From: Hugh Lecky <rkymtnwy@telusplanet.net>
To: helen@mkl.com
Subject: Tekarra

I live in Jasper, Alberta.  There is a mountain which was given the name
Tekarra after an Iroquois guide in the 1850's for Sir James Hector.
Unfortunately the history books don't tell too much about Tekarra.  Do you
know any more history and would you possibly be able to tell me what the
name Tekarra would mean in English?

Thank you,
Hugh Lecky
rckymtnwy@telusplanet.net

Reply by John Fadden, Onchiota, NY, 3-21-99

In respect to the word fragment, "Tekarra", according to my in-house Mohawk language authority (Eva, my wife), sounds like part of a word.  For example, Te-kar-ra-keh would mean 'side by side'.  There are other possibilities, and all of them would have to do with two of something. Te-ka-ni, being the word for 'two'.   Tekarra doesn't sound/look like a full word, according to Eva.

You might want to pass on to the fellow in Alberta that there are records of Iroquoian people being in the west; in particular, Mohawks.  I have an excerpt from a 1963 issue of 'Montana: The magazine of western history'. The excerpt is entitled "Iroquois Indians In The Far West."  Among other things it states that some Iroquois married Cree women and remained in Alberta.  "Their descendants, known as Michel's band after their leader Michel Callihoo..."  There were Iroquois people who intermarried with the Flathead in Montana, and one fellow, an Oneida, who lived/married among the
Crow of that state.  I also have a listing of names of people who are descendant of Iroquois from the Flathead Reservation, plus a letter to my father dated October 1, 1974 from a Sister Providenceia within which she writes about "...Big Knife, the first, full-blood Iroquois who bedame a Kootenais chief."

A book that Hugh Lecky might wish to track down is "The Fur Hunters of The Far West", published in 1956 by the University of Oklahoma Press.  Kenneth A. Spaulding is the author and the book possesses excerpts from journal of Alexander Ross 1810-1825 and contains reference to Iroquois and Abenaki men involved with the fur trade in the far west.

Clearly, the adventurous Iroquois didn't limit their range to the Northeast.

John

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