The earliest L in Kalamazoo yet found: Schoolcraft’s “Kikalemazo” of 1820, and the likely atlas of 1823

The record

1. Henry R. Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States (Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821), p. 396, entry of 4 September 1820

   “On travelling ten miles, we passed the river Kikalemazo, which appears from its mouth, to be a stream of considerable size.”

   Internet Archive · See the record

2. H. C. Carey and I. Lea, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Map of Michigan Territory (Philadelphia, 1822), in their American Atlas (1822; unchanged in most copies of 1823)

   The river lettered “Kikalemazo R.”

   Michigan State University Libraries, map library · See the record

3. David Rumsey Map Collection, catalogue record for Carey & Lea, A Complete Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas (1822)

   The record of the atlas’s editions of 1822, 1823 and 1827, on which our dating of the map in the 1823 atlas rests.

   David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford University · See the record

4. “Mémoire sur la partie occidentale du Canada, depuis Michillimakinac jusqu’au fleuve du Mississipi,” Le Bulletin des recherches historiques 26 (1920), pp. 25–32 (concluded pp. 56 ff.)

   “A quinze lieues de celle-ci est celle de Kikanamaso plus considérable et qui est navigable vers le sud l’espace de quarante lieues”: fifteen leagues beyond the Ouichitanon (by our reading, the Grand River), the Kikanamaso. The editor dated the memoir “1763 ou peu après”; it calls L’Arbre Croche “le nouveau village.”

   Internet Archive · See the record

What it changes

Schoolcraft’s entry of September 1820 is a year earlier than the treaty, and Carey & Lea’s map is the likely atlas; The Rag Picker (1984) had noted the 1822 map’s “Kikalemazo” without naming the atlas. Earlier work had already printed the older N spellings: Potier’s “kikanamaso” of about 1760 (Robert Toupin, 1986 and 1996); the Felicity log’s “Kikanamaso (Kalamazoo)” (The Minute Man, March 1925); and “Reccanamazo,” printed in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 10 (1886), p. 248, and tied to the Kalamazoo by William L. Jenks in 1912 (as “Reccanamazoo”) and by Albert F. Butler (Michigan History, 1949). The memoir of 1763 or a little after, in the Bulletin des recherches historiques (1920), is in no history of the name we found.

Limits

We have seen the 1822 map; that it was unchanged in most copies of 1823 is the David Rumsey Map Collection’s record, and the identification rests on the map’s spelling and date. Some accounts spell the atlas’s form “kikalamezo,” a spelling of British atlases (Sidney Hall’s index of 1831 has “Kikalamezo R.”); the Kalamazoo Public Library gives “Kikalemazo,” which matches Carey & Lea letter for letter. That the memoir’s Ouichitanon is the Grand River is our reading of the name, which resembles the Grand River’s Ottawa name, Owashtanong, and of its place three leagues beyond the Maskigou (Muskegon); but the memoir calls the Ouichitanon small, carrying a canoe only six leagues, which fits the Grand River poorly. The identification of the Kikanamaso with the Kalamazoo does not rest on it. The memoir’s date is its editor’s, “1763 or a little after.”

What we searched before calling it new

Full-text searches of the Internet Archive for every spelling (Kekalamazoo, Kikalemazo, Kikanamaso, Kikalamazoo, “boiling pot,” “reflecting river”); Vogel, Indian Names in Michigan (1986); Romig (1973); Gannett (1905); Durant (1880); the Compendium (1906); the Kalamazoo Public Library’s pages; Wikipedia’s “Etymology of Kalamazoo”; the city’s history page; the research repositories Zenodo, OpenAlex and Crossref, with Google Scholar, JSTOR, Academia.edu and ResearchGate through web searches (OSF, Semantic Scholar, CORE, SSRN and arXiv could not be searched from our tools).

Our standard for calling a finding new is set out in How we research, and how we weigh each kind of record in Scrollsigns.

“New” means new to print as far as we can tell. If you know of an earlier publication, tell us and we will credit it here and raise the note’s version.

Works cited

Earlier work, catalogues and databases named in this note, besides the records quoted above.

1. Kalamazoo Public Library, “How Kalamazoo Got Its Name,” Local History, with its bibliography, accessed October 2026. https://www.kpl.gov/local-history/kalamazoo-history/general/how-kalamazoo-got-its-name/
2. Wikipedia, “Etymology of Kalamazoo.”, accessed October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Kalamazoo
3. Treaty of Chicago, 29 August 1821, in Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), from p. 198. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bp_996062-2
4. The Rag Picker (Paper Money Collectors of Michigan) 19, no. 4 (October–December 1984), back cover: a note on the 1822 Michigan Territory map “by J. Finlayson,” which “spells the Kalamazoo River as Kikalemazo.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ragpicker19n4pape/page/n19/mode/1up
5. Robert Toupin, “Les routes de canot et de terre au pays des Illinois et dans la vallée de la Ouabache au XVIIIe siècle: les recueils de Pierre Potier,” in Commission de toponymie, 450 ans de noms de lieux français en Amérique du Nord, ed. Georges Gauthier Larouche (Québec: Les Publications du Québec, 1986), pp. 446–454, at pp. 448 and 452 (“Le petit kikanamaso,” “Le grand kikanamaso”). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA40243212_1506?q=kikanamaso
6. Robert Toupin, ed., Les Écrits de Pierre Potier (Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1996), pp. 144–151: the itinerary naming the petit and grand kikanamaso, dated to autumn 1760. Internet Archive (borrow). https://archive.org/details/lesecritsdepierr0000unse
7. Report of the Kent Chapter (Claude T. Hamilton’s talk on the log of H.M.S. Felicity), The Minute Man (Washington: National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution) 19, no. 4 (March 1925), p. 66: “for the Kikanamaso (Kalamazoo).” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/minuteman00sons_0/page/66/mode/1up
8. “The Road from Detroit to Fort St Josephs by land,” Haldimand Papers, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 10 (Lansing, 1886), p. 248: “Reccanamazo River, or Pusawpaco Sippy.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/michiganhistoric10mich?q=Sippy
9. Albert F. Butler, “Rediscovering Michigan’s Prairies” (concluded), Michigan History 33, no. 3 (September 1949), pp. 220–231, at p. 225: “Reccanamazo, or Ke-Kalamazoo.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/sim_michigan-history_1949-09_33_3
10. Sidney Hall, Alphabetical Index of All the Names Contained in A New General Atlas of Fifty-Three Maps (London: Longman, 1831), p. [163] (unnumbered), s.v. “Kikalamezo R.” (42° 30′ N, 85° 30′ W, map 44) Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.36513/page/n170/mode/1up
11. Internet Archive, full-text search. https://archive.org/
12. Virgil J. Vogel, Indian Names in Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1986), chapter 14. Open access, Fulcrum. https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/m039k784k
13. Walter Romig, Michigan Place Names: The History of the Founding and the Naming of More than Five Thousand Past and Present Michigan Communities (Grosse Pointe, Mich.: Walter Romig, 1973), p. 297. Internet Archive (borrow). https://archive.org/details/michiganplacenam0000romi
14. Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 2nd ed., U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 258 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905), p. 171. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bulletinofunited258gann
15. Samuel W. Durant, History of Kalamazoo County, Michigan (Philadelphia: Everts & Abbott, 1880), pp. 56–57. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bad0947.0001.001.umich.edu
16. David Fisher and Frank Little, eds., Compendium of History and Biography of Kalamazoo County, Mich. (Chicago: A. W. Bowen & Co., 1906), pp. 31–32. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/arh7742.0001.001.umich.edu
17. City of Kalamazoo, “About Kalamazoo.”, accessed October 2026. https://www.kalamazoocity.org/Community/About-Kalamazoo
18. William L. Jenks, “History and Meaning of the County Names of Michigan,” Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 38 (Lansing, 1912), pp. 439–477, at pp. 455–456. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/michiganhistoric38mich/page/n498/

The full story

The finding is set out in context, with the rest of its sources, in How Kalamazoo got its name. In the discoveries register:

• first-l-schoolcraft-1820
• kikalemazo-carey-1822
• kikanamaso-french-memoir