Arendt Van Curler is a perfectly clear figure in the Indian tradition, and in the history and documentary archives of the Empire State. Having no descendants to embalm his name in art or literature, he has not had his monument. Yet he deserves to have his name enrolled high among the makers of America. The ignorance, errors—and there is a long list of them—of writers on American and local history concerning Arendt Van Curler, have been gross and inexcusable. It were surely worth while to know the original of that “Corlaer” after whom the Indians named, first the governors of New York, and later the governors of English Canada, and finally Queen Victoria, the Empress of India. To the Iroquois mind, Corlaer was the representative of Teutonic civilization. Other governors of colonies and prominent figures among the pale-faces, they called by names coined by themselves, just as they named their own warriors from trivial incidents or temporary associations. Even the King of Great Britain was only their unnamed “Father;” but as our ablest American historian, Francis Parkman, has said: “His [Van Curler’s] importance in the eyes of the Iroquois, and their attachment to him are shown by the fact that they always used his name (in the form of Corlaer) as the official designation of the governor of New York, just as they called the governors of Canada, Onontio, and those of Pennsylvania, Onas. I know of no other instance in which Iroquois used the name of an individual to designate the holder of an office. Onontio means ‘a great mountain;’ Onas means ‘a quill or pen;’ Kinshon, the governor of Massachusetts, ‘a fish.’”[4] Rev. I. A. Cuoq, in his “Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise,” also remarks that the title Kora, the present form of [Van] Curler, given even yet to the kings and queens of England and to the English governors of Canada, is a purely Iroquois creation; while that of Onontio, used of the French king and governors, was given for the first time to Montmagny, the successor of Champlain. Quite differently from their method in the case of Van Curler, they translated, with the aid of the French missionaries, Montmagny’s name, rendering it freely by Onontio, which means, strictly speaking, “the beautiful mountain,” rather than “the great mountain.” The term Onontio was used until the end of the French dominion in America, whereas Kora [or Corlaer] is still in vogue; Queen Victoria being to the Canadian Indians Kora-Kowa, or the great Van Curler.