A fresh look at the place name Chicago

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2003 by McCafferty, Michael

It appears that the place name "Chicago" first entered the annals of history in 1680 in a report composed by the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. It was published in the form . (Angled brackets are used to indicate an attested historical spelling.) La Salle used this name in that year instance to refer to an area where there was a portage between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River.7 He had not actually been over this portage route at this point in his life. But he had no doubt heard about it and the name for it at least by sometime between 5 January and 1 March 1680, during his first stay in the Illinois Country.8

Then, between 6 January and 11 January 1682, on the way to his famous Mississippi voyage, La Salle actually passed through the Chicago area.9 In a report written in situ he applied the name again published in the form to the Des Plaines River.10 This designation agrees with Swenson's claim that Chicagoland's eponymous leeks would have grown near this particular stream." Indeed, there are good primary-source data indicating that, until at least around the mid-1700s, the French knew the Des Plaines River by one of the words in the Miami-Illinois language for the wild leek.

The earliest Europeans in the Chicago area were an exploration team composed of Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, Jacques Largillier, Pierre Moreau, Jean Tiberge, Jean Plattier, and a seventh Frenchman whose identity is unknown.12 In the late summer of 1673, while on their way from the Mississippi to Green Bay via Lake Michigan, these men passed over the Chicago portage. They were soon followed in 1675 by Father Marquette, Largillier, and Pierre Porteret, who passed over it twice that year, then by the Jesuit missionary Claude-Jean Allouez, who came through the area in 1677." As far as anyone has determined, none of these men recorded the Miami-Illinois name for the Des Plaines River. It is not unusual, however, that they apparently failed to record a name for this riverine passage. La Salle himself was on the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan continually for years without ever recording an Indian name for that stream. We are confident that, as far as he was concerned, the St. Joseph already had a name: "la riviere des Miamis," the French moniker. However, La Salle did put on the map. At the same time, there is clear and conclusive evidence within the spelling itself that indicates its appearance in La Salle's 1680 report was not the first time this place name was written down.

La Salle was responsible for bringing several important North American place names of native origin, including "Ohio," "Wabash," and "Milwaukee" to the attention of Europeans. Even so, he did not speak any American Indian languages and, as a result, the forms found in his cache of indigenous place names are not always clearly portrayed. Indeed, La Salle was a monolingual French explorer and soldier of fortune whose place name legacy is quite hit-and-miss. On the whole, the evidence suggests that he was generally too preoccupied with his North American dreams and schemes to do solid onomastic work. And his is only one example from among his significant but carelessly compiled inventory of native place names from the late seventeenth century that we are still cleaning up here in the twenty-first century." However, in the case of , intimacy with the early works on the Illinois language as well as knowledge of this language allow us the requisite perspective for understanding the nature of his spelling.