Project Scroll Research Note 2026-04: The earliest L in Kalamazoo yet found: Schoolcraft's "Kikalemazo" of 1820, and the likely atlas of 1823

The published histories of the name, the Kalamazoo Public Library's and Wikipedia's among them, say the L in Kalamazoo first appears in the treaty of 1821, or in an unnamed "atlas of 1823." It is older. On 4 September 1820, a year before the treaty, Henry R. Schoolcraft "passed the river Kikalemazo," and printed the entry in his journal of 1821. The atlas, we believe, is Carey & Lea's American Atlas: its map of Michigan Territory, dated 1822 and unchanged in most copies of 1823, names the river "Kikalemazo R.," Schoolcraft's spelling exactly. And a French memoir of 1763 or a little after adds an eighteenth-century witness to the older spelling with an N: "Kikanamaso." Project Scroll Research Note 2026-04, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-04/.