The river's name-legends: Sheggwe, the mystery river, and the mushroom man

The St. Joseph River carries a Potawatomi name with a legend inside it, and the tellers are named. Notre Dame Magazine's "Wondering Out Loud: Saint Joseph River" gives the Potawatomi name as Sheggwe ("SHAG-wah"): the river "happened spontaneously," and the name preserves the legend of a man who would mysteriously materialize on its banks, the way a mushroom springs up overnight — the magazine's tellers are named in its own text: the historian Gregory Dowd and John Palmer of the St. Joseph County Public Library's local history staff, with the Northern Indiana Center for History behind the telling. A second Potawatomi form circulates in the Project Scroll telling ("Where the River Begins," 5 November 2026): "Sauwk Wauwk Sil Buck," Sakiwasipi, "mystery river" — and that telling attaches the darker legend Charles H. Bartlett printed in 1904, of twin sisters drowned in the stream and a Spirit of the River demanding an annual sacrifice of two victims, assessing it in its own text as a late local legend found in no earlier source. The two name-forms and their legends print together, unmerged: Sheggwe the mushroom-man river of the magazine's telling, Sakiwasipi the mystery river of Bartlett's. The linguistic stock stands beside the legends at its own strength: a possibly Miami name, Sagwasibi, "coming-out river" — the stream as the connector out of the Kankakee country to Lake Michigan; La Salle's French name of 1679, the River of the Miamis; and the first "Saint Joseph River" reference in a French Canadian land grant of 1689. The Kankakee's own name-legend stands at the valley's other end in the Kankakee Valley Historical Society's telling: Potawatomi Au-ki-ki, "beautiful river," under its chain of French renderings. The neighbouring name-conflict prints at boundary size, as this build prints boundary matter: Mishawaka's name carries a scholarly gloss, "firewood-tree land" (standing dead trees), against the popular Princess Mishawaka legend — the gloss and the legend both in circulation, neither promoted here. For Lakeville's own ground the finding is exact: the township has no St. Joseph frontage (the tribes file's frame), so these are the valley's legends carried at boundary strength, and no legend attaches to either township lake in any carrier reached — the lakes' naming beliefs stand in the folklore file at their own strength, unlegended.

Principal sources: Notre Dame Magazine, "Wondering Out Loud: Saint Joseph River" (magazine.nd.edu); Project Scroll, "Where the River Begins," 5 November 2026, citing Charles H. Bartlett (1904); Kankakee Valley Historical Society, Potawatomi/Kankakee history pages; the banked Native Nations and Folklore frames. Residue: the Pokagon Band's and Citizen Potawatomi Nation's own cultural tellings, named in the audit as settlers, were not separately read; the legends above stand on the carriers named.