St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-02-21
: JUDICIAL JOURNALIST"
ENTERTkMI C ADDRESS At PRESS
CLE8 BY HON. C.. E. EsR32AU
EARLY r1MEs I'm MINNESOTA.

How the Names of Our Lakes and
Cities Originated-French and
Indian Nomenclature -Nissi,-
sippi River Anecdotcs-Inci-
dents Among the Indians-rhc
Source Of the mississippi.
AT the literary evening of the st.
Paul Press cluU. given at the Ryan last
evening, Judge Charles T.. Flandrau
was the orator OF the occasion. and the
following is copy of his exceedingly in
tereSting address:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press
Club: The honor of being invited 10
talk to you, | assure You,is highly graft
Tying. because 1t implies the eXpecta-
lson on your part that | may be able to
communicate some FACT. incident or idea
with which YOU are u~nacQuainted. and.
considering that the Press club is
known to be the storehouse of all
knowledge and wisdom, the request be-
comes very tiattcring indeed, but | fear
that my feeble attempt to comply will
result in disappointment.
You must remember that my only
claim to journalism is contained in the
dedication of your book. where | am de-
Scribed as a judicial Journalist"
Whatever that may signify, l accept it
as a sort of brevet conferred for past
good conduct in other channels of indus
fry and hoNn hOnoc that T aop,c4
my pOSterity may achieve the full rank.
Since the days OF Johnson and his
Boswell talking has ceased to lie a fine
art, and passed into desuetude. Men
nowadays speak, write and read, but
they rarely taxi in the SENSE OF enter
tanning or inStrncting an audience. |
suppose the reason is that the mass of
the people is, in the present day, so
generally Informed OF all topics of COM
mon interest that they demand some
thing mOr critically correct and pre-
found than a mere eXtempoganeous
dissertation. no matter how wise the
talker Or how interesting the topic.
Yet, what L shall say tonight will be
such a disJointed tumble of facts, tradi-
tons and anecdotes that it viii hardly
rise to the dignity Of a talk.
As you may know, l have been in the
West, and in 4 good deal of it, for a
long series of years. and have naturally
picked up, during the French and In-
dian periods of its occupation. some
things that may prove to be new,
curious. and perhaps interesting, to
those who have arrived later and only
known its civilized epoch.
OUR NOMENCLATURE.
The nationality ad religion OF tile first
settlers of any country on this CONT
nent can DE easily determined by the
names of its rivers and cities. All over
Minnesota and what we generally des-
lgnate the Northwest is written the
fact that the first innovation upon the
Indian was the Frenchman and the
Catholic Frenchman. We here find ST.
Paul. ST.. Anthony, ST. CroiX, which
suggest the religion. Then we find Lac
qui Parle. Traverse DIES Sioux, Trempea-
leau, POrnme de Terre and other
French names. indicating the nation
ality. Seine of the French names
are original with them. and some are
AAAAAoASAAAblAO VI LIZ 1llIldll lldllGS
into French. For Instance. take the
name of Lac qui Harle. meaning the
lake which speaks, or the talking lake.
1t got its name from the fact that it
emltS a constant sound Of murmuring
or gurgling, which naturally attracted
the Sioux, and they named it M'Day-ea,
or the talking lake, which the French
literally translated into Lac 1ui Parle.
1t was a very early post for the French
traders, and has maintained the French
name very much in its purity, the rea-
son for which | attribute to the diff
Guilty of c%Orrupting 1.-THE words being
too simple to DE distorted into anything
else.
The same may be said of Traverse DIES
Sioux, the crossing of the Sioux, the
Indian name OF which 1 have forgotten,
but the words are so simple that it
would be difficult to pronounce them i'll
correctly, except the ''deS" which is
frequently called ''dess.". as the trib e
of Indians called the Nez Perces, or
Pierced Noses, is frequently called Ness
Pefcies.
When we cross over to the Pacific
coast we find the urmiStakable hand
writing of the Catholic Spaniard. Here
we have San Francisco, San Jose. Santa
Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Diego and
the river Rio GTaude del Norte, which
separates Us from Mexico, all of which
bespeak the Spaniard and the Catholic.
How long these landmarks OF the ma
tivity and religion of the early settlers
will remain is doubtful. Some OF them,
like San Francisco. will endure as long
as the country lasts and is inhabited by
civilized people, for reasons quite appar-
ent. Bat it must be kept in mind that
they are not only rapidly disappearing,
but many of them have been