It’s a simple question, although to some it may sound like a trick one. It’s not meant to be.
There’s also a simple answer: I don’t know – and neither does anyone else.
We know that settlers arrived here in 1837, but our part of the world had its name, and human inhabitants, long before those first families arrived here. Before English, Norwegian, and German-speaking settlers walked these prairies, this place saw generation after generation from among the original peoples on this continent. They were born, worked for sustenance, raised families, and died here. Those pre-Columbian inhabitants long preceded even the Potawatomi.
One could unpersuasively argue that Whitewater wasn’t Whitewater until someone spoke that name in English, or that it wasn’t Whitewater until settlers established American laws and institutions, but to do so is evasive quibbling. Our forefathers weren’t the first people here, any more than some of them were truly first people on the east coast, despite early settlement during colonial times.
The written accounts of Whitewater’s residents are a mere fraction of the full number lives, lived generation after generation, over at least thousand years.
We’ve a long past behind us, of so much time, and so many generations, and it is – as it should be – properly humbling.