Pain Court => St. Louis? (fwd)

[Rory M Larson]

>> Interesting!  But I'm still confused about where Pain Court
>> comes into the equation.  Was that the site's name prior to
>> 1764?  Or was it a nickname applied later by voyageurs?
>
> Prior to 1764 the site was a nameless uninhabited place on a bluff above
> the Mississippi, as I understand it.  However, it was a place with
history
> whose potential for settlement had been noted before.  The Cahokia
> archaeological site is in the general vicinity.  I don't know if Laclede
> recognized its mounds for what they were, or when they were first
> recognized at all.  I deduce that Paincour(t) was a named applied after
> the site began to develop, by the inhabitants.  Like "the Big Apple" or
> "Gotham" for New York (all three late additions, of course), or LA for
> Ciudad de los Angeles y tal y cual.

Possibly, but this name seems to have been an alternate from
pretty early on.  We might want to reckon with the possibility
that it was derived from the original international Indian
name for Cahokia, which might still have been remembered
historically by the still-intact Indian societies at that
time.  The name might have been something like *Pa-i(N)-***.
Indians would have continued to refer to the vicinity by that
name, and French voyageurs would have punned it to Pain Court.

As a wild shot, does /(h)ko:/ mean anything in local Algonquian
languages?  What would be their term for 'red'?

Rory