Introduction

It is indeed a privilege, through the agency of the Pennsylvania Alpine Club, to assist in the publication of so timely a monograph as that of Dr. Donehoo’s, on the subject of changing historic place names. Every month the senseless shifting is going on, newcomers wresting from the historic past the heritage of honored names. It will be difficult a century hence to follow the course of history in Pennsylvania; even now it is hard to identify the places visited by early travelers like Spangenberg, Ettwein and Col. Weiser, as innovators have changed and re-changed even the names of the streams and mountains that they crossed. It will be hard to trace the racial and philological development of the State, as the haphazard system of renaming places destroys all historic sequence of nationality and individual tendencies. One bright spot remains. Pennsylvania has discarded fewer of her Indian names than most other States; personal vanity or prejudice was hardly strong enough to obliterate these—for even more than “their names are on the waters and you cannot blot them out,” the Indian-named mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and streams persist and bid fair to defy the ruthlessness of the ages. Let the constant watchfulness of every public-spirited Pennsylvanian be directed to “save the ancient landmarks” and keep inviolate the sturdy, distinctive nomenclature and spelling handed down by our fore-fathers.

Henry W. Shoemaker.

“Restless Oaks,” McElhattan, Pa., April 30, 1921.