Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Whatever it means, it's a good name

As self-appointed spokesman for the floating-scum underground, I feel somewhat qualified to comment on issues dividing our town. First off, let me say that if Saratoga is to be riven by controversy, I only hope it can be on the same good-humored level as that involving the origins of the town's name.

Mayor Don Wolfe has settled the issue, or thinks he has, with a proclamation stating that Saratoga is derived from an Iroquois Indian word meaning "Hillside country of the great river, place of the swift water." He has compiled considerable documentary evidence from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to that effect.

Meanwhile, some of us cultural Philistines are hanging tough with "floating scum upon the water," cited by Florence Cunningham in Saratoga's First Hundred Years as coming from the Iroquois root word describing a mineral spring.

Without getting bogged down in detail, I'd say there are two pivotal factors here. One is that the "swift water" description apparently referred to a location other than the mineral springs. The other is that there has to be plenty of room for ambiguity in the transliteration of a spoken language--the Iroquois--into the written phonetics of our own tongue. And isn't it just possible that the Iroquois language had its own homonyms--words that sound the same but have different meanings (e.g. to, too, two; bow, bough)? I'm working on it, and, in the ringing words of Yogi Berra, it ain't over till it's over.

As to issues that really have divided the town, nothing could match the antagonism that flared more than 130 years ago when the Civil War was raging and emotions generated by the fierce fighting a continent away were reflected in the peaceful surroundings of McCartysville. Strictly speaking, it was during the town's nine-month identity as Bank Mills when, on a hot October day in 1864, a large crowd gathered here for a patriotic rally in support of the Union cause.

There was good reason for such a gesture. As described in Saratoga's First Hundred Years, McCartysville was a hotbed of Confederate sentiment, with Southern sympathizers reportedly in the majority. A semi-military organization of Secessionists, the super-secret Knights of the Golden Circle, was believed to have had a branch in McCartysville.

These regrettable manifestations of disunity were brought into focus when several of the town's leading citizens were accused of having helped plan the robbery of a stagecoach traveling from Virginia City, Nev., to Placerville. The leader of the bandits told passengers that money from the holdup would be used for recruiting Confederate troops.

Although they were not on the scene, three of McCartysville's pioneer citizens, including Henry Jarboe, the first blacksmith in the village, were arrested and held for trial as alleged conspirators. Ultimately they all were released for lack of sufficient evidence, but the seeds of suspicion had been sown.

This was the background for the patriotic rally of Oct. 5, 1864, complete with the raising of a large flag on an 80-foot pole erected for the event. There were speeches on behalf of the Union cause; the town's home guard unit, a cavalry company known as the Redwood Volunteers, paraded in uniform; and there were selections by the San Jose Cornet Band.

It was a real "upper" for the supporters of the Union, but what gave the event special significance was the vote taken among those attending to change the name of Bank Mills. Although never really accepted by townspeople, Bank Mills was the post office designation, having been promoted by Charles Maclay, whose business and political exploits were the stuff of legend.

It was proposed to name the town Saratoga, after one of the springs in New York, where the water was found to have the same content as the mineral water source discovered in the early 1850s up the canyon from the village here.

In her First Hundred Years account, Florence Cunningham didn't record any discussion of floating scum or swift water. Saratoga is just a good name, whatever its origins. Those people at the patriotic rally did the right thing when they voted it in.

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