GNRT DAY 32 A LITTLE HISTORY
Today as we traveled from Michigan into Canada
across the twin cities of Salt Ste. Marie….
on the 300 miles of this journey…we learned a little more history….
The name Canada most likely came from the Huron-Iroquois word Kanata
meaning village or settlement…
A frenchmen used it to name the entire country
before the Hurons could tell him exactly what it meant.
We are currently near Lake Ontario which also got it’s name from the Iroquois.
The legend says from an Iroquois chief’s daughter
who when she saw the lake said kandario…which means sparkling water.
We have been on Lake Superior…named Gitchi-Gami by the Ojibwe
this means Big Sea Water…and she is a beautiful lake
In Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha…he called it Gitchi-Gumi by mistake.
We have felt the waters of Lake Michigan…a little boat trip we did take….
the Anishinabe called it mishigami …which simply means…big lake
We have driven my Lake Huron another beautiful place to be.
The Wyandot called it karegnondi which roughly translated means
freshwater sea
.
And we spend the next 2 days on Nipissing Lake…meaning little water
A name the Ojibwe chose to keep
because the crystal clear waters of this lake are not so very deep
It seems all around us on this trip…we’ve seen and tried to understand
how we travel over the footprints or on the shoulders
of those who first walked this land.
We have gained a new appreciation…of all they saw
the mountains, the rivers, the lakes…the plains and the buffalo too
of how they lived…of their philosophy…and of all they have gone through,
We offer them our thanks
we only wish we could go back in time…and change our history….
and we wonder if things had played out differently….
what kind of beauty in our world the would see.
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