July 14, 2021
Good morning. Welcome to Jo Ann’s Corner. Come on in and help yourself to a breakfast beverage.
Let’s talk. I do like trivia. A friend who loves history told me some trivia about something that most people don’t know or even realize. This trivia or history relates to Native Americans and the United States. Well, he stated that 26 out of our 50 states in the United States have names that had to do with Native American Indians.
Here’s the trivia. Now some of us know that Kentucky came the word Kentake, an Iroquois place name meaning “meadow land.”
For us in Tennessee, Tennessee came from Tanasi, which was the name of a Cherokee Indian town. For those of you from Alabama, it is the name of an Indian tribe native to the state of Alabama.
We all learned to spell Mississippi by using a little jingle, but its Indian name is shorter, called Misiziibi, which is the native name of the Mississippi River in the Ojibwe language. I won’t go into all of the state names, but you can look them up.
Some of them are a little funny, like Iowa, which means in Ayuhwa, which is one of the tribal names of the Ioway Indian tribe meaning “sleepy ones.” I can believe that. Perhaps the one state with the most bragging rights is Illinois which comes from the Illini tribe meaning “best people.”
Finally, one state is named after a color. Oklahoma comes from Okla Homma, which means “Red Nation” in the Choctaw Indian language. So, the next time you do a little traveling around the United States, look up where the names of the states you visited came from.
You may be surprised by what you find. If you need a friend, you may want to go to Taysha, which means “friend” in the Caddo Indian language– or just plain old Texas to most of us.
Oh, for some of our locals, Pellissippi means “winding waters” in Cherokee for the Clinch River near Pellissippi State Community College near Knoxville, Tennessee. Now that’s my rant for today about history.
Time does seem to fly these summer days. I know that many of us have had to sometimes rely on our neighbors for help.
Now that may seem to be a given, but we don’t always think how important our neighbors can be.
In my day, neighbors were very important. If you grew up on a farm, neighbors could be the difference in getting your crops in or not. Many farmers would work together with the neighboring farms to assist each other when baling hay, picking corn, putting up tobacco, and other things. Why, if a farmer’s barn burned down, many neighbors would help him put up a new one. It was just what was expected a neighbor to do in those days.
You, in turn, would help your neighbor if they needed help. It was one of those unwritten codes that people lived by. That’s where the saying “I’m just being neighborly” came from when that neighbor helped you.
I remember when my mom and all our neighbors kept an eye on all us young ’uns to make sure we didn’t get in trouble in my neighborhood. I know that kept me somewhat in line. Neighbors would also check on you if they hadn’t seen you around at your regular time. Even the old saying of going to the neighbors to get a cup of sugar or flour was true back then.
Remember on that show “Tool Time” when Tool Man would talk to his neighbor over the backyard fence? We may not have had a fence, but we did have a backyard. It’s a shame that many people don’t get to know their neighbors today.
They are surely missing something by not. Having a good neighbor and being one is one of the most precious treasures in the world. All I have left to say is, “Howdy, Neighbor!”
Having said that, let’s share a breakfast beverage and some Native American Proverbs. The Proverbs of today go like this,
“Our ancestors live on in us. Their tracks in the sands of time will always be there for all to see if one only looks for them.”
“To have a good neighbor is a gift like the sunrise every morning. You should never take that gift for granted.”
Thanks for coming! Enjoy your gift of today. Have a great day!
