Note 95 — VOYAGES AND TRAVELS (continued 3)

Lac les Puans (Stinking Lake) was a name used by the French for Green Bay. The origin of this term was long supposed to be either in the ill-smelling shores or the filthy character of the native Puants (i. e., Winnebagoes). In Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, p. 360, however, an early writer testifies to the cleanliness of the Puants.

It appears that the original Algonquian name for these people, who are an offshoot from the Sioux, was Ouinepeg, a word which has come down to us in two forms—Winnipeg and Winnebago. The meaning of Ouinepeg was, “men of (or from) the fetid (or bad-smelling) water.” It is probable that these people may at one time have lived near a sulphur spring or on the shore of a salt lake. The earliest French inferred that the allusion was to the ocean; hence Nicolet’s appearance among the Winnebagoes on Green Bay (1634) attired as a mandarin, under the apprehension that these “Men of the Sea”—as they were called in some of the earlier French accounts—were Chinamen. Herein we have an illustration of the tenacity of the old theory that America was but an outlying portion of Asia. La Salle’s post at La Chine, near Montreal, which was so nicknamed because some thought it to be on the road to China, is another case in point. When the “Men of the Sea” were discovered to be ordinary Indians, their Algonquian appellation Ouinepeg was translated by the French into a less complimentary term, “Puants” (Stinkards). Given the name, the reputation of uncleanliness soon followed. The Jesuit Relations frequently mentioned the matter; but by the time of the missionaries the old term of “Men of the Sea” appears to have been forgotten. See Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, p. 3, note, for citations; also Thwaites, Stories of the Badger State (New York, 1900), p. 30, for brief recital of the case—Ed.