SOME INDIAN PLACE NAMES IN NEBRASKA'

BY MELVIN R. GILMORE

This paper briefly discusses some place names of Nebraska which are derived, directly or indirectly, from the aboriginal inhabitants and some of doubtful origin which are supposed to be derived from them. Some of these names, either true to form or more or less mutilated, have been transferred to our own nomenclature some translated, some mistranslated, some misapplied. Some of these commemorative place names were given to the tribes by themselves, others by their white successors. Some of these names are nondescript, and I have found no satisfactory explanation for them.

I shall not here treat in detail the place names still employed by the tribes which formerly occupied the region. It is sufficient to say that each tribe possesses an ample nomenclature, even providing for all the small streams. Their place names disclose a wealth of legendary and mythologic lore which research has scarcely touched. Moreover, they indicate a world of aboriginal economics and industries which is wholly unexplored.

Originally all names of persons or of places in all nations had a meaning, and generally a special fitness of application. This statement applies equally to the nomenclature of the aboriginal Americans and to that of our European races. Names are historic monuments, sometimes significant and worthy, sometimes obscure, trivial or frivolous; but they always have their story to tell.

Washington Irving has so well expressed the poverty of our geographic nomenclature, at the same time calling

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1A paper read before the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, December 29, 1914.

attention to a comparatively little-used but wonderfully fertile resource for enriching the same, that I shall here quote his words. He says, "and here we cannot but pause to lament the stupid, commonplace, and often ribald names entailed upon the rivers and other features of the great west, by traders and settlers. As the aboriginal tribes of these magnificent regions are still in existence, the Indian names might easily be recovered; which, besides being in general more sonorous and musical, would remain mementoes of the primitive lords of the soil, of whom in a little while scarce any traces will be left. Indeed, it is to be wished that the whole of our country could be rescued, as much as possible, from the wretched nomenclature inflicted upon it, by ignorant and vulgar minds; and this might be done, in a great degree, by restoring the Indian names, wherever significant and euphonious."

Nebraska contained, either partially or wholly within its borders, the following tribes: In the northwest were the Teton Dakota; along the lower course of the Niobrara River, on the north side, were the Ponca; in the northeast, from the Niobrara southward to the Platte River, were the Omaha; south of the Platte River, in the southeast, were the Oto; next to these were the Iowa, partly on the east side of the Missouri River in what is now the state of Iowa, and partly west of the Missouri in what is now the extreme southeast of Nebraska. South of the Oto were the Kansa, from which tribe the state of Kansas is named. The Kansa domain extended only a little way within what is now the south boundary of Nebraska. All these tribes are of the Siouan stock, hence their languages are cognate, although mutually unintelligible to each other. In the middle part of the state from north to south lay the domain of the Pawnee. This was a nation consisting of four tribes of the Caddoan stock. The structure of their language is distinctly different from that of the Sioux nation. In southwest Nebraska and eastern Colorado were the Cheyenne

and Arapaho tribes, of the great Algonquian linguistic stock.

The tribal names of places are usually descriptive of some physical feature or commemorative of some person or event in the tribal history, or they carry the idea of some legendary or mythologic relation. Each tribe had its own nomenclature for all the region with which it was acquainted. Thus any given stream, lake or hill may have six or seven different names among as many different tribes. It may be that the same notable feature is the motive of the name by which a place is called by two or more tribes, but as the languages differ the names will be quite different in form.

When taken serially, and considered in relation to traditions and other known facts, place names often show lines of migrations of tribes. For example, in northeast Nebraska there is a small stream marked on the maps as Iowa Creek, although when white men came into the region the Iowa were one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles farther down the Missouri River. The name of the creek is derived from that by which the Omaha call it, namely, Mahouda-waa-i-te. Mah°uda is the Omaha name of the Iowa tribe, and their name of the creek means "Creekwhere-the-Iowa-planted". According to the traditions of the Iowa, Omaha, and Ponca, these tribes, in the order named, migrated from farther up the Missouri River into the region where they were found at the advent of white men, the Iowa farthest down, and each tribe afterward occupying, successively, lower reaches of the river. Likewise there is a place on the Dismal River, in central western Nebraska, which the Omaha call Pado1ka-na"sa-gah°etha", The (place) where-the-Pado"ka-built-a-fort. When white men came into the region the Comanche, or Pado"ka as they are called by the Omaha, were much farther south, but from several sources we know that they were formerly in the western part of the sand-hills region. This Omaha place name is corroborative of the fact.

Names invite and reward careful study and exposition, for they are records of the past and may throw much light on the manner and means of life and cast of thought of the people, with some indication of the time of their occupancy. But if this research is to be accomplished it must be done very soon, before the death of all the old people of the tribes; for they alone can give certain information. The young people have scanty knowledge of the tribal lore, because they have generally been absent all the years of their youth, attending schools of European culture, from which they return imbued with alien interests and cares. When the old people understand my purpose in seeking such information from them they often become eagerly interested and very painstakingly impart their knowledge to me. When they are uncertain they will make no statement for fear of error. An old man of the Omaha tribe said to me: "Kageha" (friend), "I am glad to tell you all that I know, for the time will come when the Omaha will be walking altogether in the white man's way. We old people shall be gone. Unless you write down these things now, while we can tell them to you, the knowledge will be lost, and our descendants will not know what sort of people their ancestors were, how they lived, or what they accomplished."

Among the names which have been adopted into our nomenclature I mention the following: A river in northern Nebraska retains its Dakota name, Keya Paha, which means Turtle Hill. Leshara is a town in Saunders county,

2 The act of Congress March 2, 1861, for the organization of the territory of Dakota calls this stream "the Keha Paha or Turtle Hill River ." U. S. Statutes at Large, XII, 239. An act of March 3, 1865, provided for the construction of a road "from Niobrara to the mouth of Turtle Hill River," and to Virginia City, "with a branch from the mouth of Turtle Hill River to Omaha." Ibid., XIII, 516. As late as December 21, 1878, the Oakdale Pen and Plow calls the stream Turtle Creek. Leach, History of Antelope County, p. 87. Section 20 of the organic act for Dakota provides, "That, the river heretofore known as the 'River Aux Jacques', or 'James River', shall here

situated on the site of a former Pawnee village which was occupied by two tribes of the Pawnee nation, namely Kitkehaki and Chaui. Pita Leshara (Man Chief) was chief of the Chaui, and a part of his name has been taken for the name of the present town. Minichaduza Creek, in northern Nebraska, carries its Dakota name, which is aptly descriptive of the stream; mini is the Dakota word for water, chaduza is the word for swift.

Nebraska, the name of the state, is an approximation to the Omaha name of its largest river, which we now call by the French translation of the Omaha name, Ni-bthaska; ni, water; bthaska, flat.

Niobrara, the name of a river in the northern part of the state, is likewise an approximation to its Omaha name, Niubthatka, meaning spreading river. This is descriptive of its widening over sandbars in its lower course. Ni means water and bthatka, spreading. The Dakota name of this river, Mini-tanka Wakpa, carries the same idea. But the Pawnee name, Kits'kakis, means Rapid River; kitsu, water; kakis, rapid or swift. Both these names. Spreading River and Rapid River or Running Water, are vividly descriptive of this stream.

The city of Omaha bears the name of the tribe within whose former domain it is situated. Pohocco is the name of a precinct in Saunders county. It is a rather mutilated form of the Pawnee name of a prominent hill in that vicinity, on the Platte River, but outside the limits of that precinct. The Pawnee name of the hill is Pahuk, meaning headland or promontory. It is the site of the principal myth of the Pawnee mythology. I identified this site in after be called the Dakota river." But this scintillation of fine taste was ineffectual. In derogation of the law, this river is, called "James or Dakota" on a map issued from the general land office in 1912, and it is so called in the Rand & McNally Atlas. In Crane's Atlas Dakota is put first. Thus, with doubtful propriety, the awkward Indian name persisted, while there seems to have been a conspiracy to do away with the musical and otherwise appropriate Indian name of the Dakota river.-ED.