Project Scroll Research Note 2026-32: The meanings of Kalamazoo in print: "a boiling pot" by 1838, and "the mirage or reflecting river" by 1874
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Two meanings of "Kalamazoo" are often treated as late. The "boiling pot," and the footrace told to explain it, are commonly traced to twentieth-century tellings. But John T. Blois's Gazetteer of the State of Michigan (1838) begins its entry "Kalamazoo river, (or Kekalamazoo, [Indian,] signifying a boiling pot,)", and at the dinner for the settlement's twenty-fifth anniversary, on 21 June 1854, Mr. DeYoe toasted "Ke Kalamazoo — the boiling pot." The meaning is in print before the race story (George Torrey, 1867) and before Schoolcraft's otters (1855). The "mirage or reflecting river," still repeated online, is not modern either: Charles R. Brown's The Government of Michigan, printed at Kalamazoo in 1874, gives Kalamazoo as "An Indian name, signifying 'the mirage or reflecting river,'" and William L. Jenks in the Michigan Historical Collections of 1912 attributes that meaning to W. S. George. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-32, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-32/.
Author: Urbanski, Michael
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225333638