644 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



about native manners, customs and languages in countries of Spanish discovery, 

 and over which they have dommated, than any other. How funny Mr. Moore's 

 meaning as he gives it^ of the river name Orinoco, is, when we know that it means 

 in the native language of that region "Crooked River." He makes it " Orien- 

 aqua," or " River that runs towards the sunrise." On page 367 he renders 

 Michilimackinac, first into Mackinaw, from which he makes an easy jump into 

 " Maaqua-na." It is well known to every school-boy in this northwest that the 

 work Michilimackinac was the name given to a certain island near the Straits of 

 Mackinaw by the Chippewa Indians, and means "Turtle Island." I would ask 

 Mr. Moore where he gets his term Aqua, meaning water, out of the above true 

 meaning? 



On page 368 he again refers to the river names Mississippi and Missouri, 

 which I will notice in passing, to say that I have fully disposed of the origin and 

 meaning of the first, and now assert that the last was never the Indian name of 

 the river to which it is now appUed, but was given to it by the white men who 

 first traversed the country from its mouth westward, because the powerful tribe 

 of Indians which they found along its valley were known by the name of Mes- 

 sourias, which name, now changed to Missouri, is given to the State and river. 

 The ancient Indian name of the Missouri was Pekitanoni-si-pi, a name given to 

 it near to its mouth, doubtless by the " IlHni " Indians. I have not yet ascer- 

 tained the meaning of the name, but I do know that all the tribes living along 

 this river above Council Bluffs, call ii^ the Big Muddy River. The Sioux call it 

 almost universally Min-nesho-sha Tanka, literally water, dirty, big. Where then 

 is the claim of Mr. Moore to rest, that the word Missouri means " the gathering 

 river ? " His statement to that effect is the purest nonsense. Equally so his 

 statement, that the word Jehovah in any sense or form occurred in the ancient 

 Choctaw tongue. 



Now, the syllable Chuc, which Mr. Moore makes do duty for the expression 

 Great Father, or God, has in its forms of Chi, Che, or Chu, quite a different 

 meaning. For instance, here in Iowa we have a river, the ancient Indian name 

 of which was Chi ca-qua-se-po. Taking his analysis for the meaning of this river 

 name, we have Chic — God, or Father, Jehovah, aqua, — water, and as se-po 

 means river, he would render it God's Water River, and he would go into rhap- 

 sodies over his supposed great discovery of the scolastic knowledge of the Latin 

 tongue by the breech-clouted Indian who named this river. Now let us see what 

 the name of this river means in the Indian tongue to which the words belong. 

 It is Algonquin, and in that tongue Chi-ca means a stink or bad, strong smell of 

 any kind, and as applied and modified in this instance it means Skunk, or strong 

 stinking animal, hence the Indian name of this river rendered into English is 

 Skunk River. Now how divine it does appear, and how scholarly the Indian 

 must have been ;" schooled in science and the Latin language," to be able to 

 give the stream such a high-sounding title. 



The word Chicago is also of Algonquin origin, and in the case of the city of 

 ha t name means Onion, which is a strong smelling plant, and was gathered in 



