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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which flows the great river. It may be that on this account,
their Algonquian neighbors called them Missouris.
At any rate,
they became known as the Missouri tribe
of Indians. They be-
long to the great Siouan family. Members
of this tribe are still
to be found on reservations in Kansas
and Nebraska. Their
applied name attached itself to the
great river, and from the
river the state of Missouri got its
name. There is no sufficient
evidence that the name has any reference
to the muddy water
of the Missouri. If it should turn out
that it is of Sioux origin,
then it certainly has not. The Sioux
word for water is me-ne.
Me-ne-sota, Me-ne-apolis, Me-ne-haha,
are good examples of its
extensive use for present-day
geographical names. It was
shortened to ne by the Osages,
who named the Neosho-ne,
water, and osho, bowl, a river of
deep places -bowls or basins.
So, Missouri, so far as now
known, does not mean muddy water.
In all probability it has no reference
to water of any kind.
MISSISSIPPI.
This name is of Algonquian origin. Sipu in that tongue
means river. The traditions of
the Delawares tell of a migra-
tion of that people. They came to a
mighty river, now believed
to have been the Mississippi. They
called it Namaesi-sipu, that
is, Fish river. They always spoke of it as the Namaesi-sipu.
Whether they had in fact crossed this
river or not, their de-
scendants believed they had and applied
to it always the name
given it by their ancestors in an early
age. In its wide-spread
usage through the centuries, the name
became modified or slightly
shortened. But it remains to this day the Maesisipu or Fish
river. The name of the river gave name to the state of Missis-
sippi. There is no significance in the name even approaching
"Gathering in all the Waters",
or "Great Long River", or "Father
of Waters", or "Mother of
Floods". White people may rightly
attribute these qualities to the great
river, but it is erroneous and
wrong to contend that the Indian name
carries any such meaning;
for it does not.
OHIO.
It is strange that students still
perpetuate - or attempt to
perpetuate -the
errors which have long surrounded the origin
Origin of Indian Names of Certain
States and Rivers. 453
of this name. There is no doubt but that
the French called the
Ohio River "La Belle Riviere"
or "Beautiful River". But they
got no such name from the Indians. It was their own name
for this fine stream. In Colonial times it was often spoken of
as "The River Red with Blood",
or "The Bloody River". These
allusions later attached to the Kentucky
river through the misap-
prehension of the explorers and
pioneers.
The word Ohio means great--not
beautiful. It is an
Iroquoian word. In Wyandot it is
O-he-'zhu. In the Mohawk
and Cayuga it is O-he-'yo. In the Oneida
it is O-he'. In the
Seneca it is the same as in the Wyandot.
The Wyandots called
the river the O-he-'zhu -the Great
river. All the Iroquois
called it the Great river. It ran from
their western possessions
to the gulf -the sea. They considered it the main stream.
With them it was the Ohio to the Gulf of
Mexico.
The state of Ohio got its name from the
Ohio river.
KENTUCKY.
The origins urged for the name of
Kentucky are erroneous.
"Meadow-lands", "At the
Head of a River", "The Dark and
Bloody Ground", are all
applications of misapprehensions. "The
River Red with Blood", or
"Bloody River", attached to the Ohio
river, as already noticed. From this,
the name "Bloody River"
became fixed upon the Kentucky river,
and possibly other
branches of the main stream. This
connection is the progenitor
of the "Dark and Bloody
Ground" of Boone and other explorers.
The Iroquois conquered the Ohio valley
and expelled or
exterminated the Indian tribes living
there and with whom they
battled. It was, no doubt, a bloody conquest. Memory of it
remained among the victors as well as
the defeated tribes, for a
fair land was made a solitude. None dared live there. The
conquerors might have done so, but the
time for their removal
thither never came. The land included in the state of Ohio
was a part of the conquest. In fact, it embraced the larger
part of the Ohio valley.
The Iroquois desired to retain this
conquered domain. They
set the Wyandots (Iroquoian) as
over-lords of it to live in it,
and to manage it in their name. They had seen the ruin of
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other eastern tribes and could but
believe that they might share
the same fate. In that case, they, too,
would take refuge in the
West-in the Ohio valley. They saved
their possessions there
for that purpose. And in speaking of
their fine holdings in that
valley they designated them as "The
Land of Tomorrow", that
is, the land in which they intended to
live in the future if thrown
out of their present homes.
Hah-she'-trah, or George Wright, was the
sage of the Wyan-
dots.
He lived to a great age, and died on the Wyandot Re-
serve, in what is now Oklahoma, in 1899.
His father was a St.
Regis Seneca, and his youth was spent
among the Iroquois in
New York and Canada. He was a man of
great intelligence, and
he had the instinct of the historian. He
belonged by both kinship
and adoption to the Wolf Clan of the
Wyandots, and his name
signifies "The Footprint of the
Wolf". I knew him well for a
quarter of a century. Much of what I have written here under
the head of "Kentucky" he told
me.
And he said more. The word Kah'-ten-tah'-teh is of the
Wyandot tongue. It means, in the abstract, a day. It may
mean a period of time, and can be used
for past or future time.
When shortened to Ken-tah'-teh it means
"tomorrow", or "the
coming day", though it is not the
word ordinarily used for those
terms. But it came to be the word used
to apply to the Iroquoian
possessions on the Ohio, and, gradually,
to those on the south
side of the Ohio. That is, these
holdings constituted "The Land
of Tomorrow", or "The land
where we will live Tomorrow"-
"The Land where we will live in the
future". A good transla-
tion of the word as it came to apply to
the country of Kentucky
is "The Land of Tomorrow".
This Wyandot word, like other Indian
proper names, was
corrupted by the whites. "Ken-tah'-teh" easily became
"Can-
tocky", "Cantuckee", or
"Kaintuckee", and, finally, through vari-
ous changes, assumed its present form- Kentucky,
"The land
of Tomorrow".
I have no doubt as to this being the
true origin and correct
significance of the name Kentucky.
Topeka, Kansas, August 18, 1920.