The Devil, the Indigenous God and the Colonizer in American Place Names

How English linguistic colonialism stains the legacy of sacred native spaces

Devils Tower, Crook County, WY (photo by Kyle Petzer on Unsplash)

The prevalence of names associated with Hell or the Devil in the natural wonders of the American landscape can come as a shock.

For a country so rich in so many varieties of terrain, all containing striking scenes of natural beauty like its European colonizers had never seen before, it’s given nicknames like an unloved child’s bedroom. There’s a Devil’s Punchbowl, OR, a Devil’s Cauldron, NV, a Devil’s Bathtub, SD, a Devil’s Fork, SC, and even a Devil’s Hop Yard, CT. There’s a Hell’s Hundred Acres, at least two Hell’s Half Acres, and several Devil’s Kitchens and Devil’s Gates each. Most famed of all, of course, is Devils Tower, WY, having played a central role in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.

There’s probably thousands of similarly named places across the country, some rough and barren and others perfectly pleasant-looking. But why do we see so comparatively few angelically-named places? Could there have even been an agenda behind this seemingly frivolous historical motif?

Well, yes, it’s America, of course there was.