Ok, so maybe we can’t tell that much.  But it grabbed your attention, just like the National Enquirer in the check-out line at the grocery!

Sometimes Excel is my friend.  It’s much easier and more time efficient to enter these records into the Native Names document in alphabetical order.  This means that the records are sorted alphabetically first in Excel, and sometimes that provides enlightenment, such as is the case with the Coweater family.

When we see a word like this, it’s easy to assume that this is some kind of Native name translated to English as in “one who eats white mans cows” maybe.  Often, that’s right, but in this case, it may not be.  The entry on my spreadsheet right after the family of Killy Coweater is a one word Native name with no first name of Cow-e-tah.  Certainly makes me question the assumption of how the Coweater name came into being.