Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

More from the 'scum vs. swift' debate

That roseate hue on the evening horizon just has to come from Mayor Don Wolfe, basking in the glow of recent confirmation of his position on the floating scum vs. swift water issue.

For the benefit of readers who may have arrived recently from another planet, the mayor is hooked on--I was going to say obsessed with--the idea of doing away with the heretofore accepted etymology of Saratoga's name, allegedly based on an Iroquois Indian term for "floating scum upon the water." If you think about it, that term makes sense. Our Saratoga was named for the town in New York because the chemical content of mineral springs discovered near here is the same as one of the Saratoga Springs. And mineral springs, by their nature, can exhibit a substance that conceivably could be described as floating scum upon the water.

But this is Saratoga, Calif., where identification with scum, even in such a remote and wholesome context, could reduce the value of a new house by as much as $100,000.

I'll have to hand it to Don, though; he really did his homework. From sources in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., he has compiled a formidable body of authority to the effect that the name Saratoga comes from Iroquois words translating into "hillside country of the great river, place of the swift water."

And that is the way it is enshrined here in a recent mayoral proclamation to the effect that "for all official and ceremonial purposes, from this time forward, the original and true meaning of the name ... shall be considered..." etc., etc.

But back to the "floating scum." It surfaced locally in Florence Cunningham's book, Saratoga's First Hundred Years, in which she cited "an official publication of New York State" as the definition's source. But she didn't identify the official publication. I have stuck by that version because I knew Miss Cunningham as a careful historian, and as I will point out shortly, I'm still not ready to give up on it.

Comes now Dr. Martha Stonequist, historian and archivist for the city of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., who, in a letter to our mayor, identifies the probable "floating scum" source as a legislative manual from the mid-1930s. She enclosed an excerpt from a publication, "The Saratogian," circa 1936, with an article about the director of researchers in the Federal Writing Project and his debunking of the legislative manual's "floating scum" reference. This official states that, "As one who has made an intensive research of the Indian lore of the county and the meaning of the Indian names, I can find no prominent authority for such derivation of the name [floating scum upon the water], although I have consulted many authoritative references."

To Mayor Wolfe, this document is the "Rosetta Stone" to which the "floating scum" can be traced. As one who dabbles in history, I probably should take this as the end of the argument. However, if there is one thing that I gained from 30 years of law practice, it is an appreciation of wiggle room, as summarized in that lawyerly phrase, "There's a lot to be said on both sides of that question."

So where is the wiggle room here? Well, for starters, the language of the Iroquois nation, comprising several tribes including the Mohawk, was, as I remarked in a previous column, spoken rather than written. Lots of wiggle room there. Then there is the observation in the same "Saratogian" article that there are about 10 different Indian words for Saratoga. More wiggle room.

Finally there is the statement of Dr. Stonequist herself, in her letter to Mayor Wolfe: "Now I have to try and discover the source of the New York State Legislature's 1935 handbook definition of Saratoga!!" (Emphasis hers.)

What might her further research reveal? Could it possibly be there is a solid basis for "floating scum"? Just think of it: There were 10 different words for Saratoga.

In conclusion, may I cite the case of the USS Shenandoah as an example of what can happen with Indian names. The Shenandoah was the first U.S.-built dirigible, launched in 1923 and christened by Marion Thurber Denby, wife of the Secretary of the Navy, with the following words: "I hereby christen this ship the Shenandoah, which in Indian language means 'daughter of the stars.' "

No one was going to argue about the appropriateness of the name bestowed on the sleek, silvery, 680-foot airship. Regardless of the name's appropriateness, though, the Shenandoah crashed in September 1925 with a loss of 14 men, including her commander.

It wasn't until a few generations later that an iconoclastic historian dug into the matter and reported that he was unable to prove that the "daughter of the stars" translation was true in any Indian language.

There's a moral there somewhere and for now, I'm linking it, however abstractly, with floating scum upon the water.

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