CHAPTER I

THE GREEN TREE

Nearly everyone knows or-believes that the foliage of trees is green, while few of us expect a tree to have green roots. The tree that we are going to read about in the following pages does have green roots.

Originally, our subject did not have green roots. Involved were such names as Mauhawgaw, Mahuskah, Flying Pigeon, LeDuc, Bah-to-the-gra-me, Hah-non-a-ne-quah, White Claud, Robidoux, Tesson, Kathanimane, Kathamania, Kathaminee, Grant, and then finally Green.

We are told that the name of Green is an adaptation or derivation of the multispelling of the name of Kathanimane which was difficult to spell and pronounce by census takers and others with whom business was transacted. The Iowa Indian word Mah-them-o-nay means green which in itself might account for the initial name of Kathanimane and the ultimate translation to Green. We are told that the basic Iowa Indian name for Kathanimane was A-bra-quo-nuya, which meant flat space or buffalo wallow. The Kathanimanes/Greens belonged to the Buffalo Clan of the Iowa Indian Tribe.

Great grandfather John Grant was offered the option of the names of Grant, Green and other less difficult names to pronounce and spell. He chose the easily accepted and easily spelled name of Grant. Later, after his divorce from grandmother Julia, grandfather William Green moved to Oklahoma. He changed his name from Green to Grant so that his name would be consistent with the name of his father John, who had preceded him to the Iowa Indian settlement in Oklahoma near Red Rock.

Ralph Murray Green chose to keep the name of Green and also to live and work the majority of his life in the general locality of his birth, the Iowa Indian Reservation near White Cloud, Kansas. The final seven years of his life were spent in Falls City, Nebraska where he lived with his family and worked fior the Missouri Pacific Railway.

With the foregoing in mind, we would like to share some of the events connected with the couple responsible for the present day Green Tree.

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