The names that were never fought: two tests, printed whole

1909 — the present

The Princess: No organized dispute over the Princess Mishawaka imagery stands in the record reached for the twentieth or twenty-first centuries — no campaign against the statue, the boulder, the pageants or the brand. The city's century-long argument about the princess was of another kind: whether she had ever existed. The Story of Mishawaka section record of this history tests the legend and answers it — a fiction, traceable to an 1875 novel — and the culture record shows what the city did with the answer: it re-elected her at every anniversary, put a boulder at her "supposed grave" in Lincoln Park in 1909 and a statue in 1910, and brandished her name on its water tower. Mishawaka's dispute was with the tale's truth, conducted as scholarship and celebration at once; it was never, in the record reached, a dispute among Mishawakans about whether she should represent them.

The Cavemen: The high school's name has a documented origin — Curt Johnson's sign at Cartier Field in 1922 or 1923, carried in the schools and sports records — and no documented challenge to it stands in the record reached: no board fight, no petition, no campaign in the Tribune's record. Both tests are printed because the absence is itself the finding, against the era's pattern elsewhere: what Mishawaka fought about, across the whole of this section, was land, a theater, a deed, a tax and a fee. It did not fight about its names.

Sources:

1. The Story of Mishawaka section record, The Story of Mishawaka — the legend's test and its 1875 origin; the culture record, Culture — the princess's civic career, the 1909 boulder and the 1910 statue; the schools record, Schools & Colleges — the Cavemen origin, 1922 or 1923.