Is the Big Lake called Gitche Gumee? Or is it Gitchi Gami? Kitchi Gami? or Gichi Gami?
The answer is yes.
The world today knows the Ojibwe words for “Great Sea” primarily because of Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” which leads with,
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.
Lightfoot probably took his spelling from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha who started the poem,
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Under the influence of Lightfoot and Longfellow, most would say the correct spelling is Gitche Gumee.
The Ojibwe writing system spelled it ᑭᒋᑲᒥ, pronounced gitchi-gami or kitchi-gami in different dialects.
Other sources state that ᑭᒋᑲᒥ is an abbreviation of ᐅᒋᑉᐧᐁ ᑭᒋᑲᒥ, which is translated Ojibwe Gichigami
In the first dictionary for the Ojibwe dictionary, published in 1878 by Father Frederic Baraga, he transliterates Ojibwe Gichigami as Otchipwe-kitchi-gami
I belong to Duluth Rotary Club 25 which meets at the historic Kitchi Gammi Club, organized in 1883. I wonder if there was a great debate over whether there should be one m or two?
Lightfoot’s “from the Chippewa on down” leads to another question: Is it Ojibwe or Chippewa?
Again, the answer is yes.
Ojibwe and Chippewa are versions of the same word pronounced differently because of English versus French accents.
