Historic Treasure of the Week - April 21, 1991
By Deborah Curtis Drummy
Vigo County Historical Society
Historic Treasure of the Week - April 21, 1991
By Deborah Curtis Drummy
Vigo County Historical Society
Francis Vigo was Italian, not French!
"You say to-may-to, and I say to-mah-to . . ." You say Vee-go and I say Vie-go . . .? How do you pronounce the name of our county?
The debate has been going on for some time and remains a current topic of conversation. A local radio call-in program receives regular calls concerning the pronunciation, but no amount of discussion seems to settle the debate. So, which is the correct way to say out county’s name, and why?
The Vigo County Historical Society’s position, according to Executive Director David Buchanan, is that the first pronunciation (Vee-go) is the correct one.
The reasoning behind this position is simple. Because the county’s namesake, Francis Vigo (18th century explorer and merchant) was Italian, logic holds that the Italian pronunciation, especially one spelled in such a way as to elicit the same pronunciation in everyday American English, is the correct one.
In his 1933 biography, "Vigo: A forgotten building of the American Republic," Bruno Roselli expresses a strong indictment of his fellow American Italians for failing to name streets, theaters, businesses, etc., after their late hero, especially since Vigo’s name offered "the rare advantage of an easy pronunciation by tongues unaccustomed to the Italian language."
Roselli goes on in his book to suggest that various misspellings and mispronunciations of Vigo’s name during his life in America were the results of anti-Italian sentiment produced by gangster hysteria and stereotyping. He cites a poem by Francis Morrison "still sung by the school children of Vigo County while the Vigo bell is tolling":
"What is the story you tell,
Old Vigo, Old Vigo?
I have only the tongue of a bell,
But ye know, ye know!
Look into the past if ye can
Long ago, long ago,
And know the heart of a man--
Ye know! Ye Know!--
Who planted the fruitful seed
That gave me unto your need,
Old Vigo! Old Vigo!"
Roselli contends that Morrison’s apparent rhyming of Vigo with "ye know" places the accent on the second syllable to give Vigo’s name a decidedly French sound. All of these liberties with Vigo’s name along with the French name of the county seat (Terre Haute), have obscured the national origins of the county’s name to the point that a survey of local residents as to Vigo’s nationality will elicit the incorrect answers "French" and "Spanish" as often as the correct "Italian."
This week’s historical treasure is a lithograph of a sketch by Charles A. Lesueur, a French naturalist who traveled in America from 1815 to 1837.
The sketch depicts Colonel Vigo, but when it was drawn is unknown. Lesueur returned to Vincennes in 1883 and may have presented the sketch at that time.
The sketch is displayed at the museum along with other Vigo memorabilia and information.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.