WHEELING, W.Va. — To the average driver speeding down the road City of Wheeling Nothing about this place on Interstate 70 might seem particularly bad.

An ancient rust belt city, its name “Wheel” may be thought to be associated with the wheel. The city is inextricably linked to the history of American travel and has always been a city on wheels. Countless millions have passed Ohio River In Wheeling, it’s mostly on wheels.

But the story behind the name “Wheeling” has its roots in darkness.

Wheeling: City of Wheels

First major improved highway built by the federal government National Roadheaded west through the city, crossing the Ohio River Wheeled Suspension BridgeThe oldest vehicle suspension bridge in the country.

fed by Open Destinybound to the west Conestoga wagons They moved along the road and many stopped here to buy one last piece of tobacco in the shape of a cigar rolled by M. Marsh & Son. These were “known as”stogies” Because of the hooded wagons.

In 1851 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, ran its main line through Wheeling and through Ohio. This transition eclipsed the era of sternwheelers, which had been rowing the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Wheeling and Pittsburgh to New Orleans since 1811.

Wagon wheels, paddle wheels, locomotive wheels; but none are associated with the word Wheeling. Instead, its origins date back to the mid-1700s, when the region was one of the central theaters of the colonial-era American Indian Wars.

Location of the Skull

However, according to most of the few early historical sources that exist, Wheeling or Weeling means “place of the head” or “place of the skull”, and the story behind the name is entirely related to the horrors of the period.

Author John White, in his book “American Pioneer” published in the early 1800s, claimed that a colonist named John Brittle was captured by the Delawares and lived among them for about five years, during which time he learned some of their speech.

According to White, Brittle suggested that “in the early period of the settlement of Pennsylvania, some white settlers went down the Ohio River in a boat and, stopping at the mouth of Wheeling Creek, were killed by the Delawares.” The savages cut off their heads. They slaughtered one of their victims and placed it on a pole facing the river, calling the spot Weeling.

“The Indians informed Mr. Brittle that the head was placed there to guard the river; I suppose to protect the camp from attacks by the whites. Mr. Brittle said that if an Indian were asked where he was after shooting a deer or a bear, he would whine about the head if he had shot the animal.”

Another explanation of the nomenclature, contained in “Bowen’s Directory of Wheeling” published in 1839, postulated that the name was derived from the surname “Wheelan,” a missionary Catholic priest who settled near the mouth of Wheeling Creek before disappearing further downriver.

The late historian George W. Summers was among those who criticized the latter assumption, noting that a priest of that name, certainly an Irishman, would have pronounced it “Whaylan” and hence the name of the city should have been “Whaling”.

In any case, historians and linguists who have uncovered Native American speech at the time confirm that the name probably meant something similar to “place of the head.”

Doug Wood is a leading interpreter of prehistoric and protohistoric culture. West Virginiaagrees with this suggestion.

“Exactly,” says Wood, “and in speech of the period the suffix appears to have been pronounced -ing, -ink, or -unk, meaning something like place.”

Many words derived from Algonquian languages ​​for “head” contain the “ee” sound, as in the Delaware word “nil” meaning head and the Shawnee word “niiši”. But speech can vary greatly, especially when written characters are not used, as in North America.

Wheeling, of course, is just one of hundreds of options. US cities named after Native American origins. In the case of Tuscaloosa, Milwaukee, or Kissimmee, this relationship may be clear. But in the case of Wheeling, its similarity to the English word “wheel” has overshadowed the remarkable, albeit light and dark, history.

In recent years, tourism officials have discussed establishing a park that would house a “Skull Place” sculpture on city-owned land at the mouth of Wheeling Creek.

Some have argued that the brown “Location of Skull Park” signposts on I-70 and I-470 would be attractive enough to attract many tourists off the travel route. More than 150,000 vehicles pass through the city every day on interstates that are nearly equidistant between Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio.

Today, Wheeling is known as a welcoming city with a historic landscape boasting a casino, numerous shopping malls, and cultural landmarks. For more information about its history or about visiting the city, Wheeling Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Strange carvings greeted West Virginia’s first explorers

When pioneers and other explorers first ventured into the region that would become West Virginia, they encountered artifacts of much earlier antiquity, such as carvings, burial mounds, and stone walls whose origins the natives could not definitively explain. Petroglyphs with human and animal figures written on rocks were perhaps the most striking and inexplicable finds. Read the full story here.

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