It's "Ky-ah-HO-ga" -- the Mohawk say so

Did you see Cleveland Magazine mentioned on the Plain Dealer's front page yesterday? Mike McIntyre, the Tipoff columnist, credited us with a friendly assist as he tried to settle Cleveland's eternal debate: whether the river and the county should be pronounced "Ky-ah-HO-ga" or "Ky-ah-HOG-ah."

McIntyre covers the main points: that West Siders tend to prefer "HOG-ah," while East Siders say "HO-ga." He credited Jimmy Dimora with endorsing "HOG-ah" last week. (During his "diatribe" -- Dimora's own description -- against county Republican leader Rob Frost, my notes show Dimora also reduced the name to three, almost two, syllables: "Ka'HOG-ah" County.)

McIntyre writes, "Cleveland Magazine declared hoag correct after once interviewing a woman who speaks Mohawk. Cuyahoga is derived from an American Indian word." I had tipped him off to one of my proudest discoveries of Cleveland-iana, which we published in our December 2005 "How Cleveland Are You?" quiz:
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The most poetic legend claims Cuyahoga is a Mohawk word for “crooked river.” So we called someone who speaks Mohawk: Martha Lickers, curriculum developer at the Ronathahonni Cultural Center in Ahkwesahsne, Ont. The Mohawk word for “big river,” she says, is kahionhowanen, which is pronounced “gah-yo-ho-wah-na.” HO-ga it is.
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Gah-yo-ho-wah = Ky-ah-ho-gah. That not only settles the HO-ga vs. HOG-ah debate, it identifies the origin of the river's name! Alas, it's not "crooked river," as the poetic legend goes, just "big river."

No wonder our discovery didn't catch on. The idea that the name means "crooked river" is one of those Cleveland myths we don't want to let go -- like the legend that the bullet holes in Great Lakes Brewing's bar were shot by Eliot Ness.

Speaking of the river: "Burn On," our complete package of stories about the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River Fire, is now online. It's also in the July issue of the magazine. (If you'd like to link to it, here's a shortcut: tinyurl.com/CMriverpackage.)

Re-Birthday Party

Cuyahoga County residents and families covered the grassy slope that is Settler’s Landing at today’s celebration — Once Gray, Now Green: 40 Years of Progress on the Cuyahoga River.

The Waterband kicked off today’s events with a folksy-reggae-pop performance (I believe the term the band coined for its genre is ‘folkedelicfunkpop’). What’s even cooler than the band's unique blend of electric and acoustic style is its contribution to your drinking water. In 2008, Waterband raised and donated $4,000 to various nonprofit organizations specializing in providing clean water.

But don’t panic — you may not have missed the fun yet. The re-birthday party continues this evening. Stop at the log cabin under the Detroit Superior Bridge anytime before 8 p.m. for some re-birthday cake, games and a little river history 101 from the River’s Bend historical interpreters.

40 years later: Burn on, big river!

Water on fire: It’s elementally wrong, like earth made of air. So when an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River caught fire on June 22, 1969, 40 years ago this summer (see top photo), the rest of America laughed instead of recoiled: What kind of city is so estranged from nature that its water burns?

But fire and water are part of Cleveland: the steel mill’s flame, the inland sea we call a lake. Of course waves and flames came together in a town built on industry, sweaty work in furnaces and an oil baron’s headquarters on a watery highway.

Today, we have done more than clean up the river. We’ve made our most embarrassing scandal a defiant part of our identity. Our pride can’t be extinguished.

So we're commemorating the Cuyahoga River fire's legacy in the July issue of Cleveland Magazine. This essay by Mark Winegardner, author of the novel Crooked River Burning, explores why an industrial accident became the ultimate Cleveland metaphor and why the river fire became internationally infamous -- blame Time, which published a photo of a Nov. 1952 Cuyahoga River fire (second pic from top) and passed it off as 1969's.

To read the rest of our feature package on the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fire, pick up a copy of the July issue of Cleveland Magazine -- in bookstores and subscribers' mailboxes this week, at newsstands in July -- or visit clevelandmagazine.com starting next week.

For more on the 40th anniversary of the river fire, check this blog later today for a report from this afternoon's Cuyahoga River Re-Birthday Party, at Settler's Landing under the Detroit-Superior bridge.

If you're in the mood to celebrate, stop by the party from 2 to 8 pm. Also, stop by Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Ohio City for their party, from 4:30 to 10:30 pm, a preview event for their Burning River Fest, to be held Aug. 15. If you'd like to know more about the river's history, we also recommend the documentary The Return of the Cuyahoga, showing tomorrow night at 9 pm on WVIZ.

(If you'd like to link to Winegardner's essay, you can use this shortcut: tinyurl.com/CMriver.)