Indian River and Place Names in Ohio
By AUGUST C. MAHR*
It can be safely claimed that as a rule
North American Woodland
Indians when penetrating into a given
region first traveled by canoe
on that region's main river and, then
proceeded upstream on the
major tributaries as far as they were
navigable and promised a
sufficient food supply. Again and again
they would branch off from
the respective tributary, ascending
side streams which offered pros-
pects either of good hunting and
fishing, or of fertile bottom land
for the planting of maize, or of
deposits of that special clay they
used in making their face paint, or of
other essential commodities.
A great many instances of the role of
the main watercourses and
their tributaries in this pattern of
inland penetration can be cited
from all parts of the Eastern Woodland
domain. Even today count-
less Indian names of streams and
places, either in their more or
less corrupted original word-forms or
in English translation, bear
witness to this aboriginal method of
immigration, consistently
followed since pre-Columbian days until
far into modern times.
Ohio, the name of the river and the state, may well serve as
a
typical example. It has been a widely
accepted fallacy that Ohio is
an Indian name meaning 'Beautiful
River.'1 True, it is an Indian
name, or rather part of one; and it is
also true that a French traveler
about 1750 had called it "la Belle
Riviere," that is, 'the Beautiful
* August C. Mahr is professor emeritus of
German at Ohio State University. He is
the author of a number of studies
dealing with the Indian tribes once resident in Ohio,
particularly the Delawares.
Like the preceding article, "The
Removal of the Wyandots from Ohio," by Carl
G. Klopfenstein, this was originally a
paper read at a meeting of the American Indian
Ethnohistoric Conference at Columbus,
November 2-3, 1956, under joint sponsorship
of Ohio State University and the Ohio
Historical Society.
The asterisk which is used frequently
before Indian words throughout the text is
meant to indicate a hypothetical form of
a word.
1 See even John Heckewelder, "[On
Indian Names]," Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, New Series, IV [1834], 367.
138
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
River.' But this in no way implies that
the Indian name Ohio has
that meaning.
David Zeisberger, Moravian missioner
among eighteenth-century
Woodland Indians, mainly the Iroquoian
Onondagas and the
Algonkian Delawares, states in one of
his writings that the river
name Ohio is Iroquoian in
origin.2 Zeisberger had a thorough knowl-
edge of Onondaga and related Iroquoian
tongues as well as of all
three dialects of Delaware, which is
Algonkian. Hence his opinion
appears to be founded on fact.
Unfortunately however he presents
no etymology of the name. All we know
is that he found in the name
Ohio some Iroquoian connection. But with what dialect? The
one
most likely is Wyandot, the Wyandots,
or Hurons, next to the
Seneca Indians, being in Zeisberger's
day the most influential Iro-
quoians in the Ohio Valley.
John Johnston, Indian agent for the
United States government
at Piqua, Ohio, in his autobiographical
Recollections recorded the
Wyandot name for the Ohio River as *O/hii/zuu
(transcribed
from his own spelling, "O,he,zuh"),
with the definition 'some-
thing great.'3 This is in
agreement with a remark of John
Heckewelder that the name Ohio is
not a complete Indian name but
rather the initial part of one, the
second half of which must have
denoted 'river' or something along that
line.4 Heckewelder further
states that he frequently heard the
name Ohio used, not however
accented Ohio, but Ohio, and
never used by Indians among them-
selves, but exclusively in
conversations between Indians and whites
by both parties. This indicates that
the name Ohio, evidently pro-
nounced O/hii/o at that time,
and regardless of its probable origin
among the Wyandots, had become a term
of interracial travel-and-
trade lingo on the all-important
waterway during that era of mutual
acculturation between Indians and
whites, and that it simply meant
'the Big River' to everyone concerned.
2 Archer B. Hulbert and William N.
Schwarze, eds., "David Zeisberger's History of
the Northern American Indians," Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly,
XIX (1910), 33.
3 John Johnston, "Account of the
Present State of the Indian Tribes Inhabiting Ohio,"
Archaeologia Americana: Transactions
and Collections of the American Antiquarian
Society, I (1820), 297.
4 Heckewelder,
"Indian Names," 367.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 139
Heckewelder moreover attempts an
explanation of the name
O/hii/o on the basis of Delaware: he sees Ohiio as the
initial com-
ponent of a polysynthetic Delaware term
*Ohii/'oop/peek/'ane, as
transcribed analytically from his own
spelling. He defines it as
'indeed, a white, deep river'; 'white,'
so he explains, because of the
many white-capped waves during a high
wind.5
For various reasons Heckewelder's
theory is not acceptable. In the
first place, he totally ignores
Zeisberger's positive statement about
the name's Iroquoian provenience. In
the second place, Heckewelder's
Delaware term, according to his own
admission, rested on memories
of long ago and possibly was never
heard by him in this form from
Indian lips. Further, Heckewelder
expressly states that the Delaware
among themselves called the Ohio River Kit/'ane,
in the Unami
dialect, or Kicht/'ane, in
Munsee, meaning 'main stream' in both
dialects.6 This appellation,
by the way, applied as far upstream as
the Allegheny River in its full length.
According to John Johnston, the
Shawnees among themselves called
the Ohio River in their own tongue "Kiskepila
Sepe, from Kiskepila
an eagle, and Sepe a river."7
To be Shawnee, Johnston's explanation
needs some adjustment. First of all, "Kiskepila"
ought to be written
*kish'chk'/aap/ela, 'moving fast,'8 a basic meaning which
obviously
could likewise apply to 'an eagle.'
Secondly, "Sepe" should be
written thiipii, which means
both 'running water' and 'river.'9
Hence *Kish'chk'aapela Thiipiichki (with
required locative suffix)
signifies 'a fast-moving river.'
Nothing in the semantics of Ohiio or
Kit/'ane or *Kish'chk'aapela
Thiipiichki points to any practical significance of the Ohio River
for
Indian life other than its usefulness
as a waterway for migrants and
traders. As such, the Ohio had been
indeed of vital importance since
pre-Columbian times for all Woodland
Indians east of the Missis-
sippi. Traveling northward on two of
the Ohio's major tributaries,
5 Ibid., 369.
6 Ibid., 368.
7 Johnston, "Indian Tribes," 297.
8 Carl F. Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems and the Jacob P. Dunn Miami
Dictionary,
Part III," Indiana Historical
Society, Prehistory Research Series, I (Indianapolis,
1937-40), 301, 336.
9 Ibid., 319.
140
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the Scioto and the Muskingum, two
important East-Algonkian
nations, the Shawnees and the
Delawares, penetrated into the present
state of Ohio, the Shawnees on the
former, and the Delawares on
the latter.
The Indian name of the Scioto carried
a connotation of 'good
hunting.' As a word formation, Scioto
belongs to the same category
of Indian-white travel-and-trade lingo
as does Ohio. As Indian
river names, both of them are
incomplete. As to its provenience, the
term Scioto unmistakably is
Iroquoian, and in particular Wyandot.
It is reliably attested that the
Wyandots called the river Scionto,
although it was chiefly known as the Scioto,
that is, among the
white people.10 The
fragmentary character of this river name is
obvious from the fact that in Wyandot *och/sk'onto
means 'a
deer,'11 while the unknown second half
of the complete name must
have denoted 'river.'
When toward the end of the eighteenth
century Delaware Indians
from eastern Ohio moved into the Scioto
basin, they called the
Scioto *Me'nkwi Siipunk, that
is, 'the Big River.' Nevertheless,
these same Delawares, at the same
period, whenever temporarily more
concerned with the Ohio River, also
called the Ohio *Me'nkwi
Siipunk. It shows that these aboriginal appellations were not
specific,
as are our modern geographical names,
but rather were coined and
applied as dictated jointly by the
nature of the locality at hand and
by its momentary significance in the
Indians' life.
The few authors dealing with conditions
in early Ohio during
the last two decades of the eighteenth
century and in the first three
of the nineteenth, had obtained their
knowledge about the local
Indians mainly from Delaware
informants, whose language, or
rather a quite terrible hodge-podge
variety of it, had eventually be-
come the accepted medium of
communication between the whites
from the East and the Indians in Ohio
in general. Thus it happened
that most of the Indian stream and
place names recorded in these
early days are in Delaware.
A Shawnee name for the Scioto, for
instance, is not on record,
10 Emilius O. Randall and Daniel J.
Ryan, History of Ohio: The Rise and Progress
of an American State (New York, 1912), I, 225.
11 Johnston, "Indian Tribes,"
293. Johnston writes it "Ough, scan, oto."
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.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 145
the form of *M'shkiink'm
(Mushkinkum), and by force of folk
etymology understood it to mean 'elk's
eye.' It appears quite probable
that the original Shawnee place name as
assimilated by the Dela-
wares, may have been *m'shkeenkw/aam(-),
a Shawnee term com-
bining *m'shkeenkw-,25 'swampy,'
with -aam, a stem approximately
denoting '(land, soil, etc.) being as
indicated,' and invariably
followed by -'chki or some other
adverbial determinant,26 with the
composite meaning, 'where the land is
swampy, soggy.' Where this
place was located, it is impossible to
ascertain.
Evidently, in their assimilation of
this Shawnee place name, the
Delawares, disregarding as unessential
the final locative affix, were
solely concerned with *M'shkeenkwaam,
from which it was but a
small step, over intermediary *M'shkeenk'm,
to folk-etymologically
conditioned *Muushkiink'm (
Mushkinkum; Muskingum).
Until after 1800 the name Muskingum also
applied to its north
branch, today officially called Tuscarawas.
The latter name com-
memorates the Iroquoian Tuscarora
Indians, who once had a settle-
ment, Tuscarawi, or Tuscarawas,
at its upper course, near present
Bolivar, on the line of Stark and
Tuscarawas counties.
At Coshocton, where the
Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers
unite, forming the Muskingum, there
formerly was a Delaware
settlement called Koshachkink (spelled
Goschachkung) in Moravian
documents. *Kosh'/'ochk/'nk was
the Unami dialect version of a
more explicit Munsee dialect form, *Koch'/kochk/'nk,
meaning
'where there is a river crossing.'27
It seems though that the present
name, Coshocton, is not just a
white man's corruption of this
Delaware form, but rather reflects
another Delaware original,
*Kosh'/'ochk/t/oon, likewise Unami, and meaning 'river-crossing
device,' that is, 'a ferry.' Although
undocumented as the source of
the place name Coshocton, it appears
obvious that it is.
Walhonding, the name of the west branch of the Muskingum, is
a Delaware term, woal'anti/nk,28
here not meaning a ditch dug by
human hands, but rather 'a ditch-like
river stretch; a ravine,' such
25 Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems,"
363.
26 Ibid., 338.
27 Zeisberger's Indian
Dictionary, 49.
28 Ibid., 59.
146
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
as the one east of Mount Vernon at the
middle course of the
Walhonding's west branch, commonly
called the Kokosing River.
The complete Delaware name of the
Walhonding, of course, must
have been *Woal'anti/nk Siipu/nk, 'ravine
river.'
While this river name may have advised
the canoe traveler that
here a strong current was to be
encountered when paddling upstream,
it is not immediately apparent to
anyone not a Delaware for what
practical reason that west branch of
the Walhonding was called
*Kook'oos'nk Siipunk, that is, 'river where there are owls.' It be-
comes clear, however, from a remark of
Zeisberger's: "If an Indian
hunter hears an owl screech in the
night he immediately throws some
tobacco into the fire [as an offering],
muttering a few words at the
same time. Then they promise themselves
success for the next day
for the owl is said to be a powerful
spirit."29 Hence, a place where
there were owls was, naturally, a place
of good hunting.
As on the Scioto, so likewise on the
Muskingum, the Delawares
knew of good hunting places because of
salt licks and saline springs
at the headwaters of some side streams.
One such salt spring which
eventually became of vital importance
to the white settlers, mainly
those at Marietta, was located at one
of the headwaters of Salt
Creek in Muskingum County. The Delaware
Indians named this
particular Salt Creek Siik/hee/wi/nk
Siipu/nk, that is, 'river where
there is salt-making.' The salt-making
place was on Buffalo Fork at
the site of present Chandlersville in
southeast Muskingum County. On
Rufus Putnam's "Map of the State
of Ohio" (1804) it is shown,
marked "Salt Spring," at
about nine miles south of the fortieth
parallel, and about six miles west of
the eighty-second meridian.
Nine miles up the Muskingum from the
mouth of Salt Creek, a
tributary comes in from the west whose
good old Delaware name
has likewise been connected with salt,
not by Indians though but
rather by a folk etymology of the white
man. In 1881 a local histor-
iographer explained the origin of the
river name, Licking, "from
the fact of there being in early times
some 'salt licks,' as they were
called, upon or near the banks, which
were much resorted to by dee
29 Zeisberger, "History," 139.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 147
and buffalo."30 Of
course, no English-speaking person in his right
mind ever would have dreamt of calling
a river "Licking" because
of "salt licks" at its banks.
Further, it is known that the Delaware
Indians formed the names of such
salt-lick streams with the term
*m'hoani-, 'a salt lick,' as has been pointed out above. There
existed,
moreover, two more streams called
Licking, one an eastern tributary
of the Allegheny in Venango County,
Pennsylvania, and the other the
second largest river in Kentucky,
emptying into the Ohio from the
south, slightly east of Cincinnati.
Both are shown on a map of 1765,
the latter named, instead of Licking,
"Great Salt Lick River."31
The name Licking is a
white-man's adaptation of an original Dela-
ware form *W'li/'ik'/nk, compounded
as follows: *w'li-, 'yonder'
(spelled wuli by Zeisberger32);
-'ik'-, shortened from -'ikan, '(reced-
ing) flood water' (spelled hickan, and
defined as 'tide,' Germ. 'Ebbe
und Flut,' by Zeisberger33); and locative affix -'nk,
'where there is.'
As a river name it requires the
addition of Siipu/nk, 'river.' Hence,
the composite meaning of the entire
name is: 'river where (Siipunk),
at a given point (w'li-, 'yonder'),
the flood waters recede again
(-'ik'/nk).' It may be noted that the verb stem 'ik- (hik-) basically
implies 'a dropping water level';
Brinton defines hikan as 'ebb tide;
(at the ending of the flow).'34
All this indicates that at a certain
distance upstream from the
mouth of the Licking River the flood
waters of the Muskingum
ceased to back up in the Licking, but
receded again. Evidently, there-
fore, the name Licking was a
hint at the varying navigability of a
river thus named to the Indian canoe
traveler about to enter its
mouth from the main stream, be it the
Muskingum, the Allegheny,
or the Ohio.
The ready association formed by the
whites between "Licking"
and "salt lick" clearly comes
to the fore in John Johnston's following
30 N. N. Hill, History of Licking County, O. (Newark, Ohio, 1881),
199.
31 "A Map of
the Country from the Western Lakes to . . . the Center Colonies of
North America, 1765. Traced by Wm
S[cull?]."
32 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 236.
33 Ibid., 198.
34 Daniel G. Brinton and Albert S. Anthony, A Lenape-English
Dictionary (Phil-
adelphia, 1889), 48.
148
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
remark about the Shawnee name for the
Licking River: "Nepep-
enime Sepe, from Nepepenime, Salt, and Sepe, River,
i. e. Salt
River."35 Johnston's
name for the river, Nepepenime, is correct
Shawnee (Sepe is not; it ought
to read Thiipii). However, Nepepen-
ime does not mean 'salt'; the Shawnee term for 'salt' is nepepimma,
according to Johnston's own word list;36
Voegelin carries essentially
the same: nepipemi, 'salt.'37
Obviously under the sway of the popular
etymology (Licking == salt lick),
Johnston confused the Shawnee
river name Nepepenime with
Shawnee nepipemi (in his own
spelling, nepepimma), 'salt,'
and, presto, he had "Salt" River for
Licking River.
But what does Nepepenime actually
mean? This Shawnee term
is composed as follows: nepi-, 'water';
-pen-, 'below'; and -ime,
'it is.'38 The composite meaning is 'water,
below, it is.' It indicates
that 'here is a river with water at its
lower course,' that is, 'a river
navigable only near its mouth.' Thus in
the Shawnee name for the
Licking we have another such hint to
the canoe traveler about the
water conditions of that stream.
The navigation of the lower course of
the Licking must indeed
have posed quite a problem to Indians
traveling on the Muskingum,
for we encounter a second Delaware name
for the Licking which
likewise shows concern with the
condition of the water. The term
in question is Pataskala, a
white-man's simplification of the original
Delaware form. Pataskala today
is the name of a town founded in
1852 in southwest Licking County, Ohio,
by people with not the
faintest notion of the name's
significance.
This modern version, Pataskala, being
the only form available,
the name might have defied
interpretation were it not for a com-
pound listed by Heckewelder spelled petapsqui and defined as
'bank or tide water.'39 Analytically
written *p't/aaps/'kui, its com-
ponents are: p't- (p'nt-), adverbial
prefix, 'up to (a certain point)';
-aaps- (-as-, -ash-), Unami contractions of Munsee aptchi, 'always';
35 Johnston, "Indian Tribes," 299.
36 Ibid., 292.
37 Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems." 93.
38 Ibid., nepi-, 375; -pen-, 95; -ime, 338.
39 Heckewelder, "Indian
Names," 378.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 149
and -'kui (properly, -t'kui),40
'a wave,' in particular, 'a wave from a
tide or flood.' By adding to this
compound the verb affix -'l'w, 'it
exists (in motion),' we are confident
to have established the basic
Delaware form of Pataskala: *P't/aaps/'ku'/'l'w. We
feel all the
more justified in adding this final
element since there is known
another such multiple-stem compound, in
all probability traceable
to Zeisberger, which consists of
essentially the same components as
Heckewelder's, has the same meaning,
and, moreover, contains
-'I'w (in Moravian spelling, -helleu) as its final
element. Evidently
a Munsee parallel to Heckewelder's
Unami form, it occurs in the
spelling Pendaskitquehelleu, with
the definition, 'a rising river
which swells the water of a creek.'41
Analytically written, it is
*P'nt/as/'k'/t'ku'/'l'w. Apart from -'k' (-iki-), an emphatic verb
element not translatable, and from the
initial t- in -t'kui ('a wave'),
this term is identical with *P't/aaps/'ku'/'l'w
in form as well as
basic meaning, the latter being, 'up to
some point/always/a swell/
exists (in motion).' In conjunction
with the two lexical definitions
cited above, this semantic
interpretation of the Delaware term under-
lying the name Pataskala clearly
shows that this original term indic-
ated to all concerned that the waters
of the Muskingum, at flood
stage, invariably backed up to a
certain point in the Licking.
In connection with the river name Muskingum,
it has been
mentioned that bands of Shawnees had
preceded the Delawares in
their inland penetration of the
Muskingum river system. These
Shawnees had mainly settled on the west
bank of the Muskingum,
north of present Zanesville, and in
particular along a river bend
at present Dresden, Muskingum County.
It embraces an extended
area of fertile land, named, in
Shawnee, *W aak/'t'/aam/'chki,
meaning 'it is river-bend land.' The
term is compounded from
waak/'t'-, 'it (the river) is bent,' and -aam/'chki, 'it
(the land)
is of the nature just indicated.'42
Even today the stream here empty-
ing into the Muskingum is called Wakatomika
Creek, in Shawnee,
*Waak't'aam'chki Thiipii'chki.
40 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 222.
41 Brinton and Anthony, Lenape Dictionary, 112.
42 Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems,"
338, 416.
150
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Not quite twenty-seven miles down the
Ohio from the mouth of
the Muskingum there is the mouth of the
Hocking River, formerly
called Hockhocking, a form of
the name which occurs on a map of
1764, though on another map, one of
1765, the river is called
Hocking Hocking. Apparently this last version, probably the oldest
of all, is not just a duplication of Hocking,
but rather seems to
reflect the original Delaware
appellation *Hok/'nk/haki/nk Siipu/-
nk. The initial term, hok/'nk, idiomatically
functioned as a locative
adverb, meaning 'high up; above,' while
haki/nk indicates that 'there
is land, or soil.' Hence the meaning of
the composite river name is
'river where there is (arable) land
upstream.' As a matter of fact,
bands from the Turkey tribe of the
Delawares followed this compara-
tively short watercourse, which was
easily navigable for canoes
for almost eighty miles upstream, to
its headwaters, and settled
there, near and on the site of present
Lancaster, in Fairfield County,
naming the area Achsinink, that
is, 'place of the rock,' after the
enormous rock formation which, at
Lancaster, dominates the scene.
It is most likely that, rather than the
whites, the Delawares them-
selves shortened the river name to Hok'/haki/nk,
which is less
clumsy than the original form but
conveys the same meaning.
While the Shawnees and Delawares in the
main had penetrated
into central and eastern Ohio from the
Ohio River, the Miami
Indians, according to tribal traditions
of their own, seem to have
originally emigrated from the north,
eventually reaching the west-
ernmost rivers of the state, which even
today are named after them,
the Maumee River in the northwest, and
both the Big and Little
Miami in the southwest. Apart from
other testimony, the northern
provenience of the Miami Indians is
confirmed by the name
Loowanwaaki (plural), which the Shawnees in Ohio gave them,43
loowaani being a Shawnee term for 'north; northern.' The
Shawnees,
having migrated north from the South,
called themselves
Shaawanwaaki (plural), or Shawanooki, literally meaning
'southerners.'44
Maumee and Miami are the same name in two slightly
different
pronunciations. Seventeenth-century
French transliterations, in com-
43 Ibid., 352.
44 Ibid., 318.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 151
bination with linguistics, permit us to
establish *'/m'oam/'k as the
basic aboriginal form of the name. It
is definitely Central Algonkian,
possibly Chippewa, and is supposed to
mean 'people who live on
the peninsula.'45 that is,
the narrow strip of land reaching out for
about eighty miles into Lake Michigan
on the east side of Green
Bay in a general northeasterly
direction. The basic form,
*'/m'oam/'k, not only explains both the current names Miami and
Maumee but also corresponds to the Miamis' own name for them-
selves, which in their tongue is Miamiaki
(plural).46
One of the Miami settlements in western
Ohio was on the site
of present Piqua, on the upper
course of the Big Miami. As the
Miamis had taken it from the Shawnees,
it was known by its
Shawnee name, Pickawillanee, indicating
that its inhabitants were
members of the *pekewaaka, a
political subdivision of the Shawnee
nation. The basic meaning of Pekewaa-,
despite a few existing
theories, must be considered uncertain.
A like mystery shrouds the name of
another Shawnee subdivision,
called tchalaaka, a member of
which was a tchalaakaatha (plural
tchalaakaathaaki,47 a term which has survived in the place name
Chillicothe. Wherever located, the village of these members of the
tchalaaka, the most distinguished of all four subdivisions of the
Shawnees, invariably bore the same
name, perpetuated by the whites
as Chillicothe. Since no one but
a tchalaakaatha could become great
chief of the Shawnee nation, the tchalaaka
village was regarded as
the national capital. The fact that
there were in Ohio successively
several Shawnee settlements called Chillicothe,
clearly shows that
the location of the grand council seat
could be freely shifted.
When by the treaty of Greene Ville in
1795 the Shawnees lost
their holdings along the Scioto, they
settled, with the consent of
the Wyandots, at and near a village on
the Auglaize River, the
name of which has survived in the
modern place name Wapakoneta.
According to local folk tradition, the
name contains in its initial
half the name of a chief, Wapach, who
so far has not been identified.
45 Frederick W. Hodge, ed., Handbook
of American Indians North of Mexico
(Washington, 1907), I, 852.
46 Voegelin,
"Shawnee Stems," 374. By early colonial authors writing in English,
the Miami Indians usually are called Twichtwees, a term
of uncertain origin.
47 Ibid., 149.
152
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Evidently it is sheer fantasy. It
appears plausible, however, to analyze
this place name in the following
manner. As may be inferred from
the name of that fictitious chief, Wapach,
the name of the place
sometime in the past must have been Wapachkoneta,
a form more-
over, recorded by Johnston in the
spelling Wapaghkonetta.48 With
this older form as a guide to
appropriate Shawnee word stems, it
seems safe to propose *Waapi/yochkan/ite
as the original form of
the name. It is a compound from waapiyochkani-,
'white bone(s),'49
and -ite, a final affix vaguely
indicating 'here (is, are).'50 The com-
posite meaning is 'white bones place.'
It may refer to skeletal remains
of a person or persons found unburied
there.
Next, let us take a look at the names
of a few streams and places
along Ohio's Lake Erie shore. The
Maumee River has already been
discussed in connection with the Miami
Indians, who availed them-
selves of this waterway. So likewise
did the Hurons, or Wyandots,
who had settlements at and near the
Sandusky River. Both Huron
and Wyandot are names for the
same nation of Iroquoian Indians;
and both names are documented in
seventeenth-century French
records. The name Huron is not
even of Indian origin, but is French;
in the French usage of the period, un
huron signifies 'a wretch; a
lout; an unkempt person,' in brief, 'a
roughneck.'51 The name
Wyandot, a term of obscure Indian origin, appears in French
records
of 1640 as Guyandotte, and Ouendat.
Conrad Weiser, a German by
birth, in 1748 wrote it Wandat. The
name was especially applied
to those Hurons who, after their defeat
by the French in 1748, had
returned to their former settlements at
Detroit and Sandusky. These
Wyandots "gradually acquired a
paramount influence in the Ohio
valley and the lake region. They laid
claim to the greater part of
Ohio, and the settlement of the Shawnee
and Delawares within that
area was with their consent; they
exercised the right to light the
council fire at all intertribal
councils, and although few in numbers
they joined all Indian movements in the
Ohio valley and the lake
region and supported the British
against the Americans."52
48 Johnston,
"Indian Tribes," 298.
49 Voegelin,
"Shawnee Stems," 448.
50 Ibid., 151.
51 Hodge, Handbook, I, 584.
52 Ibid., I, 589-590.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 153
Sandusky is the name of two Ohio towns, one at the upper
course,
and the other about twenty-five miles
east of the mouth, of the
Sandusky River, from which these places took their name. As a
term, Sandusky is a white-man's
adaptation of Wyand. *sa'ndesti,
plainly denoting 'water.'53 As
a Shawnee name for this river,
Johnston lists "Potake
Sepe," defined as 'a rapid river.'54 While
his definition is correct, the Shawnee
name ought to read *P'too/'ki
Thiipii/'chki, meaning 'fast-running river.'55
At about fifteen miles east of Sandusky
the Huron River empties
into Lake Erie. In Croghan's travel
journal an Indian name for this
stream occurs which is definitely
Ottawa and has been transliterated
by Croghan as "Notowacy
Thepy,"56 which is not sufficient for ascer-
taining the original Ottawa form of the
name. It can however be easily
interpreted on the basis of a Shawnee
parallel, due to the fortunate
congruity in this instance between the
two Algonkian dialects.
Whatever Ottawa sound values Croghan's
transliteration may repre-
sent, "Notowacy" without
a doubt corresponds to Shawn.
naatoweeki (plural), 'the Senecas, the Wyandots,' a derivative
from
a basic term naatoowe, 'Seneca,
Wyandot (tribe or individual),'
with a Miami parallel natawia, 'Seneca.'57
Hence, "Notowacy
Thepy" means 'Seneca, or Wyandot, River.' Its English name,
Huron River, indicates that in this case the Wyandots were meant.
The Delawares called the Huron River Pettquotting,
as it is
spelled in Moravian Mission diaries.
Analytically written, the term
reads *P't/t'ku'/'att'/nk and,
being the name of a stream, requires
the addition of Siipu/nk, 'river.'
It is a compound of the following
elements: p't-, 'up to (a
certain point)'; -t'ku'-, 'a wave'; -'att'-
(-hatte-), verb stem, 'doing, making, being'; and locative affix -'nk,
'where there is.' The composite meaning
is '(river) where there is
tide-water up to a certain point.' The
name reminded Delaware In-
dians traveling by canoe along the lake
shore that this river was com-
fortably navigable upstream from its
mouth because "up to a certain
point" it was on the same water
level as the lake.
53 Johnston, "Indian Tribes," 297, 299.
54 Ibid., 299.
55 Voegelin, "Shawnee Stems,"
74, 319, 331.
56 Thwaites, Early Western Travels, I,
109.
57 Voegelin,
"Shawnee Stems," 377.
154
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Similar hints at the navigability of a
stream are implied in the
names Licking, Pataskala, analyzed
above, and possibly Conneaut,
below.
The next noteworthy channel east of the
Huron River for Indian
penetration from Lake Erie was the
Vermilion River. As previously
pointed out, its main attraction for
the aborigines was an abundance,
in its drainage area, of that
iron-oxide clay which they used for
making their red face-paint.
The easternmost of the sizable
penetration inlets from Lake Erie
this side of the Pennsylvania state
line is the Cuyahoga River. The
name is doubtless Iroquoian. That is
about all we know about it.
It is quite possible though that it
reflects the name of the Cayuga
Indians, which in Onondaga was *Kayukuhaga,
as transliterated
from German-based Gajukuhaga in
a Zeisberger word-list,58 where
it appears under the German heading Cajuger
(meaning 'Cayuga
Indians'). If this derivation is
tenable, the complete Iroquoian name
of the Cuyahoga River may have been *Kayuhukuhaga
Kaihate
(Onondaga; spelling modified). The
second term, Kaihate, is like-
wise listed by Zeisberger, spelled geihate,
and defined as 'river.'
Although of no significance as channels
of Indian penetration,
there exist in the extreme northeastern
part of the state two small
streams, the Ashtabula River and
Conneaut Creek, both of which
empty into estuaries of Lake Erie at a
distance of about fifteen
miles from each other. Today the mouth
of either stream is marked
by a lake town named the same as the
respective streams Ashtabula
and Conneaut.
The linguistic structure of the two
names shows that Ashtabula
is of Algonkian coinage, either Ottawa
or, more probably, Delaware,
while Conneaut clearly is
Iroquoian, either Onondaga or another
closely related dialect.
The Delawares who named Ashtabula most
likely were members
of the Munsee, or Wolf, tribe, who came
to the lake shore evidently
for the purpose of fishing at places
such as Ashtabula and Conneaut
where, as they knew, good fishing was
assured. The Iroquoian
Indians who named Conneaut seem
to have arrived there by canoeing
58 E. N. Horsford, ed., Vocabularies
by Zeisberger (Cambridge, Mass., 1887), 1.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 155
westward along the south shore of Lake
Erie from somewhere at
the eastern end of the lake.
Ashtabula is a white-man's adaptation, most likely of Del. *Ash'/-
t'pe/'l'w, a
contraction, ash'-, of aptchi-, 'always,' and, added to
it, a verb form -t'pe/'l'w, 'there
is enough of it, moving,' the plural
of which, spelled tepelook and
defined as 'enough of them,' is listed
by Zeisberger.59 The
composite meaning of the name is 'there is
always enough, moving,' probably with
reference to fish.
The name Conneaut may be an
anglicized form of Iroquoian (pos-
sibly Onondaga) *(wa)/koano/hote, 'there
is increase.'60 Since
basically it means 'it has been made
big,' the term may apply to an
"increase" of water in the
Conneaut estuary whenever, for one
reason or another, the water level of
the lake had risen. Provided that
this derivation is tenable, Conneaut
is another one of those Indian
names that reminded the canoe traveler
of essential features of a
waterway he was about to pursue.
Sir William Johnson in 1761 described
the topography of
Conneaut as follows: "Encamped in
a very good creek and safe
harbor. The creek about fifty yards
wide, and pretty deep; two
very steep hills at the entrance
thereof, and the water of it of a
very brown color."61
This reference to the water's "very brown
color" (due to ferruginous seepage
from neighboring bogs) sug-
gests a possible connection of the name
Conneaut with Onon.
*kanawoate, 'mud' (spelled ganawate by Zeisberger).62
As stated above, the most likely group
of the Delawares to be
concerned with those two fishing places
at the lake shore were the
Munsees. They populated, in the main,
the drainage areas of the
Beaver, Little Beaver, and Shenango
rivers, that is, roughly, present
Butler, Beaver, Lawrence, and Mercer
counties in northwestern
Pennsylvania. Whenever bound for
Ashtabula or Conneaut, ob-
viously for the purpose of fishing,
these Munsees pursued an estab-
lished route. It led, either by trail,
or by canoe, up the Shenango
to its junction near present
Clarksville, Mercer County, with a
western tributary called Pymatuning
Creek. From here either one
59 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 67.
60 Ibid., 102.
61 Thwaites, Early Western Travels, I, 103, note 68.
62 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 126.
156
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
could pursue Pymatuning Creek into
neighboring Ohio upstream to
its headwaters in Ashtabula County,
from whence a short portage
led to the west branch of the Ashtabula
River. Or, one could con-
tinue on the Shenango upstream to a
point at the state line, near
Andover, Ohio, where the former
Pymatuning Swamps rendered
further progress by canoe impossible.
Hence, a portage had to be
made to either the west or the east
branch of the Ashtabula. From
this river, an easy portage could be
made to Conneaut Creek by
travelers bound for Conneaut.
This travel route has been discussed in
some detail because the
interpretation of the Delaware name Pymatuning
is closely tied up
with it. On modern maps it occurs as
the name of the Pymatuning
Reservoir, an 18,000-acre expanse of
water, partly in Ashtabula
County, Ohio, and partly in Crawford
County, Pennsylvania. It
covers in its entire north-south
extension a considerable stretch of
the Shenango traveled by the Munsees on
their way to the lake. Once
more in Ohio, the name appears in
Pymatuning Creek, already
mentioned as part of that alternate
Munsee route to the lake.
Expressly as an Indian place name in
Mercer County, Pennsylvania,
Heckewelder listed Pymatuning (in
this spelling), and transliterated
it into Del. Pihmtonink, which
he interpreted as 'the dwelling place
of the man with the crooked mouth, or
the crooked man's dwelling
place.'63 His first
definition, although linguistically tenable (while
his second one is not), bears the
earmarks of a folk etymology, as it
goes counter to the Indians' basic
motivation for the coining of
place names--a practical purpose. His
naive parenthetic remark,
"I knew this man perfectly well.
J. H.," adds in no way to the
validity of his interpretation. As an
example, by the way, of the
irresponsible manner in which Indian
names are frequently dealt
with, see the interpretation of the
name Pymatuning in a well-known
guide book. After having cited
Heckewelder's "translation," the
unidentified writer quotes another one,
"whispering waters," which
is downright idiotic.64
The Indian place in Mercer County
called Pymatuning by
Heckewelder is shown on a map of
Pennsylvania of 1788 as an
63 Heckewelder,
"Indian Names," 365.
64 The Ohio Guide (New York, 1940), 433.
INDIAN RIVER AND PLACE NAMES 157
Indian village spelled Pamatuning. It
appears on the west bank of
the Shenango, a few miles up the river
from another Indian village,
likewise on the west bank, called
Shaningo.65 On a modern road
map, along the corresponding river
stretch, there appears a small
community, Shenango, about two miles
south of Greenville, Mercer
County, and, eight miles upstream from
it, near the southern tip of
the Pymatuning Reservoir, the town of
Jamestown.66 If present
Shenango stands on or near the site of
the Indian village of Shaningo
(as, to all appearances, it does), the
Munsee village of Pymatuning
must have stood on or near the site of
present Jamestown.
On the map of 1788 there appears a
trail which cuts off a loop
of the Shenango and returns to the
river again a few miles upstream
from Pymatuning, by-passing the
village at about a mile's distance.
This close proximity of Pymatuning to
this trail, together with its
location on the river, makes it appear
probable that the place had
some special significance for travelers
both by land and by water.
With this in mind, for the name Pymatuning
an original Munsee
form is proposed, analytically written *Piim/'attoon/'nk
and com-
posed
of the following elements: piim-,
'sweating oneself';67
-hattoon-, 'it is put there';68 and -'nk, 'place
where.' The composite
meaning is 'sweating oneself, it is put
here,' or, in idiomatic English,
'here are facilities for sweating oneself.'
The significance to the Indians in
general of the sweat-oven and its
habitual use can hardly be overrated.
Heckewelder has this to say
about it:
The sweat oven is the first thing that
an Indian has recourse to when he
feels the least indisposed; it is the
place to which the wearied traveller,
hunter, or warrior looks for relief from
the fatigues he has endured, the cold
he has caught, or the restoration of his
lost appetite. The oven is made of
different sizes, so as to accommodate
from two to six persons at a time, or
according to the number of men in the
village, so that they may be all suc-
cessively served.69
65 This map was printed in the Columbian
Magazine in 1788. A large separate copy
was reprinted in 1937 by the U. S.
Geological Survey.
66 Road map of Pennsylvania published by
the Standard Oil Company in 1951.
67 Zeisberger's Indian Dictionary, 189.
68 Ibid., 152.
69 John Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian
Nations Who
Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the
Neighbouring States (Philadelphia,
1881), 225.
158
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
This intimates that the villagers of Pymatuning
may have erected
a particularly fine sweat-oven, which,
perhaps for a consideration,
they made available to outsiders
traveling by trail or canoe.
The reputation of this Indian village
on the Shenango, quite
likely as a familiar sweating station
on the customary route to and
from the lake, must have been well
established among the Munsees.
Otherwise its name would never have
spread either to Pymatuning
Creek or to the Pymatuning Swamps. The
fact that it did may be ex-
plained as follows: On the basis of
this fact it is to be assumed
(although there is no documentary proof
for it) that the Munsees
among themselves did not call the
Shenango by this its Iroquoian
name, but called it *Piim/'attoon/'nk
Siipu/nk, that is, 'sweating-
place river.' The extended swamps, the
source of the Shenango, were
analogously named Pymatuning Swamps by
people familiar with
the Munsee name of the river--less
likely by Indians, though, than
by whites.
Evidently the name *Piim/'attoon/'nk
Siipu/nk could also have
been applied to Pymatuning Creek (which
has retained the name)
whenever Munsee travelers followed this
western branch of the
Shenango on their way to the lake.