•« DID THE ROMANS COLONIZE AMERICA ? " 645 



great quantities by the ancient aborigines along the Chicago River (Onion River) 

 and over the marshy flats adjacent. Mr. Moore would have us believe that the 

 name means the City of Jehovah ! What a drop there is, from his Latin afflatus 

 down to the level of Indian simplicity ! On pages 370-1, Vol. VIII, Mr. Moore 

 says : "In some of our northwestern States the term ' Minne' is often found in 

 ' the native Indian names of waters ^ * * . It is 



' evident that some natural fact gave birth to the expression ' Minne.' What was 



* this fact ? * * * Geology and physiography unfold 

 ' their testimonies. * * * The English pioneer pushes 

 ' into that same northwestern country and everywhere the same natural facts pre- 

 '■ sent themselves, and they are marked down on our maps simply the red or the 

 '' Vermillion, and if v/e look into the geographical literature of the country, there 

 ^ we shall find the Great Red River (of the North), Vermillion Lake, Red Lake, 



' etc. Underlying the country are vast deposits of red clay, red sandstone, and 

 ' Vermillion earth. Many of the waters there have in consequence the reddish 

 ' tinge. * * * If we open our authorities on language 



' we find in our Indian ' Minne ' merely the Latin minio, which in plain English 



* means precisely the red or the red vermillion clay. It would be difficult to find 

 ' verbal testimonies more conclusive than in those Minnesota names. * 

 ^* * The legend says that Minne-ton-qua means' thundering water.' 

 / The Latin has tons for thundering and the ' qua ' is but an abbreviation of aqua. 

 ' Minne-ha-ha reveals one of the Roman idioms, etc. In analyzing the word 

 ^ Minne-h-aha we discover a superfluous h. * * * By 

 ' reference to authorities on the Latin language we find that the letter h is often 

 ' an abbreviation of the word habeo — to hold. The word Minnehaha would 

 ' therefore mean river that holds red or vermillion clay. The waters do hold the 

 ' red element for a long distance." 



In the above quotations we have Mr. Moore's attempt at derivation of the 

 words Minne Tonka (not Ton-qua as he spells it,) and Minne-ha-ha. It is proper 

 to say that these names come from the Sioux or Dakota Indian tongue. The 

 word which signifies water in that tongue is Min-ne ; it in no sense is taken to 

 mean red. The Sioux words meaning red are Sha, or Duta, the last properly 

 signifying scarlet. The word signifying thunder in that language is Wa-kin-yan, 

 also the word signifying big, or great, is Ton-ka. ^ And again the words Min-ne- 

 ha-ha signify waterfalls, ro literally, curling waters, and is always applied to 

 waterfalls. The words Min-ne Ton-ka signify Water Big or Big Water. Here 

 I must say that the lake so named up in Minnesota got its cognomen from Gov- 

 ernor Ramsey of that State. Its Indian name (Sioux) was Mde Tan-ka, Lake Big, 

 or Big Lake. There is perhaps no other State in the Union having so much 

 lake area of pure clear water as has Minnesota, and there is not a lake, or pond, 

 large or small, in the State which has a tinge of red in its waters, nor even so 



1 The n in each of these words has the nasal sound of n iu bring, and the 7i in the word 

 ha-ha has a rude guttural sound very much like the sound one makes in hawking a fish-bone 

 from the throat. 



