Quote:
Originally Posted by bilbao58
I always heard "Chicago" was the Anglicized version of the Gallicized version of the Native American word for smelly onions.
So basically it took the French to get from Shikakwa to Chicago.
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There’s recently been some debate about that.
From Garcilaso de la Vega writing about the Hernando De Soto Expedition
Years 1539-1543:
“… a large river, which because it was the greatest of all those that our Spaniards saw in La Florida,[3] they called it the Rio Grande, without giving it any other name. Juan Coles [La Vega informant[4]] says in his Relation (i.e., report) that
in the Indian language this river was called Chucagua, and below we shall describe its grandeur at more length, for it was a wonderful thing.”[5]
In 1670, the De Soto Spanish narrative gets translated into French
In 1677, La Salle makes a plan to explore the Mississippi, and in 1679 “Checagou” appears on a map of Illinois for the first time.
Henri Joutel arrives later in 1687, and is told by the Potawatomi that Chicago sounds like their slang word for ‘skunk-weed ’ although the proper Potawatomi name for garlic was
wanissisia.
There’s a good chance that the word “Chicago” is another name for the Mississippi River that’s been transliterated from Chisca —> Spanish —> French —> Ojibwe— > English
According to Hennepin, Chicago was also known as Fort Creveceur at one time.
“An Account of the Building of a New Fort on the River of the Illinois Named by the Savages Che-cau-gou and by US
Fort Creveceur.”