Fort Wayne Kekiongas

The Fort Wayne Kekiongas were a professional baseball team, notable for winning the first professional league game on May 4, 1871.^[1] Though based in Fort Wayne, they were usually listed in game reports as simply "Kekionga" or "the Kekiongas", per the style of the day. "Fort Wayne Kekiongas" is modern nomenclature.

Kekionga - pronounced KEY-key-awn-guh - is the name of Chief Little Turtle's Miami Indian settlement where the St. Joseph River and the St. Marys River join to form the Maumee River. This was the largest settlement of the Miami tribe. General "Mad" Anthony Wayne erected Fort Wayne at that same confluence, and the modern city of Fort Wayne, Indiana grew up around the fort. In the language of the Miami tribe, kekionga means Blackberry Patch.