I've heard that this month marks the hundredth anniversary of Times Square. In local history, the Lake Traverse Travesty (no, there's no Travesty Plaza here) reminds us that the 20th was the centennial of our town's first leading citizen's passing. The man's name was Shaynowishkung, meaning "he jingles/rattles." On being widowed, evidently around the time of the Civil War, he left his then-home and moved to this river-lake junction in the wilderness. In 1888 he was here to welcome the first European types to settle. (A British trading post allegedly stood across the lake a century or more earlier, but there's no obvious trace of it.) People dubbed him "Chief" out of respect, adding the lake's Ojibwe name signifying waters lying crosswise. The French called it Lac Traverse.

Since then, of course, hordes of Big Knives have done quite a number on the region's resources. Once the good timber was cut, farming proved marginal, so our land never became quite civilized. Still, I wouldn't blame any residents who might long for the great hunting/fishing/gathering of Shaynowishkung's day.

One further historical perspective: The day the "Chief" died, a certain Austrian kid named Adolf, son of a Schicklgruber who'd taken the surname Hiedler, turned 15.