The Names of Green Bay, Wisconsin

Abstract

hE SIMPLEST-APPEARING NAMES are sometimes the hardest to pin down. A prime example is Green Bay, Wisconsin, which refers both to a large bay in northwestern Lake Michigan, separated from the main part of the lake by the hundred-mile-long peninsula of Door County, and to the city at the bottom 6f this bay at the mouth of the Fox River. The naming was a complex process, many aspects of which are in doubt. Green Bay was by no means the first name; in the preceding historical sequence both French and English were involved, with one or more Indian languages of the Algonkian, Siouan, and perhaps Iroquoian families. Though Green Bay appears simply descriptive (somebody was struck by the appearance of something green) is by no means certain what the source of greenness was: has been variously attributed to the water, to the trees, and even to plant growths in the water. There is also the strong possibility that so commonplace a name was transferred from some other place farther east, rather than being a fresh invention. Further, this kind of name may reflect an archetypal form residing in folk memory. With all these possibilities, will at least be useful to review the evidence. No doubt the Indians who resided along the Bay had names for it, but these were not adopted by the white man, and such records as we have are late and scanty. Legler gives Enitajghe1 as the Iroquois name. But the Iroquois were not of the Green Bay area and hardly ranged so far west, so if this name is authentic must have been given relatively late, after the coming of the French, or as a result of the Iroquois wars against Algonkian tribes whom they drove west into Wisconsin.2 The Ojibwa (or Chippewa) name, at some time before 1853, was Bodjwikwed.3 Wikwed means bay, but bodjhas nothing to do with green. It may possibly be related to bagwa, it is shallow; if so, the Ojibwa and the white men were impressed by quite different features. As a name for the bottom of the bay where the Fox River comes in and where there are many sand-