iowa Indians called themselves Pahoja, meaning Gray

Snow. The Iowas are of the Siouan family. They descended

from the Winnebago stem of that family. At an early day they,

in company with kindred bands, migrated to the Southwest from

the country of the Great Lakes.  On the Fox river, near the

Mississippi, they separated from the others.  They wandered

over all that country between the Missouri and the Mississippi

rivers as far north as Minnesota and the Dakotas.  The first

whites to come in contact with them called them Aiaouez or

Ioways.  They still maintain tribal relations on the reservations

in Kansas and Nebraska. These are the people who gave their

name to that tract of country now embraced in the state of Iowa

- and furnished the name to the state itself.

 

MISSOURI.

The origin and the meaning of this word are both lost. It

is probably of Algonquian origin. People of that stock lived on

the east bank of the Mississippi in what is now Illinois. Perhaps

they spoke of the river and country to the west as the Missouri

river and the Missouri country.  The cause for the use of this

name and the circumstances under which it came to be applied

are no longer known. Among the people from whom the Iowas

separated on the Fox river was another band calling thmeselves

Niutachi.  They, too, wandered in this western land through

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