Squaw Run stream renamed as Sycamore Run

The federal renaming of a stream that runs through Fox Chapel, Indiana Township and O’Hara is a long-sought triumph for people who battled years against what is now a nationally recognized slur.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on Sept. 8 announced that Squaw Run will be called Sycamore Run, striking down use of the word “squaw” for federal roads, streams and parks across the country.

Jennifer Runyon, research staffer for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, said the change was approved in response to a submission by the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a Native American. “Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage – not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression.”

Fox Chapel Councilwoman Mandy Steele celebrated the news.

“The majority of our residents do not want a word in our place-names that is derogatory and hurtful to Native Americans,” Steele said.

In 2020, Steele joined Fox Chapel resident Michele Leonard, a Native American, to spearhead changes that resulted in O’Hara Council renaming Squaw Valley Park to Community Park, and later, Fox Chapel Council voting to rename Squaw Run Road to Hemlock Hollow Road.

“We are a respectful community and Sycamore Run much better represents the people that chose to call this area home,” Steele said.

A local committee worked with experts from across the country to learn how best to replace the word in the Fox Chapel area, including those from The National Congress of American Indians, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Association on American Indian Affairs and the Seneca Nation, a tribe that has roots in the area.

Miguel Sague, a board member of the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center, said the change was arduous and hard-fought.

“We worked for a long time with the residents in the region against some pretty daunting odds to get this done,” Sague said. “It was a years-long struggle for this success, not only the stream but the roads and park too.

“It was very important to us. Squaw is such an insulting word, to women in particular.”

Steele said she hopes the federal ruling will help naysayers understand that the word is a true racial slur.

“This is just as bad as other racial slurs out there,” she said. “Of course we wouldn’t want that for our community.”

The move follows several across the country, including those that predated the federal ruling.

Squaw Peak in Arizona was renamed in 2003, and people in the Utah town of Provo pushed to rename a similarly named mountain in 2017.

Most recently, five creeks and a stream on federal land in Kansas were changed to discontinue the use of squaw.

It was late 2021 when Haaland formally established a process to review and replace derogatory names of the nation’s geographic features.

“The time has come to recognize that the term squaw is no less derogatory than others which have been identified and should also be erased from the national landscape and forever replaced,” according to federal documents.

The change has been made in the Geographic Names Information System, the nation’s official geographic names repository, and is available online.

Sycamore Run winds along Old Mill and Riding Meadow roads, down to Fox Chapel Road and through O’Hara Community Park.

The new name is a nod to the native plants and trees that dot the lower Allegheny River valley.

A USGS task force worked over the last year to choose replacement names drawn from a list of nearby topographic features, the names of which are already accepted and in local use.

The task force comprised representatives of the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, USGS and Bureau of Indian Affairs, among others.

“With the name change, we are able to recognize our native sycamore tree and acknowledge the important role it plays in water management in the region,” Steele said. “Sycamore Run is a beautiful name for a beautiful stream.”

Sague said he credits the initial group of people who had the courage and wherewithal to shine a light on the issue.

“The new name is so much more appropriate,” he said. “This is a victory.”