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About Punxsutawney, PA

Shawnee wigwam villages once occupied this site on the Mahoning Creek. The first settlement that included non-indigenous people was in 1772, when Reverend John Ettwein, a Moravian Church missionary, arrived with a band of 241 Christianized Delaware Indians. Swarms of gnats plagued early settlers and their livestock for years, and are blamed for Ettwein's failure to establish a permanent settlement there. The clouds of biting gnats eventually drove the Indians away. The Indians called the insects ponkies (living dust and ashes), and called their village Ponkis Utenink (land of the ponkies), from which the present name Punxsutawney evolved.