How Onarga received its name remains a mystery. Realists believe Illinois Central Railroad land commissioner John Calhoun combined two or three consonants and added the necessary vowels to invent a nice-sounding town name. Many prairie towns in the 1850s, with the arrival of the railroads, received their names by this method. Romantics believe Onarga was named for a young Native American girl, Princess Onarga, daughter of an Iroquois Indian chief...