2005 Chicago - the City its name and reputation
There is a source, Che-Cau-Gou: A Romance: In the Evolution of a Great City from the Garden of Eden to the End of the Twentieth Century written by Onkwe Ganinwari and published by the Faithorn Company, Chicago 1924. The title page indicates it is copyrighted by F. R. Chandler in 1924 and published with a dedication to the Chicago History Society. I acquired in a used book sale copy #215 of a 1,000 copies limited edition. The author has stated, "this…work has been planned after the style of Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s New York and made adaptable to an up to date history of Chicago, with a touch of fancy in the past, and with a glowing imagination for Chicago’s greatness in the future."
City’s Name
Che-Cau-Gou is the name of City attributed in the aforementioned source’s chapter III to the "Illinois Indians, the same parent stem as the Miami." The name was derived from "Ka-Gou" something "great" denoting the three great rivers - the Mississippi, the Illinois and the Ohio - "the prefix get-che….It was also given to a noted Sac chief or ‘he that stands by the tree.’" 1 The page continues with a list of spellings enabling the reader to understand how we go from Che-Gau-Gou to Chi-ca-go." Our author denies its connection with "She-kung, a skunk, or in Ojibway language, skunk-weed, garlic or wild onion. The animal and the strong spelling vegetable may have been powerful in odor, but not Ka-gou…." 2
Our Reputation as "the windy city" 3
The Chicago sobriquet "windy city" phrase was coined by Richard Henry Dana of the New York Sun pejoratively casting doubt on Chicago’s ability to deliver on its promised - reference to the hot air of Chicago’s boasters. Chicago started organizing for the Columbian World’s Fair in 1885 with an Inter-State Exposition Committee resolution and in the summer 1886 with a committee organized in Congress to back the fair in Chicago. After the French 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris rivalries developed amongst the American cities - Washington, St. Louis and New York. In New York, Chicago was believed to be a primitive backwater town yet it was already the second city in terms of industrial and commercial wealth and power with a population of 1 million within its city limits.
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