The principal stream entering the Wisconsin from the south, in the neighborhood of Muscoda, is Blue River--the “Riviere Bleu” of the French traders. It has several head streams rising in township 6-1 E, and a large affluent named the Fennimore rising in 6-1 W, the Six Mile Creek, rising in 7-1 E and Sandy Branch which heads in 8-1 E. There are also several small branches entering the Fennimore from 7-2 W. In its lower course the Blue River swerves to the west, entering the Wisconsin near Blue River Station, in Township 8-2 W, but its rich upper valleys and those of its tributaries have always been mainly within the trade area of Muscoda. North of the Wisconsin the valleys most intimately associated with Muscoda are Indian Creek, Eagle Creek, and Knapp’s Creek in Richland County. The “Sand Prairie,” by which name the sandy plain along the Wisconsin on the south side has long been known, and a narrow tract of shelving land between the river and the hills on the north are also within the Muscoda area. Since the bluffs are mostly rough land, with only limited areas on their summits where the soil is deep, free from stones, and sufficiently even for cultivation, and the sand prairie comparatively infertile, Muscoda as a trade center suffers from the low average productivity of her territory. Still, from pioneer days the long valleys beyond the sand prairie have yielded abundant harvests; the roads through them from the high prairie to the south opened to Muscoda’s merchants for some years a great trade in livestock and grain beyond her legitimate boundaries; while the cross ranges which run out from the high prairie northward approximately fifteen miles forced the only rival railway,[75] when it came, back upon the great ridge, leaving the north trending valleys still as a whole tributary to Muscoda. THE BACKGROUND According to Father Verwyst, a distinguished authority, the name Muscoda is a corruption of the Chippewa word “Mashkodeng” which means “prairie.” A similar corruption occurs in the name “Muscatine,” a town in Iowa, and there was a tribe of Indians on the Upper Fox River called Mascouten (prairie Indians). The earlier name of the place was English Prairie, and while it is clear that geography suggested “Prairie” (or Savannah), there are various traditions to explain the association of the word “English” with it. One is that some English families were settled there as early as 1812 and that they were massacred by the Indians. Another, that the place was so named from the fact that Colonel McKay, who descended the river in 1814 with a regiment of British troops to capture Prairie du Chien, encamped at this place which thereafter was called English Prairie.