INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 141
although the Scioto Valley was the
proper domain of the Shawnee
nation. However, there is some reason
to assume that the Shawnee
name for this stream conveyed the same
meaning as did the
Delaware appellation, Me'nkwi
Siipunk, 'Big River.' Evidence for it,
though indirect, comes from the Rev.
David Jones's journal of his
travels "on the West Side of the
River Ohio," in 1772 and 1773.
"The name," so writes the
Rev. Mr. Jones, "which the Shawannees
give Siota [sic], has slipt my
memory, but it signifies Hairy River.
The Indians tell us that when they came
first to live here, deers
were so plenty, that in the vernal
season, when they came to drink,
the stream would be thick of hairs,
hence they gave it the name."12
This, to be sure, smacks of a folk
tale; and here is what may have
happened: Probably the Rev. Mr. Jones
heard Shawnee Indians
call the Scioto M'chshi/thiipi, 'Big
River.'13 At the time, he evidently
had failed to make a note of either
that Shawnee name or its meaning.
The meaning, "Hairy River,"
which he remembered, may have been
supplied by Delaware Indians who had a
smattering of Shawnee,
possibly converts in the mission of
Schonbrunn, on the Tuscarawas,
where he visited shortly after. Even
one or another of the Moravian
missioners, Zeisberger not excluded,
may have imparted some of the
information.
Especially when not quite correctly
pronounced by a white man
or a Delaware, Shawn. m'chshi, 'big,'
may have sounded not a little
like Del. *miichi/yi (interchangeable
with *wiichi/yi), 'hairy.'14
The needed explanation of a name such
as this is always to be
counted on from one of the ever-present
spinners of yarns. Of course
it is also possible, nor any less
likely, that the Rev. Mr. Jones had
been slipped this deer-hair story
custom-made by a pranking
Shawnee, who decided to have some fun
with the palefaced snooper.
Olentangy, the Indian name for the north branch of the Scioto,
again is Delaware. It really is a
misnomer, traceable to an act of
12 David Jones, A Journal . . . of
Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on
the West Side of the River Ohio, in
the Years 1772 and 1773 (reprinted,
New York,
1865), 46.
13 Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems," 361.
14 E. N. Horsford, ed., Zeisberger's
Indian Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass., 1887), 88.
Zeisberger spells it "wiechege-"
and "miechege-." Compare Shawn. wichthlaya, 'body
hair.' Voegelin, "Shawnee
Stems," 419.
142
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the Ohio state legislature in 1833. Up
to that time, the commonly
used name of this river had been
Whetstone River or Whetstone
Creek. Its Delaware name is documented
with astonishing accuracy
as Keenhongsheconsepung,15 properly
*Kiin/ansh'/'ikan Siipu/nk.
Literally, this means
'sharp/more-and-more/tool river,' which
exactly corresponds to Eng. 'Whetstone
River.' It indicates that the
Delawares knew the valley of this river
as a source of shale (Olen-
tangy shale, geologically speaking)
useful for the sharpening of
their imported cutlery, axes, and other
ironware.
The river originally and rightfully
called Olentangy is known today
as Big Darby.16 This modern
name, Big Darby, had been in use
among the white settlers for some time
when it was officially con-
firmed by the same legislative act
which misnamed the Whetstone
River "Olentangy." According
to its etymology, the Indian name
Olentangy may be either Delaware or Shawnee, being of nearly
identical form and basic meaning in
both languages. The Delaware
form would be *Olam/taanshi
Siipu/nk, the conjectural Shawnee
parallel being *Holom'/tenshi
Thiipii/'chki. In both languages this
means '(red) face-paint/from
there/river.' The name clearly in-
dicates that the Indians knew the
headwaters region of Big Darby
to contain deposits of that much-sought
iron-oxide clay which, when
fired, turns that particular shade of
red preferred by them for
painting their faces and the depilated
crowns of their heads. Not
quite correctly the whites called it
"vermilion," a term also occurring
as an Ohio place name in Erie County,
near the mouth of the
Vermilion River. In his travel diary,
under date of November 18,
1760, George Croghan, the well-known
trader and deputy Indian
commissioner under Sir William Johnson,
entered the Indian name
of the Vermilion River as "Oulame
Thepy," giving its English name
as "Vermilion Creek."17 The
language of the Indian name clearly is
Ottawa, as are a few more of Croghan's
river names along the lake
shore west of present Cleveland, which
in those days was still
populated by many Ottawa Indians. Ott. ulam-,
'face paint,' is an
15 Alfred E. Lee, History
of the City of Columbus (New York and Chicago, 1892),
I, 17.
16 Ibid.
17 Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels,
1748-1864 (Cleveland, 1904),
I, 109.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 143
exact parallel to Del. olam-, and
Shawn. holom-, the same being
true for Ott. *thepi, 'river,
creek,' Del. siipu, and Shawn. thiipii.
Indian names, moreover, existed for
each of the numerous streams
all through Ohio which today are called
Paint Creek. The Paint
Creek, for instance, which empties into
the Scioto at Chillicothe
once bore the Delaware name Olomoni
Siipu/nk,18 and the almost
identical Shawnee name *Holomoonii
Thiipii/'chki,19 both of them
literally meaning 'face-paint creek.'
In the headwaters regions of other
streams, the Indians knew of
"salt licks" and "salt
springs," and named such streams accordingly.
They were concerned with those salt
places primarily because in-
variably there was good hunting nearby,
deer and other game being
attracted by the salt. Salt as such
meant next to nothing to Wood-
land Indians, since they subsisted on a
practically salt-free diet.
Eventually, they acquired from the
whites the skill to obtain salt by
evaporating the brine of salt springs
by boiling. Rather than for
their own use though, they boiled salt
as an article of barter with the
whites, who needed it desperately for
their survival.
The Delaware term *m'hoani for
'a salt lick' (more frequently with
a locative affix, *m'hoani/nk), was
in use throughout the entire
Delaware domain. Even today, for
instance, both a county and a
river in northeastern Ohio are named Mahoning;
and there also is a
sizable Mahoning Creek, an eastern
tributary of the Allegheny, in
western Pennsylvania.
In the early 1800's, when Indians were
still living among the
white settlers in the Scioto basin, a
Delaware name for one or
another salt lick was still in use.
Thus the Big Lick Creek near
Columbus, today called Big Walnut Creek,
had its Indian name
documented as *Me'nkwi M'hoani
Siipunk (transliterated),20 an
exact equivalent of 'Big Lick Creek.'
Another stream in the Scioto basin
leading to a salt spring bore
a documented Delaware name containing
as an integral component
*Seek/'l'w, the accepted term for 'salt spring.'21 It
consists of seek-
18 Lee, History of Columbus, I,
145. It is spelled in Lee "Olomon Sepung."
19 Randall and Ryan, History of Ohio, II, 26. Spelled "Alamoneetheepeece."
20 Lee, History of Columbus, I, 145.
Spelled "Whingwy Mahoni Sepung."
21 Ibid. Spelled "Seckle
Sepung."
144 THE OHIO
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
(or siik-), a verb stem meaning
'spilling over,' which was the current
Delaware word for 'brine' or 'salt,'
followed by a verb affix, -'I'w,
meaning 'it exists in motion.' This
combination of two verb forms,
each descriptive of dynamic action,
nevertheless signified 'a salt
spring' to a Delaware Indian. When
preceding Siipu/nk, 'a stream,'
the combination indicated one of those
Salt Creeks at the head-
waters of which a salt spring was to be
found.
The Muskingum River was the
channel by which eastern Ohio
was penetrated, mainly by the Delawares
during the first half of
the eighteenth century, and to a much
lesser extent by bands of
Shawnees preceding the Delawares by a
few decades. In its present
form
Muskingum, this river name has been in use among both
Indians and whites for more than two
centuries as another one of
those terms of Indian-white
travel-and-trade lingo, such as Ohio,
Scioto, and others.
Whatever its aboriginal form may have
been, Muskingum as a
river name was fragmentary, requiring
in any Indian language the
addition of a term signifying 'river.'
Zeisberger and other Moravian
missioners spelled it Muskingum, as
we do today, as well as
Mushkingum (transliterated
from German-based Muschkingum).
Most likely, both of these spellings
represented two different pro-
nunciations current among the
Delawares. Zeisberger's definition
of the name, based on a combination of moos,
'an elk,' and
wuschking, 'eye' (in his own spelling), meaning 'elk's eye,'22
looks
like a folk etymology resting on the
similarity in sound between
Muschkingum and wuschgingunk (Zeisberger's spelling),
defined as
'on or in the eye.'23
John Johnston states that
"Muskingum is a Delaware word, and
means a town on the river side."24
This is partly correct and partly
wrong. Muskingum (or Mushkingum,
for that matter) indeed is a
Delaware word, but by no stretch of the
imagination does it mean
'a town on the river side.' It is
certain though that it named a town
on the river side. Possibly this town
was an old Shawnee settlement
whose name the nearby Delawares adapted
to their own tongue in
22 Zeisberger, "History," 44.
23 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 65, 70.
24 Johnston, "Indian Tribes," 298.