Indian
Names on Wisconsin's Map
Virgil
J. Vogel
Of
all the states of the American union, none has a name that has
been spelled in more ways, or interpreted more variously, than
Wisconsin. Among the spellings listed are Mesconsin, Meskousing,
Mishkonsing, Ouisconsens, Ouisconsin, Ouisconsing, Ouiscousing,
Ouiskonsin, Owisconsing, Quisconsing, Weeskonsan, Wisconsan,
Wisconsin, Wishkonsing, and Wiskonsin. The name has been attributed
to the French, Menominee, Ojibwa, Potawatami, Sauk-Fox, and Winnebago
languages.
Place names
are cultural artifacts that tell us as much about how people
lived as do relics dug from the ground, writes Virgil Vogel,
one of America's foremost authorities on place names. They are
historical records from which the location and migration of people,
plants, and animals can be charted. Onalaska and Aztalan, not
surprisingly, are place names transplanted to Wisconsin from
the far north and south. Some names tell of topographic features
that have long since disappeared or are little noticed today.
Beaver Dam once had an Indian name meaning just that; Sheboygan,
"big pipe" in Ojibwa, described the shape of a river
bend. Other names are vestiges of ancient languages nowhere else
recorded. Some commemorate historic events: Winneconne is believed
by many to mean "place of the skulls."
The Indian
names of Wisconsin's towns, rivers, and lakes reveal the minds
of the Indian peoples, their cosmic views, their values, their
relation to their environment , and their ways of life and convey
as well something of the history of their white invaders.
Virgil Vogel's
thirty years of research into Native American influence on geographical
names has resulted in an absorbing account that illuminates the
history and culture of Wisconsin Indians. Vogel tells his story
thematically—names from the spirit world, names of trails
and portages, French-Indian personal names, tribal names, and
so on—to show that place names are part of a larger cultural
and natural world. In recovering the history and meaning of these
names, he has restored an important and colorful part of America's
heritage.
Virgil J.
Vogel,
professor emeritus of history and social science at Harry S. Truman College,
City Colleges of Chicago, is the author of Indian place name
books for Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan in addition to This
Country Was Ours: A Documentary History of the American Indian
and American Indian Medicine.
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Back in print
January 2005
LC:
91-007294 E
342 pp. 6 x 9
7 photos,
2 maps
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