INDEX

Women, aid to Volunteers of 1812, I,

554; exempted from imprisonment for
debt, II, 614

Wood, Abraham, I, 43

Wood, A. T., II, 1096, 1007

Woodbury, II, 899

Woodford, Catesby, IV, 254

Woodford County, I, 74, 291; II, 685,
807, 1100, 1113

History of Kentucky

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND MEANING OF NAMES

To determine the true origin and meaning of historical and geographical names is frequently a difficult matter. Sometimes it is impossible. It has required many years to work out the origin and meaning of some of the important names connected with the history of Kentucky. It is believed, however, that these points are finally settled here.

Kentucky is a beautiful word, derived from the Wyandot dialect of the Iroquoian tongue. As a name for the state it is splendid. No other state has a name of more beauty, dignity, sublimity. Its significance is prophetic of coming greatness, of progress, of leadership in free, independent, and untrammeled government for and by the people under the law, of which she was the pioneer in the Mississippi Valley-if, indeed, not in all America.

KENTUCKY

"Mead

The origins urged for the name of Kentucky are erroneous. ow-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. 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. 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 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 To-morrow" that is, the land in which they intended to live in the future if thrown out of their present home.

Häh-she'-träh, or George Wright, was the sage of the Wyandots. He lived to a great age, and died on the Wyandot Reserve, 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

Vol. I-5

1

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 signified "The Foot-print of the Wolf." The writer knew him well for a quarter of a century. Much of what is written here under the head of "Kentucky," was acquired from him.1

And he said more. The word Käh'-ten-täh'-těh 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-täh'těh it means "to-morrow," 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 To-morrow," or "The Land where we will live To-morrow" "The Land where we will live in the future." A good translation 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-täh'-těh" easily became "Cantocky," "Cantuckee," or "Kaintuckee," and, finally, through various changes, assumed its present form-Kentucky, "The Land of To-morrow."

There can be little or no doubt as to this being the true origin and correct significance of the name Kentucky.

OHIO

It is strange that students still perpetuate or attempt to perpetuate the errors which have long surrounded the origin 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 misapprehension of the explorers and pioneers.

The word Ohio means great-not beautiful. It is an Iroquoian word. In Wyandot it is O-hē'-zhū (ō-hē’-zhū). In the Mohawk and Cayuga it is O-he'-yō (ō-he'yō). In the Oneida it is O-he' (ō-he'). In the Seneca it is the same as in the Wyandot. The Wyandots called the river the O-he'-zhū (ō-hē’-zhū)—the Great River. All the Iroquois called it the Great River. It ran from their western possessions to the gulfthe 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.2

1 The author makes apology for speaking here, and at another point in this paper, in a personal way. The meaning could be better expressed by doing so, and expressed much more briefly.

2 Ohio is derived from the Iroquois. The original is variously spoken in the different dialects. In Wyandot it is ō-he'-zhū; in Mohawk and Cayuga it is ō-he'-yō; in Onondaga and Tuscarora it is ō-he'-yě; in Oneida it is ō-he'; in Seneca it is very nearly the same as in Wyandot. Darlington, in his Christopher Gist's Journals, p. 94, and Morgan in his League of the Iroquois, say this word means "fair," "beautiful," and that the Iroquois called the Ohio the Beautiful River. The French so called it (La Belle Riviere), but there is no evidence that they secured the name from any Indian original.

The word does not mean “fair," neither does it mean "beautiful." It means great. The Iroquois, therefore, called the Ohio the Great River. The Wyandots called it ō-he'-zhu Yan'-dä-wä'-ye-Great River. And in the various dialects of the Iroquois it is so called without exception. They give the stream that name from its source to the Gulf of Mexico; with them it is the main stream and has but one name. When I became acquainted with the Wyandots they told me of hunting trips to the "Sunken Lands" on the Ohio. "But," I replied, "there are no sunken lands on the Ohio." "Yes," they said, “plenty on Ohio; plenty by New Madrid."

MISSISSIPPI

This name is of Algonquian origin. Sipu in that tongue means river. The traditions of the Delawares tell of migration 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 descendants believed they had and applied to it always the name given it by their ancestors in an early age. In its widespread 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 Mississippi. 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 carried any such meaning. For it does not.

THE TENNESSEE AND TRIBUTARIES

On the map of South Carolina and Georgia, 1733, published in London in that year, in a pamphlet supposed to have been written by General Oglethorpe, the Tennessee River is marked "Cussetaolias Hochelepe" River. It is there marked down as a long straight river rising east of the "Meridian of Charles Town," and flowing west into the Ohio. Ramsey says that the Indians called this river Kallamuchee, which he believed to be the original name of the stream. He believed that the first explorers named it Riviere des Cheraquis, or Cosquinanbeaux. If he is correct, the first Europeans to explore and map the Tennessee River were the French. One of the principal Cherokee towns, in 1730, was Nequassee, which is located by Adair in the mountains at the sources of the Hiwassee River. Here Sir Alexander Cumming held a treaty with all the chiefs of the Cherokees in that year. He designated a chief named Moytoy, of Telliquo, to be the head chief of the whole Cherokee Nation, which consisted at that time of the Lower Town, the Middle Towns, the Valley Towns, and the Overhill Towns. Like all other kings, Moytoy wanted to take high place among sovereigns. He wanted to open an acquaintance or correspondence with the ruler of England, so he was sent on an embassy to that august personage. He carried the crown of the Cherokees with him. It consisted of five eagletails, and four scalps of enemies of the Cherokees. The Crown had to be brought from the chief town of the Cherokee Nation, which was named Tanassee. This town was in the country of the Overhill Cherokees, which seems to have always been the principal community of the Cherokee people. Ramsey says that this is the first mention of Tanassee. He says the town was on the west bank of the present Little Tennessee River, a few miles above the mouth of Tellico, and afterwards gave the name to Tennessee River and to the state.3

In speaking of the Cherokees, in 1702, M. Pericaut mentions the Tennessee River. He says "ten leagues from the mouth of this river (Ohio) another falls into it called Kasquinempas (Tennessee). It takes its source from the neighborhood of the Carolinas and passes through the village of the Cherokees." 4

"But New Madrid is on the Mississippi," I insisted. "We call him Ohio-all along, Ohio; not call him Mississippi any place." The Iroquois must have had at some time a name for the Mississippi above the mouth of the Ohio, but those I have met do not remember it.-The Heckewelder Narrative, edited by William Elsey Connelley, The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, Ohio, pp. 162, 163, note. 8 Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee, 47, note.

4 Fifth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 139.