9 July 2021
Detail of a German map, c.1748, that depicts a native village of Wiöming on the banks of the Susquehanna River in eastern Pennsylvania
Wyoming is known as the “Cowboy State,” and its automobile license plates depict a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco. And for many, Wyoming is the quintessential western state. Its name, however, is anything but. The name Wyoming is a transplant from the east, an Indigenous place name that has nothing to do with the state that bears the name.
Wyoming is an anglicized version of the Munsee (Delaware) chwewamink, pronounced / xwé:wamənk /, and meaning “at the big river flat,” / xw / (big) + e:wam (river flat) + ənk (place). And the original Wyoming is a valley along the Susquehanna River in what is now Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
The earliest reference to Wyoming in a European language that I have found is on a German map from c.1748. The map depicts a native village, labeled Wiöming, along the banks of the Susquehanna, where the current town of Wyoming, Pennsylvania is located.
The name appears in English in the records of an April 1756 diplomatic conference between the British and Indigenous nations meeting to find a way to prevent Delaware raids on land claimed by settler-colonists. The conference decided to send three representatives to Wyoming to carry a message to the Delaware people:
But we assure you what you propose to us is what we like best, and we will assist you in it, and shall send these three Indians [pointing to Newcastle, Jaggrea, and William Lacquees] to Wyoming, with the Message to let our Cousins know, there are a People risen in Philadelphia, wo desire to have Peace restored; and that they must cease from doing any more Mischief, and not be afraid to be willing to treat with you.
Then later on:
Then, with mutual, friendly Salutations, by the good old Custom of shaking Hands, the Conference ended.
Scarroyada, and most of the Indians set out on the 25th fourth Mo. for New York, and thence to Onondago, and the three Ambassadors, under the Conduct of A. and I. Spangenberg, and others, by way of Bethohem [sic] to Wyoming.
Wyoming was also the site of a July 1778 battle between Patriot militia on one side and Loyalist militia and Indigenous (primarily Seneca) forces on the other. Some 300 Patriot militiamen died in the battle with little loss to the Tory and Indigenous forces. Following the fighting, the American militia who had surrendered were executed, and there were reports that they had been tortured to death. Although the Tory and Indigenous forces spared non-combatants during the campaign, killing only those who had been carrying arms.
The battle was memorialized in an 1809 poem by Thomas Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming, which became quite popular. The opening lines of the poem read:
On Susquehana's side, fair Wyoming,
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall
And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall,
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pensylvania's [sic] shore!
As a result of the fame (or infamy) of the battle, the name was proposed for a new territory that was created in 1865. The Daily National Republican of 5 January 1865 reported:
Mr. Ashley, of Ohio, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to-day introduced in the House a bill for the erection of the Territory of Wyoming, chiefly to be carved out of Utah and Washington Territories.
The Wyoming Territory was officially organized in 1868. It became the forty-fourth state in 1890. So, the state is named for a minor, albeit bloody, skirmish during the American Revolution which took place on the site of what had been a Munsee village in what is now Pennsylvania.
Sources:
“Another New Territory.” Daily National Republican (Washington, DC), 5 January 1865, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Campbell, Thomas. Gertrude of Wyoming; a Pensylvanian Tale. And Other Poems. London: T. Bensley, 1809, 5. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Grumet, Robert S. Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names in Greater New York and Vicinity. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2013. 188.
Several Conferences Between Some of the Principal People Amongst the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Deputies from the Six Indian Nations in Alliance with Britain. Newcastle: I Thompson, 1756, 25, 28. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Image credit: Tobias Conrad Lotter. Pensylvania, Nova Jersey et Nova York cum Regionibus ad Fluvium Delaware in America Sitis (map), c.1748. Library of Congress. Public domain image.