17 
Legler■—Wisconsin Place-Names. 
other. In this century, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen and 
Horsemen, who three hundred years ago collectively claimed 
all of the Horth American continent, except a few Colonies 
struggling for a, foothold in the thin tide-water strip between 
the Atlantic and the Alleghenies, are left without an acre of 
their vast domains; the story of their explorations, their for¬ 
est fortresses, their attempts to establish feudal empires, remains 
recorded in the names that, still dot the, modern map from| ocean 
to ocean. 2 
As a rule (which, however, has notable exceptions) it will 
be found that the streams and lakes and mountains preserve 
the names given therm by the red men, or their equivalents in 
European tongues; the cities and villages bear the names, trans¬ 
planted from European soil. Thus may be found scattered 
over this continent, in juxtaposition to names of undoubted 
Indian origin, a nomenclature whereby the immigrant exiles 
sought to preserve in the wilderness the associations endeared 
to them in youth. 
Some striking feature in the landscape suggested to the im¬ 
aginative savage mind a term, descriptive of it. The analogous 
mind of the trappers and pioneers who pushed the frontier 
ever westward applied names on the same principle. Big Bone 
Lick, Bad Axe, Hickory Flats, etc., may be cited in illustra¬ 
tion. It is to be regretted that the apt Indian names were 
not permitted to remain in all cases., or that the, builders of 
commonwealths and cities did not confine their selections for 
christening to such old-world names as would suggest historical 
significance. For instance, “the name of Louisiana reminds us 
that, in the days of the Grand Monarque, France was the rival 
of England in the colonization of the Western World; the 
nantes of Virginia, of the Carolina# and of Georgia give us 
the dates of the first foundation of England’s colonial empire.” 
2 “How rapidly such a stratification of names can be effected is shown 
in the case of North America, where we find a layer of Indian names, 
like Massachusetts, Niagara, Canada, Quebec, Erie, or Ontario, overlaid 
by Franco-Indian terms like Huron or Illinois, or pure French names 
such as Vermont, lake Superior or Montreal, by Dutch names like 
Brooklyn or Hoboken, with a Spanish stratum such as Florida, Col¬ 
orado, Montana or Rio Grande, and the whole overlaid by such pure 
English names as Westpoint, Maryland, or Springfield—Taylor’s Names 
and Their Histories, p. 3. 
