History
The Skokie River was traditionally a wetland river that flowed very slowly through a valley left behind by two parallel sand dunes that bordered Lake Michigan. In early historical times, the river had no defined banks, was filled with wet prairie grasses and forbs, and swelled or shrank in line with the seasons and with recent precipitation and runoff.
The river had a large population of fish and waterbirds. A seasonal village of the Native Americans stood at the river's mouth in what is now Morton Grove. The Pottawatomi called the long, low lakeside swale Chewab Skokie, or "big wet prairie." They did not conceptualize the drainage as a river, but as a long, ribbon-shaped wetland.
Read more about this topic: Skokie River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)