call it Kuwohi
Uluru and Denali …
Mackinaw or nac?
The U.S. Board of Geographic Names this week approved a formal request by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. to change the name of the highest peak in the sprawling Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Clingman’s Dome to Kuwohi.
Kuwohi, pronounced “ku-whoa-hee,” is one of the most popular sites in the park, with more than 650,000 visitors per year. It is the tallest point in Tennessee, the third-highest summit east of the Mississippi River.
I do want to point out that Clingman’s Dome was NOT named after a General in the Confederate States Army but it was named after a feller who went on to become a General in the CSA. Not that this makes any difference but I was happy to learn that back in the day geographer Arnold Guyot was not trying to honor anyone connected with the Confederates but a fellow geographer. A small, and now moot, point.
This is not something that has been proposed or something that has been set in motion, this is a done deal starting last Wednesday.
Who knew the U.S. Board of Geographic Names could move so fast?
The highest mountain in the Smokies is now Kuwohi.
And aside for the need for lots of new signs and maps in the National Park, the matter has been settled.
And I think that’s fine.
When the Australians changed the name of Ayers Rock to Uluru, Bill Bryson wrote that Uluru was “its more respectful Aboriginal name.”
When President Obama changed the name of Mount McKinley back to Denali, not much more than some odd Ohioans even seemed to notice.
I have to point out that Denali is a perfectly beautiful name and that opinion has nothing to do with that I have a beautiful Grand daughter by that name.
I grew up in the Great Lakes State of Michigan.
The road map of Michigan is filled with Anishinaabe names that carry over from the days before Europeans got to the place.
Consider the names of Michigan rivers like Potagannissing and Sebewaing.
In his book about traveling around the United States, Blue Highways (Boston, Little, Brown, 1982), William Least Heat Moon writes, “On a map, lower Michigan looks like a mitten with the squatty peninsula between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron forming the Thumb. A region distinctive enough to have a name was the only lure I needed, but also it didn’t hurt to have towns with fine, unpronounceable names like Quanicassee, Sebewaing, Wahjamega, or other names like Pigeon, Bad Axe, Pinnebog, Rescue, Snover, and—what may be the worst town name in the nation— Freidberger.”
Then there is the Mackinaw region of Michigan that includes upper lower Michigan and lower upper Michigan in an area called ‘The Straits of Machinaw” or is Mackinac or Michilimackinac?
Michigan’s own, Bruce Catton, in his book, Michigan: A Bicentennial History (New York, Norton, 1976) put it this way:
Michilimackinac is a stumbling block for anyone who writes or talks about Michigan. There are innumerable ways to spell it, there is argument over its meaning, and there is no logic whatever to its pronunciation; on top of which, it does not stay put properly as a historic place should. Before Marquette’s time, the name was applied to the entire Straits area, which was the Michilimackinac country. Today, mercifully abbreviated to Mackinac, the name is applied only to the island out in the Straits — a beautiful place, the only spot in the state of Michigan where no automobiles are allowed. South of the island, at the tip of the lower peninsula, there is a village named Mackinaw City; perversely, here the name is spelled the way the name of the island is pronounced. In any case, when Marquette and his charges arrived, the great name was being applied to a more or less intermittent and informal trading center that had come into existence around a little bay on the east side of a point on the north shore of the Straits. Later, it meant the Mackinaw City area, where a notable fort was built, and still later it meant the island, where there was another notable fort. Men said that Michilimackinac meant “great turtle,” in the Ottawas’ language, but an Ottawa chief in the nineteenth century said that this was not so at all; the name came, he insisted, from a small tribe that originally lived on the island, a folk called the Mi-shene-mackinaw-go; and anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.
Kuwohi.
Uluru.
Denali.
Anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.
BTW: My sister and brother in law just sent us a care package of Mackinac Island Fudge – I can attest … there is nothing like in the world 🙂
No Haiku For You 