Location
Redwood Falls is in Redwood County
Established February 6, 1862, this county was named for the Redwood River, whence also comes the name of the county seat, Redwood Falls, situated on a series of cascades and rapids of the river. Prof. A. W. Williamson wrote of this name: "Chanshayapi;--chan, wood; sha, red; ayapi, are on; Redwood river; so called by the Dakotas on account of the abundance of a straight slender bush with red bark, which they scraped off and smoked, usually mixed with tobacco. This name is spelled by Nicollet Tchanshayapi." William H. Keating and George W. Featherstonhaugh each gave both the Dakota and English names of this river; and the latter traveler expressly defined their meaning, as follows: "This red wood is a particular sort of willow, with an under bark of a reddish colour, which the Indians dry and smoke. When mixed with tobacco it makes what they call Kinnee Kinnik, and is much less offensive than common tobacco."
The inner bark of two Cornus species, C. sericea, the silky cornell, and C. stolonifera, the red-osier dogwood, were used by the Indians, both the Dakota and the Ojibwe, to mix with their tobacco for smoking. The Algonquian word kinnikinnick for such addition to the tobacco included also the leaves of the bearberry and leaves of sumac, gathered when they turn red in the autumn, which were similarly used.
It has been supposed also that the Dakota name of the Redwood River alludes to the red cedar trees on its bluffs at Redwood Falls or to trees there marked by spots of red paint for guidance of a war party at some time during the ancient warfare between the Ojibwe and the Dakota for ownership of this region, as told in a Dakota legend to early white settlers (history of this county, 1916, pp. 613-14). Either of these alternative suggestions has seemed to many of the settlers more probable than the testimony for the kinnikinnick, which was received from an earlier and more intimate knowledge of the Dakota people and their language. Chan, as a Dakota word, may mean "a tree or any woody shrub," being a more general word than wood in our language, which in its most common use is applied only to trees.
But two or even all three of these reasons for the naming of the river may be included together as each contributing to its origin, namely, the kinnikinnick, the red cedars, and also painted trees. In support of the third as a part of the origin, we should quote from Giacomo C. Beltrami who was here in 1823, accompanying Maj. Stephen H. Long's expedition, for he wrote that the Redwood River was "so called from a tree which the savages paint red every year and for which they have a peculiar veneration" (Beltrami, A Pilgrimage in America, vol. 2, p. 316)
From: Upham, Warren. Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, First edition 1920. Third Edition 2001. Print.
