Research Guides: Indigenous Appalachia: Places, maps, and names

Indigenous places, names, maps, and, where is Appalachia?

Map of the several nations of Indians to the Northwest of South Carolina

Articles and online resources

Native trails and maps

Coming home to Indigenous place names in Canada To mark the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada, the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine is pleased to release a new map, Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada. The map honors Indigenous place names in Canada and the assertion of Indigenous authority through place names.
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“…the most compelling thing here. It’s–wait for it–a map, conventional-seeming until viewed up close. The familiar boundaries of Canada span sea to sea, filled in-between with words. It’s called Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada, and God bless its straightforwardness: Over years, Margaret Pearce collaborated with dozens of Indigenous groups to resurrect traditional names for places nationwide (my local favourites: ‘At where it is heard approaching,’ somewhere north of what we call Huntsville, or ‘Place of calling silvery waters’ near the Kawarthas). It remakes the familiar into something glorious and new, saying so clearly what so much else here is straining to articulate: Land is power, and its surface only tells one tale. Scratch it just a little and see what’s underneath.”
Driftwood cartography As a source of information, a map is always a way of groping through the darkness of the unknown. But locating yourself in space has never been cartography sole function: like these driftwood pieces, maps inevitably chart how cultures perceive not only their landscapes but their lives.
Greenland’s Hand-Sized Wooden Maps Were Used for Storytelling, Not Navigation These distinctive artifacts are clues to how the Tunumiit people saw the world
Making the Coming Home Map [non-WVU access options] o mark Canada 150, the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine released a new map, Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada. The map is intended to honour Indigenous place names in Canada and the assertion of Indigenous authority through place naming. It was made possible by permissions and contributions from First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities, organizations, and language speakers. In this article, we explain how and why this map came to be made at the Canadian-American Center. We examine the methods we used to request and include place names and how this process in turn informed the design of the visual language of the map.
Making the Coming Home Map [WVU access] To mark Canada 150, the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine released a new map, Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada. The map is intended to honour Indigenous place names in Canada and the assertion of Indigenous authority through place naming. It was made possible by permissions and contributions from First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities, organizations, and language speakers. In this article, we explain how and why this map came to be made at the Canadian-American Center. We examine the methods we used to request and include place names and how this process in turn informed the design of the visual language of the map. Pearce, M. W., & Hornsby, S. J. (2020). Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 55(3), 170–176.
Map of the several nations of Indians to the Northwest of South Carolina [Catawba deerskin map] "This map describing the situation of the several nations of Indians to the NW of South Carolina was copied from a draught drawn & painted on a deer skin by an Indian Cacique and presented to Francis Nicholson Esqr. Governor of South Carolina by whom it is most humbly dedicated to his Royal Highness George, Prince of Wales."

Places and names

The Algonkian Tribes [Native American society on the eve of British Colonization At U.S. History: Pre-Columbian to the new millennium
Allegheny Mountains [place and see] The name is derived from the Allegheny River, which drains only a small portion of the Alleghenies in west-central Pennsylvania. The meaning of the word, which comes from the Lenape (Delaware) Native Americans, is not definitively known but is usually translated as "fine river". A Lenape legend tells of an ancient tribe called the "Allegewi" who lived on the river and were defeated by the Lenape. Allegheny is the early French spelling (as in Allegheny River, which was once part of New France), and Allegany is closer to the early English spelling (as in Allegany County, Maryland, Allegany County, New York, or Alleghany County, Virginia).
Denali and America’s Long History of Using (or Not Using) Indian Names By Doug Herman. Smithsonian magazine. Sept. 3, 2015. In restoring the Athabaskan name to the country’s highest mountain, President Obama is among those who have wrestled with the issue
How did the Appalachians get their name? Blog post at Medium.com by Gregory Rush. Jan 15, 2018.
Indigenous Place Names [Government of Canada] In Canada close to 30 000 official place names are of Indigenous origin, and efforts are ongoing to restore traditional names to reflect Indigenous culture.
Keepers of the Western Door: The Story of the Seneca Nation By Richard Hill and Donald A. Grinde, Jr. reprint from from a book entitled "Niagara Land: the First 200 Years," which in turn was a reprint of a series of essays published in "Sunday, the Courier Express Magazine" to celebrate the 1976 American Revolution Bicentennial
Names Have Power: The United States of Indigenous Names by Steve Russell. Sept. 2015, 2018. Schoolchildren are taught that the Americas are named after Amerigo Vespucci, but is that really the case?
The Occom Circle: Shawnee Tribe [Dartmouth College Library] The Shawnee Tribe is an Algonquian-speaking people, who originally occupied lands in southern Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Their name comes from the Algonquian word “shawum” meaning “southerner,” and refers to their original location in the Ohio Valley south of the other Great Lakes Algonquian Tribes.
Organization for Native American Interests at West Virginia University Organization for Native American Interests (ONAI) is one of many student organizations devoted to cultural exploration. Often community members take part in the organization’s events along with student members. The group’s activities are aimed at increasing awareness and understanding through education, experience, interactions with Native American elders, writers, leaders, and so on.

Celebrating the History of Appalachia [All things considered. May 7, 2006]

Follow links to these Library of Congress Subject Headings to retrieve lists of related library materials

Names, Geographical -- Appalachian Region

Regionalism -- Appalachian Region

Books

West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains

Kenny, H. (1960). West Virginia place names: their origin and meaning, including the nomenclature of the streams and mountains. [Online copy in public domain]

West Virginia place names : their origin and meaning, including the nomenclature of the streams and mountains by Hamill Kenny.
Publication Date: 1945 [1960]
Library copy in print
The Invention of Appalachia by Allen W. Batteau Appalachia has been characterized by any number of stereotypes, from moonshiners to country music stars. Although many scholars have sought to debunk the images of Snuffy Smith and Li'l Abner, none have identified the archetypes and the poetic values from which Appalachia's political reality has been constructed. Allen Batteau here provides an appreciation of the invention that created and sustained Appalachia in the American imagination for more than a hundred years.Portrayals of Appalachia have united such images as hillbillies, homespun, and hungry children. The unity of these, Batteau maintains, is contained not in their semantic values, but in a common mood of mountain sublimity, wilderness innocence, and the gothic horror of rural industrialization. Like other vivid fictional works--Uncle Tom's Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath--the documentaries of Appalachia, by virtue of their poetic force, have altered America's political landscape. Today Appalachia is marketed as a commodity in the form of handcrafts, television shows, and the Foxfire books. Yet the symbolism of Appalachia also contains such positive images as Daniel Boone, Alvin York, and the heroic miners of Harlan County. In the periods of reform during which American interest in Appalachia increases--the 1930s, the 1960s, and, Batteau suggests, the 1990s--these positive images will return, enlisted once again in a struggle for America's soul.
ISBN: 9780816511723
Publication Date: 1990