'I have fallen in love with American names, the sharp names that never get fat," Stephen Vincent Benet says in the first line of "American Names."
His 1927 poem comes to mind as I walk my dog through Ashton Park near Willow Hill Elementary. So does the first paragraph of "Indian Names in Michigan," a book by historian Virgil Vogel.
"Place-names are linguistic artifacts," Vogel writes. "They are records of the past, conveying information about successive waves of inhabitants, native and European. They record people's perceptions of the environment. They tell us of the first people's spiritual and material culture, of historical happenings, and their description of topography of land and water."
I've been reading a lot of local history, which is why I wonder about area place-names like Ashton Park, Ramsdell Street, Ahgosa Trail, Peshawbestown and Kewadin as I wander West Side parks and Slabtown sidewalks in search of a neighborhood once called "Bagdad."
The first Ashton in Traverse City was Benjamin D., a physician and surgeon who moved here from Ohio in 1862 at age 34 with wife Margaret. Jonathan G. Ramsdell was a circuit judge whose hobby farm turned first into a pioneer-era agricultural experiment, then morphed into a showcase fruit farm. Ah-go-sa was a Chippewa Indian chief at Mission Harbor when the Rev. Peter Dougherty established his first mission on what is now called Old Mission Peninsula in 1839. Peshawbestown, the site of a Catholic mission started in 1852, is named after Ottawa Chief Peshawbe. Kewadin in Antrim County is the name of a former Ottawa chief of an Indian settlement on the shores of Elk Lake.
Questions abound as I follow the dog through the grounds of the old Northern Michigan Asylum, later known as Traverse City State Hospital and Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Hospital, now being redeveloped into the Grand Traverse Commons, a village of shops, restaurants, apartments, galleries and offices.
Did Indian trails criss-cross this area? Did Perry Hannah, visionary lumber baron and city founder, ever wander these paths? What would he and other pioneers think if they could see us now? Did they think about future generations? Did they ever question the environmental devastation of the lumber era? Did they ask whether we would love this area and care for it?
Do we, the present generations, ask ourselves that enough as we confront E.coli, algae and exotic species in the bay? What's more important, what comes first? The future of Grand Traverse Bay and the Great Lakes? Great Lakes shipping? Well-fertilized lawns? Or tourism that pollutes?
What linguistic artifacts will we leave the future?
Mussel Beach? Algae Bay? E. coli Cove?
Record-Eagle columnist Loraine Anderson can be reached at landerson@record-eagle.com or 933-1468.
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