A fresh look at the place name Chicago

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

An excellent example of an uninformed re-transcribing of an original final 8, excellent because it is quite to the point, is the historically recorded names of two Miami-Illinois-speaking Tamaroa leaders in the late 1600s and early 1700s. These men's personal names were the Miami-Illinois term for the striped skunk. Even though they were commonly spelled "Chicagou" ~ "Chicago" in the literature,24 these terms, which would be written phonetically as *[sikaaku] and *[sikaako] respectively, have never existed in Miami-Illinois; there is only the independent noun sikaakwa and the initial stem sikaakw-, the latter used in forming composite expressions involving the striped skunk. This understanding naturally implies that these men's names derive from an original form written *Chicag8 that was mistakenly rewritten and .

Another good example of how 8 has been commonly misinterpreted is found in the holograph journal of Father Jacques Marquette. Here we find the term , which is his recording of the name of a famous Illinois Indian trader he met in 1675 during his winter stay at present-day Chicago.25 In this man's name the first 8 stands predictably for the sound w, but the final 8 was intended by Marquette to represent none other than wa, since the Illinois term in question is saahsaakweehsiwa 'copperhead' (Agkistrodon contortrix). However, note that Marquette's term, which was judiciously left untouched in the early Cramoisy French-only publication of the relations, the reports written in New France by the Jesuits, was transliterated at the turn of the twentieth century to .26 In this case, it was reshaped with an ending by an English speaker who had no more understanding of the letter 8 than did nearly all historic French speakers. What makes this erroneous spelling particularly troubling is the fact that, not only is the sound u (represented here by orthographic not possible at the end of a noun in Miami-Illinois, the sound sequence iu represented here by orthographic does not even exist in Miami-Illinois at the end of any word.

Father Jacques Gravier, the Jesuit priest who replaced Allouez in 1688 as missionary to the Illinois Indians and who spoke fluent Illinois, also wrote down our place name several times in a report compiled in 1701, although he no doubt knew of the name long before that year. Of course, Gravier wrote , , and ,27 which are the expected French spellings. His recordings of this place name thus represent the earliest authoritative spellings of it on record. Indeed, the spelling created by La Salle as well as all the variants based on the explorer's term are but garblings of the original native place name that Gravier spelled carefully and intelligently.

Given the benefit of the doubt, La Salle could have used 8 in his original spelling of this place name. This letter could have then been retranscribed incorrectly to ou by Claude Bernou, his influential abbot friend in France who processed his letters. Or else La Salle could have picked up the name with final 8 from a priest's notebook, since Jesuit and Recollect missionaries alike used the letter 8, and then refitted it himself with final ou. La Salle hated and harassed the Jesuits but got along fairly well with the Recollects. Although it is not impossible that he got the term from a Jesuit notebook, the odds seem to favor his having seen it among the notes of a Recollect priest, perhaps in something penned by Father Zenobe Membre. Membre, a member of La Salle's entourage, did exhibit an interest in learning the Illinois language. In this connection, however, Swenson's belief that Membre actually learned Illinois in a few months is fantasy.28