Legler—Wisconsin Place-Names. 
23 
stream is indicated for the first timle, no name is put down. 
Joliet’s map gives it as Miskonsing. Friar Hennepin wrote it 
Onisconsin and again Misconsin, and the French traveler Char¬ 
levoix, who visited this country early in the eighteenth century, 
gave his preference to this form: Ouisconsing. It was not 
long before the final letter was dropped, and this form was re¬ 
tained until the present English spelling superseded that of the 
French. 
From its source in Lake Vieux Desert, on the northern 
boundary line, the stream hows through this state for four hun¬ 
dred and fifty miles. Its descent from the lake to where, at 
Prairie du Chien, it debouches into the Mississippi, is about 
a thousand feet. From the famous portage that has played 
such an important part in Western history, where the Wiscon¬ 
sin turns to the southwest, the current is exceedingly rapid, 
and the distance to the mouth a hundred and eighteen miles. 
The Indian name for Lake Superior was Kitchi-Gami, or, 
as Longfellow has rendered it, Gitcheef-Gumee. The name is 
derived from the Ojibwa tongue, its English equivalent being 
“big water.” Lac de Tracy was a French appellation given, 
in honor of Gen. Tracy, but it was not sufficiently popular to 
take firm; root. On some of the old maps of the seventeenth 
century this great fresh-water sea is given the name of Grand 
Lac des 1STadouessis. The latter word was the appellation by 
which the French usually designated the Sioux Indians. It 
was at the western end of the lake that the Sioux were wont 
, to come in war parties for sudden raids on the villages of their 
old-time foes, the Ojibwas. 
Lake Superior is the only one of the five great lakes that 
has retained the name Frenchmen gave it, Superieur, or Upper 
Lake. This is the more remarkable in that legendary lore is 
associated with every island in this lake, and headland and bay 
on its shores. The Indian fairies known as pukwudj inees had 
their fabled home along the southern shore of Lake Superior, 
amjong the great sand dunes. This pigmy folk is happily de¬ 
scribed in Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” 
Early travelers on Lake Superior ascribe the origin of the 
