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Folklore: The Stories Mishawaka Tells
Folklore, in this section of the record, is handled the way an archive handles a letter: what is told, who told it, and when it was first written down come first, and the checkable record stands beside the telling in plain type. Mishawaka's tale-stock is dominated by one story, and this section does not pretend otherwise: the Princess fills the first three entries, because the princess fills the city's imagination. But the entries are not the Story of Mishawaka section's and not Culture's. The Story of Mishawaka section tested the legend against the documents and printed the verdict; Culture traced the nickname, the pageants and the contests. What stands here is the tale itself — its author's own text, read first-hand for this section; the three distinct forms the story takes in 1875, in the bronze of 1932, and in the city's modern summary of itself, printed side by side because they do not agree; and the tale's travels through other people's books. After the princess: the river's older legend, the city's one compilation ghost, the names as the folk tell them, and the empty shelves, which are also part of the record.
Mishawaha as Littlejohn Wrote Her: The Tale in Its First Telling
1875 · Flavius J. Littlejohn, Legends of Michigan and the Old North West
The teller and his framing: the tale's first documented telling is its author's, and the author is unusually candid about what he made. Flavius Josephus Littlejohn — Michigan lawyer, legislator and judge, a surveyor and geologist…
The Tale in Its Three Forms: The Book, the Bronze, and the City's Own Summary
1875–1932–today · the variants, printed side by side
Why three entries' worth of variants gets its own article: Mishawaka does not tell its legend one way. It tells it three ways, in three carriers of descending age and ascending authority, and the differences are not details — on…
The Tale in Circulation: Reprints, Homespun, and the Folklore Canon
1931–2013 · how a Michigan storybook became two states' local history
The reprint: the book that carries the tale was kept in print by its own country. The Library of Michigan's author file records the Legends in the 1875 Allegan edition and in an authorized reprinting of 1956 by the Allegan County…
The River's Own Legend: The Sau-wau-see-bee and the Fate of the Sisters
Printed 1931 · the St. Joseph's older name, and the drowning that named it
The tale: the Princess is not the river's only legend, nor its oldest in print. The valley's homespun history opens with another: “There is a quaint old Indian legend of the Sau-wau-see-bee which tells of the fate of two young…
The Ghost at the Brewer's House: The Hacienda Tale
In print by 1992 · 706 Lincolnway West
The place: Mishawaka's one ghost tale with a standing address in the national compilations belongs to a restaurant: the Hacienda in Adolph Kamm's house, the 1853 brewer's mansion inside the Kamm & Schellinger brewery complex at…
The Names as the Folk Tell Them
Undated, as sayings are · the etymologies that circulate
The city's name: the folk etymology of Mishawaka is the princess herself — “our city was named in her honor,” in the tablet's words — and it is the version a resident is most likely to meet first, because it is the version cast…
The Empty Shelves: Treasure, Curses, and Hoaxes
The search shown · what this city's record does not carry
The method of this entry: a folklore file is a record of what a place tells, and a place's silences are part of it when the search for the telling is shown. Three standard tale-types were tested against Mishawaka's record for…
Pointers: The Test, the Career, the Ghosts' Own Pass, and the Valley's Other Teller
Cross-references, kept short on purpose
The test: the Princess Mishawaka legend examined as a claim — who Littlejohn was, what documents would have to exist and do not, the name's real history — stands whole in this history's spine, in the entry “The Princess…
The Old-Settlers' Stock: Merrifield's Articles, Brunner's 137 Essays, and the Certificates
1859–1983 · the collected stock, collector by collector
The first collector — the town's first publisher: Mishawaka's old-settlers' stock was first collected in print by a man who had printed the town's first newspaper. George Merrifield, publisher of the town's first paper, published…
The Keepsake-Money Test: Eight Hundred Dollars, a Deed Price and Not a Tale
The test run, November 2026 · the small-sum pattern against this city's stock
The pattern and the candidate: The tale-type is a small sum that lasted — a handful of dollars kept, carried or remembered until it stands for the whole fortune or the whole town. Mishawaka's stock was tested for it, and the…
"Our Team Will Fight Like Cavemen!": The Sentence's Growth, Stage by Stage
1922 or 1923–today · from a placard to the city's standing property
Stage one — the utterance, in its two tellings: The sentence's birth stands in this record in two accounts that cannot both be right, and the growth tracing begins by printing both, as the Sports record prints them whole. In the…
The Names They Brought With Them: A Test, Printed at Its Result
The immigrant place-name test · Belgian and Italian Mishawaka
The pattern tested: In some American settlements the immigrants rebuilt the old country's map in the new country's streets — a neighborhood called by a Polish hill-town's name, a district that is a transferred Warsaw — and the…