Huron River (Ohio) - Variant Names

Variant Names

According to the Geographic Names Information System, the Huron River has also been known as:

• Hurons River
• Notowacy Thepy
• Pettquotting
• Riviere Huron
• Bald Eagle Creek
• Huron Creek

Similarly, the West and East branches have been referred to as the West and East forks.

• Also shown on early maps as named the "Guahadahuri".
• The word "Huron" refers to a Native-American tribe who were also known as the Wyandots (sometimes spelled "Wendots" or "Junundats"). This tribe had many villages in the area of Sandusky Bay, in the latter-1700's.

The Huron River had been given that name by European explorers at least by 1778, when it appears as such on a map by Hutchins. A much earlier map, by Evans in 1755, names it as the "Guahadahuri"; on that Evans map, because of the river's significant depth and navigability even at that early time, it was the only river denoted between Sandusky Bay and the Cuyahoga. Also in 1755, Pennsylvanian James Smith, who had been captured by Native-Americans and brought to this river to live amongst them, recorded the river's name as the "Canesadooharie". Whichever one, or both, "guahadahuri" or "canesadooharie", was the more phonetically accurate of a Native-American word, but the word's translation seems lost to obscurity. In 1760, explorer George Croghan refers to the name of this river, also phonetically from its Native-American/Chippewa tribe name, as "Notowacy Thepy"; John Heckewelder recorded it as "Naudowessie Sipi", meaning "the River ("sipi") of the Huron ("Naudowessie") tribe". Some maps of the latter-1700's also show the Huron River as "Bald Eagle Creek"; named for a large eagle's nest at its mouth at that time.

• In 1787, the Moravian missionary, David Zeisberger, led a group of Christian-converted Native-Americans from their settlement on the Cuyahoga River, to a new settlement called first Pettquotting (but later named 'New Salem' in 1790) on the Huron River, about 3 miles north of (now) Milan, Ohio. They remained until 1791 when forced by local Native-American unrest, they relocated to Canada; but in 1804, some of the Christian-converted Natives, under the direction of G.S. Oppelt, returned to a new different settlement here (also named "Pettquotting") and it eventually became the village of Milan, Ohio.
• Throughout the latter-1700's, the northern part of the river was a well-known outpost for many French traders, including Gabriel Hunot who ran an Indian-trading-post there in the 1780's, and the later John B. Flamand (or "Flemmond"/"Flemming") about 1805. ---