Chewelah
Stevens County, Washington
Chewelah, a town at the mouth of Chewelah Creek, a tributary of the Colville River in Stevens County. Rev. Myron Eells says Cha-we-lah means a small striped snake and "was applied to that place either because the snake abounded there or because of the serpentine appearance of the stream." (American Anthropologist, January 1892) There is an Indian legend to the effect that an old Indian chief saw a snake reaching from east to west, from mountain to mountain, and so they called the place Chewelah. In the sixties a military post was placed there and the old Indian name was accepted. (J.W. Patterson, in Names MSS., Letter 259) The creek has also received the same name on recent maps. Captain George B. McClellan of the railroad surveying expedition, 1853, camped on the stream and called it "Kitsemawhep." (Pacific Railroad Reports, Volume I., page 386) Governor Stevens of that same expedition says the Indians on the Colville trail were Skecheramouse, a band of the Spokane. A form of the same word appears on the United States Land office map of Washington, 1897, as "Chiel charle Mous Creek" for what we now know as Chewelah Creek. -
[Source: "Origin of Washington Geographic Names", 1923]
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