The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-08-31
me AH-TA-WAN Ia"
BY REV. t. W. ILLMAN.

BY REV. T. W. ILLMAN.
That is rather formidable looking
name, isn't it7 Well, / am not re-
spcnsible for it. If anybody is to
blame for its invention, some of those
old Indian fellows, Chippewas or
whatever their tribe was, who used to
roam the Michigan forests and pad
die their canoes over these beautiful
but capricious seas without salt,
must bare their bronze backs for the
blows of censure. ! found it ready
made, and probably the fellow or
wigwam- madam who first applied it.
did what any of US would have done,
used few familiar and accepted
sounds, his linguistic inheritance
from an ancestral line of unknown
length, to designate descriptively the
pretty little piece of water to which it
is attached. Thus does evolution
string out responsibility. But in my
way of looking at the matter, that
old bronze warrior, or plump and
pretty squaw, whichever it was, has
no need to apologize for this partic-
ular addition to the English Ian
guage. Formidable as it appears, it
is tripping and sweet, and after try
ing my tongue on it a few times, /
found it quite as easy to say and fully
as smooth and soft, as "Placid Wat
er," its equivalent in our civilized vo-
cabulary.
Lake Michigan, as the map MAX
ers draw its portrait, always used
to seem to my boyish imagination
like a well-fed and somewhat cor
pulent grass hopper, seated on
the extreme end of his robust and
generous person, looking at you
through an eye made out of hap
PLY located island, and helplessly
trying to hold up two rather bloated
fore paws, which would persist how
ever, in assuming an idiotic Kan
garoo-like droop. Doubtless, it is
scarcely correct to speak of grass
hopper's paws, but such they seemed
to me, and because of them, poor
Lake Michigan, in the days when I
was trying to get the map of my
country into my brain, and ever
since, has always been an object OF
some of my most generous pity. Its
bloated paws were SO helplessl
Well, it is in one of those dropsical
paws, made by the Old Mission pen
insula dividing Grand Traverse bay
into east and west, that the Placid
Water is situated that the Indians
called Ne-ah-ta- -wan-ta. Riding by
cars through the Michigan forests,
which remind one of nothing so
much as the unfortunate man in the
parable who fell among thieves and
was left by them crippled and half
dead, you are glad to know that you
are to go the last dozen miles by
boat. The vandalism of greed has
not been able to deface the water,
and from Traverse City to the
Placid Water is ride which washes
from your eyes images of forest DESC
lation that / am free to confess were
very saddening. On the west side OF
the Old Mission peninsula, protected
by an arm which that stalwart and
beautiful piece of land throws out
around it, lies the little harbor whose
maritime virtues the name Ne-ah- -ta-
wan-ta shows were appreciated be-
fore the days of whale backs and
floating palaces, spread of water
large enough for rowing and sailing,
its face showing all the moods and
caprices of beauty, multiplying in
its ripping mirror of the gold and
silver of sunshine and moonbeams,
and forming an alliance with the
encircling shores, with which, blends
in shadows and shoals, to compel
from every visitor declaration which
proclaims it charming.
Did you know that there was a
Universalist summer resort here7 OF
course you Western people did, but
am only recently from the East, and
had never taken pains to become ac-
quainted with localities of the kind
that l was not likely to visit for a
summer vacation. But 1 am of the