The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1919-02-04
SOME IDAHO
NAMES DEFINED
Names of Indian Origin
Used in Many Cases
INTERESTING FACTS

This office has been trying for
years to find a satisfactory explana-
ton of how the word "Blackfoot'
became attached to a town in Idaho
several hundred miles from the orig
inal homeland of the Blackfeet
Indians and We seem to have found
it in a book on Idaho by John E.
Rees of Salmon City, which says that
Donald Mckenzie, one of the men
who was wrecked at Caldron Lynn,
near Miner. Idaho in 1912 and who
starved thru the whole fall and win
ter and got to Astoria the following
summer, had something to do with
naming our town.
Mckenzie was one of the party
that came thru the country again in
1919, hundred years ago next sum-
mer, and late in summer arrived at
the big marshes at the head of the
BlackfOOt river now known as Henry
Some wandering parties of the Black
feet Indians from Montana were in
that valley, and part of their job
of terrorizing the local Indians was
to burn the grass off of their country.
In travelling about after the fire,
their feet were kept black all the
time, and Mckenzie associated the
name of Blackfeet with the river he
followed for few days, calling it
the Blackfoot river. The name was
applied to it thereafter to the present
time and when the Utah Northern
railroad established a switch and
warehouse near the stream It was
given the name of the river that was
just below.
The name, "Pocatello," is said to
have been made up of Indian words,
"po" meaning road" aka" meaning
mo" and tello meaning ito follow"
mot follow road.) The name or ex-
preston was applied to old chief Po-
katello because of his marauding and
his custom of travelling by other lines
or routes than the road or trail taken
by honest people. He reached a eli
max in his career when his band
massacred an immigrant party on the
Port Neuf river and he took an end
gate rod from one of the wagons and
used it for spear to impale the body
Of an infant Of the party. Some
white men learning of this incident
got on Pokatello's trail and for three
days were In such close pursuit that
they sometimes got sight of him.
They planned to tie him to tree on
IN island in the river and burn him,
but after eluding them for some time
up and down the wooded island, he
was cornered and plunged into the
stream and disappeared.
Ben Holiday, owner of the stage
Inc to Montana, named one of his
stations for him, and the place still
bears the name. Strangely enough,
he significance of the word Is the
'everse of the Gate City Of today,
hru which all road lead.
Market Lake received it's name |
rom the fact that vast numbers of |
Wild game assembled there for feed |
when 1t was scarce in most other To-
'alities. 1t was low country shut |
vi from Snake river by q natural
,arrier built by silt deposits along
he right bank of the river. These
ich lands afforded vegetation Of un-
usual richness, and hunters and trap
'ers observing the great number and
'ariety Of animals assembling there,
compared it to great stock market
where one could get anything he
wanted. From that fact and its be-
ng lake in times of unusually high
water, 1t took the name of Market
AXE. In the spring of 1854 the
loods were unusually high and the
hannel or wash into the lake cut
leep and widey and thereafter 1t
7as less of market and more of a
AXE. During the early nineties,
fart Patrie, father of DR.. w. e.
'atrie, and others associated with
i'm in the venture, undertook to
lake the Market Lake station once
lore a market in the agricultural
ense, but one misfortune followed
mother until most of them lost in
crest in It.. In recent years the
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