Mkenak and the Veiled Prophet: The Story of Our Name

   What’s in a name? A name can tell us a lot about someone.  When the shell of mystery around a name is cracked, we can recognize heritage, the era in which a person has lived, even a thing or two about the giver of a name. Names can also evolve over time; for example, it is very common that a child goes by one name in his early years, but takes a completely different one in adult life. Villages are also no exception to this rule. When one turns back the pages of our local history, such places as Van Horne’s Point, Frankfort Station, New Bremen, and Sedgewick appear. While these towns have grown to become respectable, solid Midwestern communities, (respectively known now as New Lenox, Frankfort, Tinley Park, and Orland Park) a few neighboring hamlets have died out altogether. Does any reader in 2021 remember Chelsea, Spencer, or Alpine? 

 

     However, exotic-sounding names often lead to rumors and mistaken truths, for despite local folklore, the true origins of the word Mokena are deeply shrouded in mystery. Norma Lee Browne, a reporter from theChicago Tribune who canvassed the town for interesting stories at the end of World War II, found an interesting take on the village’s namesake. In her 1945 work, Mokena Memorabilia, Browne wrote “…The old-timers say the town was named for a great Indian chief named Moke, Mokey, McKinney, and diverse other variations.” 

     Longtime resident Clinton Kraus remarked a few decades ago that he was also told the word trickled down from the name of a certain Chief Moke, an Indian leader who centuries ago lived where Mokena now stands. As interesting as the story sounds, Kraus admitted he had no idea how authentic it was. (Although he was quick to note, “we always liked to believe it was true.”)

    Taking as Chief Moke’s name might be, historians have never given this story much credence.

 

The majestic Makina, Mkenak, and Mikinaak. No mud in sight.

     Another spin on this tale was told around 1960 by pioneering local historian Florence Pittman. In gathering information for her booklet The Story of Mokena, Pittman came across an anecdote from the early days about a small but determined group of Indians who lived not far from town. Although the majority of their brethren left this part of the state in the late 1830s as a result of unfair treaties with the United States government, a few Potawatomi hangers-on lingered in this part of Will County. Having gained a healthy sustenance from a huge slough that existed somewhere northeast of Mokena, this group of Native Americans insisted that the word Mokena meant mud hole in their language.

     While she was a very talented writer who presented an account that wasn’t far-fetched, Mrs. Pittman forgot to include any references or sources as to where exactly she heard this account. Therefore, modern historians have had extreme difficulty in pinning down the authenticity of the story. 

 

     Yet another take on the meaning of Mokena was related by editor William Semmler of The News-Bulletin in 1930. In the columns of his newspaper, Semmler wrote that Mokena resident Milton Krapp had recently found himself doing some plumbing work at the summer home of a rich Midlothian man in Wisconsin. While there, he had become acquainted with some members of a local Chippewa tribe, who upon learning the name of Mr. Krapp’s hometown, told him that a trench or foxhole-like dugout were known as a Mokena in their mother tongue. 

 

     Be it a feared and respected tribal leader, a muddy swamp, or place of shelter during war, perhaps the most bizarre explanation for the meaning of Mokena can be found in the brittle and fragile pages of the October 11, 1910 issue of The Joliet Weekly News. On that day a feature titled Mokena Doesn’t Need a Copyright ran, and aside from providing us with countless historical gems on the town’s early days, the unknown writer boasted that the name Mokena “is associated with poetry…being taken from The Veiled Prophet of Korassan by Tom Moore”.  

    Today we know that that Irishman Thomas Moore wrote Lalla-Rookh, an Oriental Romance in 1817. In this work of poetry, a character named al-Mokanna makes an appearance as the Veiled Prophet of Khorasan, and interestingly enough, a routine check of facts shows that al-Mokanna was most likely based on a real figure named Al-Muqanna. A Persian prophet who led an anti-Arab rebellion in his homeland around 776 AD, al-Muqanna’s name translates to “the veiled one”, who, according to which story you hear, concealed himself due to his beauty, the fact that he was battle scarred and one-eyed, or that he was severely burned in an explosion that occurred in his line of work as a chemist. After having poisoned himself while under siege by his enemies, his followers kept up his sect until the 11^th century. 

    How did al-Muqanna become connected with the Mokena of 1910? Could an early settler of Mokena been a fan of Thomas Moore’s poem? Or perhaps the “fact” that al-Muqanna and Mokena were connected was simply an invention of a Joliet newspaper editor looking to spice up his story? Any answer to these questions has long since faded into history.

 

    With our hindsight now in the year 2021, we can spread every theory about the meaning of our hometown’s name on an imaginary table in front of us. We can critically review and analyze them. When this is done, there is one theory, one story, and one piece of evidence that sticks out above the rest. The historical puzzle pieces snap together just nicely enough to make a theory seem believable. That is namely that the word Mokenacomes from an ancient Algonquian term meaning turtle.

     In his seminal 1881 tome, Discovery and Conquests of the North-West, DuPage County historian Rufus Blanchard included a respectable list of American place names whose origin could be traced to the first Native American residents of these regions. Along such words as Milwaukee, Minnesota, and Mississippi, the term Mokena appears, almost as if by afterthought. Peering into this fragile, antique work, the reader notices a phonetic pronunciation of the word, a brief note signifying its Algonquian root, and “A town in Illinois. Turtle.”

                              This wily creature can still be found in our environs to this day.

      

     Blanchard’s factoid does make sense. The Potawatomi natives that Frankfort Township’s first white settlers encountered spoke a language that belonged to the large Algonquian family. Even more interesting, is the fact that linguist Michael McCafferty of Indiana University states that American Indians often named geographical features for “a prominent aquatic animal…living in or near its waters.” As if more convincing was needed, early surveyors of what would later become Frankfort Township noted vast areas of swampland not far from the future site of Mokena. Could it be that these pioneers encountered a turtle or two in the swamps, and for curiosity’s sake, had asked a Potawatomi the name in their language for these shelled reptiles? 

 

     While very believable, determining the correct spelling and pronunciation of any Native American word is next to impossible, this being due to the lack of a written language and a dire shortage of fluent speakers. As such, associate professor Edward Callary of Northern Illinois University, today’s pre-eminent expert on Illinois place names, concludes that our fair village’s name stems from the Algonquian Makina, from which the Tazewell County village Mackinaw’s name could also be taken. A similar word, mkenak, also denoting turtle, exists in the Potawatomi tongue, not to be outdone by mikinaak, or snapping turtle, in the closely related language of the Ojibwe. 

 

     The cold hard fact is, no one really knows for sure what Mokena means. While early historian Blanchard presented a very sound theory, no living person can give any explanation complete certainty. The sole reasons for this are simply because modern-day researchers have no idea who exactly gave our village its rustic name, or even if it pre-dates the 1852 founding of Mokena. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the word Mokena, or some variant thereof, has been used for centuries to describe this location.

 

     All in all, maybe it doesn’t matter. Like a champion resting on his laurels, we can look back at nearly 170 years of proud history, onto a village that has not only shaped its region, but has also survived the tides of time. We can pride ourselves on the fact that we are one of kind. Our community is unique in the United States. For every city, village, municipality and hamlet in the land, we are the only Mokena.