Indian Rivers ( #AtoZChallenge )

     No one owns a river.  It's more like the rivers own us.  But it's up to us to take care of those rivers so we can have a workable partnership with them...

 

 

Indian Rivers

The Tellico River near Tellico Plains, Tennessee (Wikipedia)

         There are a number of rivers in the United States that bear the name of "Indian River" in reference to something about them about indigenous peoples who had lived in the area.  None of these rivers are in India so now it seems a bit ludicrous to have a river with this name.  In some cases maybe those who named the river weren't aware of any specific tribal names or words, but they made the connection to early people who had lived near those rivers.  Or maybe they knew and just wanted the generic tribute to those people--or perhaps it was a dismissive slur of sorts.

        A great many rivers in the United States derived their names from some native American connection.  From the mighty Mississippi to the Tennessee and to the more obscure rivers such as the Allagash in Maine or the Tellico River in Tennessee, many American rivers were given variants of their original indigenous names or names that reflected some aspect of native American lore or descriptive terms.

      One of my high school friends, Vernon, has long had a fascination with the stories of the Native Americans.  He used to have a very nice collection of Indian artifacts, but they were stolen from him. Vernon also studied extensively about the peoples who lived in the United States before European settlers arrived and drastically changed the demographics of the country.  He had a fantasy that one day he might set off in a canoe in the Little River in Rockford Tennessee and set forth on an epic journey from river to river until he reached the Gulf of Mexico.  He had the trip mapped out in great detail, even going so far as to have determined places where the rivers were dammed where he would have to go through locks or whatever it took to get back into the stream of the river.

          Vernon supposedly wrote down another adventure in a notebook when he was in middle school.  That was before I met him so I never saw it   Our friend Fred told me about reading this grand adventure that ended up in the hinterlands of Canada going from lake to lake.  Vernon had seen the lakes on a map.  Now, fifty years later, Vernon lives along the Little River where it is the backwaters of what I think is Fort Loudon Lake.  He seems pretty happy where he is and I don't imagine he's going anywhere soon.  

         Is there an "Indian" river near you?  Did you write down any adventure accounts that you shared with schoolmates?  Would you rather live on a river or a lake?

       

         

•