"Kalamath"

[David D. Robertson]

On a public-radio program a couple days back, about the Klamath River
watershed in Oregon, I noticed the reporter kept referring to it as
the "Kalamath" River, and mentioning the "Kalamath" tribe.

I'd never heard that pronunciation, and searched on google.com for the word
spelled as above.

Turns out this is the name of a street in Denver, presumably an old variant
on "Klamath".  Denver has nearly a full alphabetic sequence of streets
named for Indian tribes, as I seem to recall from one of William Bright's
columns last year in the SSILA bulletin.

It seemed telling that there were more google.com hits for "Kalamath"
+ "Colorado" than there were for that spelling + either "California"
or "Oregon".

Equally interesting was the fact that the familiar NW spelling "Klamath"
came up far more often in connection with "Oregon" and "California" than
with "Colorado".

I've recently notice a "Tuallatin" Street in Los Angeles, and wonder if
that's a sort of "Kalamath" phenomenon; maybe pioneers or their descendants
brought these names to the big cities.

Wandering a bit off-topic,

--Dave