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Abstract
A clean linguistic analysis of a place name as important in history and geography as “Kankakee” is presented here. The original place name, from the Miami-Illinois language, while faithfully recorded in the early 1680s by the explorer René de La Salle, was distorted by the French in the years that followed. This article explains the original form of this place name and its development into the form “Kankakee.” It even shows how aspects of the original Indian and French pronunciation of the name are still with us in the English pronunciation of this name.
Notes
1 Portions of the original wetlands have been restored, particularly at the Grand Marsh Lake County Park, in the Beaver Lake area, and in the English Lake area. Richard Schmal, personal communication, February 17 2004.
2 The best copy of Marquette’s map is in Sarah Jones Tucker, comp., Indian Villages of the Illinois Country, vol. ii, Scientific Papers, part I, Atlas (Springfield: Illinois State Museum, 1942), pl. V. The data concerning the Mississippi valley that appears on Franquelin’s map came exclusively from Jolliet’s memory since he had lost Marquette’s written account and one of the priest’s two original maps of the Mississippi voyage earlier that summer in a canoe wreck near Montreal.
3 In addition to “Teakiki,” without an acute accent, La Salle also spelled the term “Theakiki.” See Margry, 1876, 2: 246.
4 The location of the Maroa, or Tamaroa, on Marquette’s map, which he learned from the Kaskaskia, is authoritative, given our knowledge of the accuracy of his cartographic work in general. See Lucien Campeau, “Les Cartes relatives à la découverte du Mississipi par le P. Jacques Marquette et Louis Jolliet,” Les Cahiers des Dix 47 (1992): 47–53. For the authenticity of the Marquette map, see David Buisseret and Carl Kupfer, “Validating the 1673 ‘Marquette Map’.” Journal of Illinois History 14 (Winter 2011): 261–276.
5 See La Salle’s statement: “[...] une grande riviere que les sauvages appeloient Ohio et les autres Mississipi” (a great river that the Indians called Ohio and the others Mississippi), in Margry, 1876, 1: 436; also a statement by Rémy de Courcelles from ca. 1669: “[...] une grande rivière que les Iroquois appellent Ohio et les Outaouas Mississipy” [a great river that the Iroquois call Ohio and the Ottawa Mississippi], ibid., 1:181; see also de Gallinée’s remarks on the Iroquoian hydrological conception for the Ohio River in Jean Delanglez, Life and Voyages of Louis Jolliet (1645–1700) (Chicago: Institute of Jesuit History, 1948), 41. The term ohi·yo? is composed of |o-|, a simple noun prefix that carries no meaning, |-h-| meaning “river,” |-iyo-|, the verb “be big, be great/beautiful,” and | ? |, which represents a glottal stop, the required noun suffix, which also has no meaning. Blair A. Rudes, personal communication, December 29 1997. For another good example of the verb |iyo| in a Northern Iroquoian hydronym, see “Ontario,” which means “(the) lake is big.”
6 The place name “Pimitéoui” does not mean “place of fat,” another skewed La Sallian onomastic legacy. The French spelling represents the Miami-Illinois language term pimiteewi “it burns past,” a reference to prairie fires. Analysis by David J. Costa, personal communication, July 10 1996. This Miami-Illinois term is composed of the initial root pimi- “past, by,” the I.I. final -itee “by heat,” and -wi, the independent I.I. ending. See the folk etymology presented alongside the correct linguistic etymology under the heading “Pimitéoui” in the encyclopedia of the internet site on the history of Chicago, <earlychicago.com.>
7 All English translations of Margry in the present article are the author’s. Parenthetical remarks are also the author’s. All French quotations appear in their original form, irrespective of modern French orthography.
8 Henri de Tonti, La Salle’s right-hand man, concurs when he says, “[...] after going up the River of the Miami [St Joseph River] about twenty-seven leagues, and having no one who could guide us in order to find a portage that led to the River of the Illinois (i.e., the Kankakee) [...]” [après avoir monté la rivière des Miamis environ vingt-sept lieues, et n’ayant personne qui peust nous guider pour trouver un portage qui va a la rivière des Illinois], Margry, 1876, 1: 581.
9 Right before the traveler reaches the Mississippi, Potier correctly states “Le tiatiki coule et courre est” [The Tiatiki flows and runs east] (Potier, Gazettes, ms).
10 Charlevoix came to his translation in an interesting way. He equated La Salle’s “Téakiki” with “Huakiki,” another Miami-Illinois language name for the Kankakee, recorded by the Jesuit missionary Gabriel Marest in 1712. “Huakiki” is a slightly garbled spelling of Miami-Illinois mahweehkiki “it is wolf country.”
11 René Paul, 1816, “A Map Exhibiting the Territorial limits of several Nations & Tribes of Indians agreeably to the notes of A. Chouteau ...,” in Tucker, Indian Villages, pl. XLI. The latter is a map designed for the American government. “Kinkiki” also appears on the map from 1812 drawn by the first American governor of the Illinois Country, Ninian Edwards: Ninian Edwards, 1812, “Illinois River leaving Peoria to go to Chicago,” in Tucker, Indian Villages, pl. XXXV.
12 In French, “Kinkiki” and “Quinquiqui” are pronounced [kẽkikí]. One of the amazing features of the place name “Kankakee” is the fact that the French pronunciation of “Kinkiki” has been remarkably preserved in the modern English pronunciation of this place name, which is [kẽŋkIkí]. Interestingly, the stress falls on the last syllable of “Kankakee,” just as it does in the French pronunciation of “Kinkiki” ˜ “Quinquiqui” — and, in fact, in every word in French having two or more syllables. “Kankakee” as an English language place name should actually follow the same stress pattern we see in “Kentucky,” and it would have, had it not been borrowed into English from French.
13 See excerpt of La Mothe’s letter from April 24 1782, in David A. Baerreis, Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, and Remedio Wycoco-Moore, “Anthropological Report on the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi Indians in Northeastern Illinois,” in David Agee Horr, comp. and ed., Indians of Northeastern Illinois (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1974), 136. A Guillaume Dagnaux known as “Lamotte” was in the company of Delatour at the Miami post in the 1700s. See Frances Krauskopf, “The French in Indiana, 1700–1760: A Political History” (PhD diss. Indiana University, 1953), 104. A Guillaume de Lamothe was on his way to the Miami from Quebec with brothers and associates in 1726. Ibid., 126. For Pierre-Guillaume Lamothe, dit Guillaume Lamothe, see <www.usinternet.com/users/dfnels/lamothe.htm> [Accessed January 6 2014].
14 It should be noted that “Kiakiki,” “Kinkiki,” etc., represent place names used by the French; the Indians would never have stopped using the original morphologically, phonologically, and grammatically correct place name in their own language.
15 Regressive assimilation refers to a phonological process whereby a sound is changed by a sound that follows it. The discrepancy between the two terms’ first vowels is insignificant, since Frenchmen who did not know the Miami-Illinois language often confused native e and i. La Salle correctly heard e; Charlevoix, who had immeasurably less experience with the Miami-Illinois language than La Salle, incorrectly heard i. Note that it was La Salle himself who created the meaningless variant “Teatiki,” which became “Tiatiki.”
16 To split hairs, “Kiakiki” derives from a French pronunciation of La Salle’s original “Téakiki” in the form “Tiakiki.”
17 La Salle’s term also followed a second evolutionary trail: “Téakiki” → “Teatiki,” and “Teatiki,” which has been used by modern French-speaking historians. See, for example, Gérard Malchelosse, “La Salle et le Fort Saint-Joseph des Miamis,” Les Cahiers des Dix 22 (1957): 91–92. La Salle’s original “Téakiki” might have yielded its meaning at a much earlier date had La Salle not muddied the waters with the misspelling of the name in the form “Teatiki” (Margry, 1876, 2: 248). La Salle’s promoter in France, the abbot Claude Bernou, picked up this misspelling and used it right away on his map from the following year (Claude Bernou and M. Peronel, [1682], “Carte de l’Amérique Septentrionale ...,” in Tucker, Indian Villages, pl. VIII). Bernou was an influential force in the development of early French geographic conceptions pertaining to North America, including the spellings of Native place names, even though he did not know anything about Indian languages. He exerted this influence because of his connection to La Salle and to various important people in France. In this way, the Bernou map left its mark on place naming with its errant “Teatiki.” Even though La Salle’s many good, consistently formed renderings of “Téakiki” appeared in various publications, including Bellin’s map of 1745 and De Vaugondy’s influential atlas from 1750, his meaningless “Teatiki,” with Bernou’s “help,” took root in the French lexicon and went on to have a very active life of its own — and not just in Europe but especially in the Illinois Country, right alongside “Téakiki” and la rivière des Illinois. See Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix and Nicolas Bellin, 1745, “Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France,” Historical Atlas of the Great Lakes and Michigan, comp. by Louis C. Karpinski (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1931), 44. Bellin was a French naval engineer; Robert de Vaugondy, 1750, “Amérique Septentrionale ...” (Paris). Manuscript map at the American Geographical Society, Milwaukee (AGS Rare A.T. 050 A-1757). A published version of this chart is in Karpinski, Historical Atlas, 97. See also “Teakiki” on the anonymous French government map titled “Forts Français et anglais sur l’Ohio en 1755” in Marcel Trudel, Collection de Cartes Anciennes et modernes pour servir à l’étude de l’histoire de l’Amérique et du Canada (Quebec: Tremblay and Dion, 1948), pl. 67; and an official French map bearing the same spelling for the river’s name: n.a., 1757, “Carte de la Floride, de la Louisiane et Pays Voisins Par M.B., Ing. de la Marine,” at the American Geographic Society, Milwaukee (AGS 800-A-1757).
18 Largillier’s Illinois dictionary has “teïahan8i [...] en plain air, qui n’a aucun abri, cabane au milieu d’une prairie” [outdoors, in the open, (that) which has no shelter, a house in the middle of the prairie]; “teïatapate8i, teïa8ate8i exposé a la veüe de tous” [exposed to the everyone’s view]; “teïateheta qui decouvre son coeur” [one who reveals his heart]; and the adverb “teïa8e a decouvert ...” [in everyone’s view, out in the open]. Jacques Largillier, [Illinois-French dictionary], [ca. 1700]. Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford. This dictionary was commonly attributed to Jacques Gravier. However, see Michael McCafferty, “Jacques Largillier: French trader, Jesuit brother, and Jesuit scribe par excellence,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (Vol. 14. no. 4, Winter, 2011): 188–197. I would like to thank David Pentland for our discussion concerning the vowel length of the first syllable of teeyaa-. Note that the combination of -ahki- “land, country” plus -k-, the dependent peripheral suffix and i, the conjunct ending that we see in “Téakiki,” is discussed in Largillier’s dictionary: “-aki8i est une terminaison qui marque la situation, ou la difference des terres, -akiki pour le subjonctif” [-akiwi is an ending that marks the situation of or the difference between lands, -akiki for the subjunctive]. What is curious about the final product “Kankakee” is that the -akee part was taken by previous scholars to be -ahki “land, country” in Miami-Illinois. In truth, the -akee of “Kankakee” actually represents the -iki of teeyaahkiki. It is in fact the -nka- of “Kankakee” which is a warped original Miami-Illinois -ahki in this place-name.
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Michael McCafferty
Michael McCafferty is a linguist and the author of many works including the historical and linguistic study Native American Place-Names of Indiana. McCafferty also researches and writes on the early historic French-Algonquian interface in the Illinois Country and environs. He teaches at Indiana University.