Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo

Kokomo, whose name is also sometimes given as Koh-Koh-Mah, Co-come-wah, Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo, or Kokomoko, was a Native American man of the Miami tribe who lived in northern Indiana at some point probably in the early nineteenth century.

According to one set of legends, Kokomo was the "last of the fighting chiefs" of Miami, a 7-foot (2.1 m)-tall man of immense physical strength and great cunning under whose leadership his tribe flourished.

Another set of legends, however, portrays him as not a chief at all, but an ordinary, lazy, dishonest, wife-beating drunkard of such despicable reputation that the Miami disowned him.

[5] The only other piece of documentary evidence of Kokomo as a real Miami name is a single entry from the ledger of Francis Godfroy's Mississinewa River trading post dated to June 27, 1838 recording that an individual named "Koh Koh maw", accompanied by his unnamed wife, paid twelve dollars for a barrel of flour on that date.

[6] George Ironstrack, a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the assistant director and program director of the Education and Outreach Office of the Myaamia Center at Miami University in Ohio, has warned against attempts to deduce the etymology of the name Kokomo, stating that while Kokomo was a historical figure, "The origin of the name 'Kokomo' is fuzzier and supported only by bad history.

[1] Traditionally, it has been said that Kokomo was a great Miami chieftain in north-central Indiana of enormous physical size, who was able to use his superior strength and cunning to secure the interests of his people and win them a vast hunting territory.

[2] This story holds that, finally, Kokomo gathered together a portion of the tribe, mostly women, and took them to the Wildcat Creek, where he founded his own village.

Richmond concluded that they had belonged to a "giant more than seven feet tall and of great power,"[14] and the grave had contained brass kettles and stone tools, which Foster interpreted as evidence that the burial was ancient.

[13][3] Every mid-September, Koh-Koh-Mah & Foster Living History Encampment, located ten miles west of Kokomo, puts on a reenactment of the times of Chief Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo.