02/28/2003

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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Lake Erie's Name (for the Week of March 2, 2003)

Writer:

Kurt Knebusch
knebusch.1@osu.edu
(330)263-3776

Dear Twig: Where does the "Erie" part of Lake Erie come from?

A long time ago, around 1600 or so, an Indian nation lived, farmed and hunted on the south shore of Lake Erie. Except it wasn't called Lake Erie then.

The nation was called Erielhonan -- "long tail," or "People of the Panther," a reference to the cougars (aka pumas, panthers, mountain lions) of the region. Sometimes the people wore cougar pelts.

The French called the Eries Nation du Chat, "Cat Nation," and the lake Lac du Chat, or "Lake of the Cat."

Later, a short version of Erielhonan was used to name the lake.

Erie.

The Eries reached their peak in the early 1600s, when they numbered 10,000 or more.

But in 1656 the Eries lost a war with the Five Nations alliance -- the Mohawks, Cayugas, Senecas, Oneidas and Onandagas. Many died. Others fled and joined other nations. The Erie nation ceased to be.

By 1838, their namesake, the cougar, would be gone from the region, too.

As Louis Bromfield wrote in The Farm, a novel set in Ohio's early days, "Times were changing. The wilderness was vanishing."

Ch-ch-ch-changed,

Twig

Hey, Editor! Information for this column came from T.E.A.C.H. Great Lakes, http://www.great-lakes.net/teach/; Ohio Sea Grant, http://www.sg.ohio-state.edu/; and First Nations Histories, http://www.tolatsga.org/Compacts.html/.

"Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick," a service of The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, is a weekly science column for kids. Twig is a bow tie-wearing cartoon walkingstick, a type of insect. He's the voice of the column and appears at the left in the hard-copy version. Bob the Bug, Twig's pal, is a pensive bald-headed bug of an unidentified type who doesn't say much and appears in the bottom-right corner. For more information or to receive Twig by mail or e-mail, contact Kurt Knebusch, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691, (330) 263-3776, knebusch.1@osu.edu.