The Menominee call this place "Kāēkāēaweqnikoniw," an archaic name meaning "crossing the portage". It falls within traditional Menominee territory which was ceded to the United States in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars as part of the negotiations about how to accommodate the Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee and Brothertown peoples who had been removed from New York to Wisconsin. The town was later named in English after William Underhill, a white settler from Vermont.