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Upham records that Koochiching County was established on December 19, 1906, and that it bears the Cree name the Ojibways applied to Rainy lake, to the Rainy river, and to the great falls and rapids at International Falls. Upham’s 1920 gazetteer entry on page 281 traces this one word across two centuries of French and English writing before it settles on the county itself.
Upham writes that Jacques de Noyon, a French Canadian voyageur, was probably the first white man to travel any part of Minnesota’s northern boundary, about the year 1688. Upham records that an official report written at Quebec by the Intendant Begon on November 12, 1716, and later published in the Margry Papers, describes De Noyon setting out from Lake Superior by the Kaministiquia river route, guided by a party of Assiniboine Indians, in search of the Sea of the West.
Upham writes that the 1716 report follows De Noyon through Rainy lake, called in the report the Lake of the Crees, to the river flowing out of it, where he wintered. Upham records that the report gives the river’s name, in the Cree language of the time, as the word Upham reads as the origin of Koochiching.
Upham records a second early narrative, an account of travel in 1740-42 by Joseph la France, a French and Ojibway man. Upham says the account was given in a book that Arthur Dobbs published in London in 1744. Upham writes that La France came through Rainy lake late in April and early in May of 1740, and stayed ten days at the Koochiching falls near the lake’s outlet, where the Moose band of Ojibways kept two villages for fishing, one on each side of the falls, at or near the later sites of Fort Frances and International Falls.
Upham traces the French name Lac de la Pluie, translated into English as Rainy lake, to this same 1740s narrative, which Upham says explains the name as coming from a waterfall whose mist fell like rain on the river below it. Upham records that the older Indian name for the river, in another spelling, appears on the map Ochagach drew for Verendrye in 1728, and that the name was received from the Assiniboines.
Upham credits the translation of the county’s name to Rev. J. A. Gilfillan, who read it as a neighboring lake and river, or, under another reading, a lake and river somewhere, and who told Upham that the word is of uncertain meaning and does not strictly belong to the Ojibway language even though it is in common use there. Upham is a source here rather than an authority: Upham wrote in 1920, in the transcription conventions of his day, and where Upham gives an Ojibwe or a Cree origin, a modern Ojibwe-language source, or the Bois Forte Band, may render it differently.
Upham records that Koochiching township, like the county, took its name from the falls of Rainy river. Upham’s page 283 entry, in the same passage describing a nearby pioneer, also notes that a settler founded the first newspaper of Koochiching, and identifies Koochiching there as the earlier name of the village now called International Falls.
Upham records that Kline township, organized more recently, was named for a pioneer settler, in the entry set directly beside the one for Koochiching township. Upham’s own pairing of these entries shows the village trading its name for International Falls while the township, and the county, kept the older word.
Upham writes that the Rainy river’s falls were formerly covered in mist. Upham records that the falls have been dammed since 1908 and that they supply water power to the city of International Falls for what Upham describes as the largest paper-making mills in the world.
Upham lists the islands, bays, and points of the county’s share of Rainy lake in order from east to west: Dryweed island, already noted in the gazetteer for its gold mining, Sha Sha point, Black bay, Grindstone island, Grassy island, with the Grassy narrows between it and the south shore; then Red Sucker island; Jackfish island and its bay; Stop island; Kingston island; Sand bay; and, at the mouth of the lake, Pither’s point.
Upham’s gazetteer records no settled meaning for the two-hundred-year word itself, noting only that Gilfillan called it uncertain even as it stayed in common Ojibway use. The county, the lake, the river and the falls still carry the one name across all four.
Where the Name Came From is an 18-part series read from a public-domain 1920 gazetteer of Minnesota place names, compiled by Warren Upham and out of copyright since publication. Where the Name Came From — part 2 of 18. Every date, every name, every figure and every quotation in it is checked automatically against the gazetteer pages listed below before it is published, and each quotation is checked word for word against the scanned text and carries the page it came from. The scan carries machine-read text, and where a word in it is damaged this series says so rather than quoting the damage.
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