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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