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 Indian women, twin sisters of a chief. They were swimming in the clear waters of a river and the river-spirit, jealous of their beauty, took the maidens as tribute. So the Indians called the river the Sau-wau-see-bee — the ‘Fate-of-the-Sisters.’” In Silliman's telling the Potawatomi called the same river the Sauwk Wauwk Sil Buck and the Ottawas the Sau-gan-see-pe, and the legend carries its own sequel: the French priests blessed the cruel river and renamed it St. Joseph, for the saint “who guards and guides the travelers.” It is a complete little aetiology — a name, a death in the water, a spirit paid, a saint substituted — and it is the only drowning-legend the river's print record offers this section: the river itself as the taker, the drowned as the explanation of a word.

The record beside the tale: the name-forms in Silliman's paragraph belong to the river's genuinely documented old names — South Bend's record, in this history's Folklore section there, carries the river's second Indian name as Sagwasibi, glossed by its authorities “coming-out river,” for the river's work as the connector between the Kankakee and Lake Michigan. Whether Silliman's Sau-wau-see-bee and the Sagwasibi of the South Bend authorities are one word in two spellings the record reached does not settle, and the glosses could hardly differ more — a coming-out, or a fate of sisters — so the two are printed side by side here without reconciliation: the river's name-lore comes down in folk glosses, and the folk glosses disagree, which is the ordinary condition of name-lore and is stated rather than smoothed. The boundary of this entry is printed with it: Silliman's is a Michigan-valley telling, collected for St. Joseph County, Michigan, and no telling of the sisters tied to Mishawaka's own reach of the river — to the rapids, the dam, or the bend — stands in any source this section could reach. The search for a Mishawaka drowning-legend of the usual kind, a death in the river at this ground that grew a tale, found none: the dam's and the river's documented dead at Mishawaka stand in the disaster and crime records as deaths, with names and dates, and no legend grew on them that print preserves. What the river gave Mishawaka was not a ghost but a princess — the book's village of Mishawakee sat on this bank — and the older water-legend belongs to the river whole, printed here at the size of its one telling because the river is this city's river too.

Sources:

1. Sue I. Silliman, St. Joseph in Homespun: A Centennial Souvenir (1931), chapter I, “Indian Tribes of St. Joseph Valley” — the Sau-wau-see-bee legend quoted; Sauwk Wauwk Sil Buck (Potawatomi) and Sau-gan-see-pe (Ottawa) as printed there; the French blessing and renaming to St. Joseph.
2. This history, South Bend Folklore section — the river's names in the Indiana-side record: Sheggwe in the Potawatomi telling, Sagwasibi “coming-out river” (per Notre Dame Magazine's named authorities), La Salle's Miami River of 1679, Saint Joseph from the grant of 1689.
3. This history, spine section — the rapids, the dam and the river's course at Mishawaka, to which any local river tale would attach; none found in the record reached.