According to a legend told by Isaac Steele, an aged Seneca Indian, in 1892, in the early eighteenth century, long before settlements reached west of Sudbury, Pennsylvania, a young Frenchman from Lancaster County, Malachi Boyer, explored the wilderness and became friendly with Indians in the forests. One April, while camped at Mammoth Spring near the Indian camp of Chief O-Ka-Cho on the shores of Spring Creek near Bellafonte, he befriended the old chief and sent him small gifts. O-Ka-Cho had seven sons and a daughter, Nita-nee, whom the sons guarded closely. Malachi saw Nita-nee washing a deerskin in the stream and fell in love with her. Because the Indians would not permit their marriage, the two fled by night for the eastern settlements, but her seven brothers captured them and returned them to Chief O-Ka-Cho. He ordered his sons to take Malachi into a water-filled cavern and thrust him in. For a week Malachi swam back and forth seeking an exit besides the guarded entrance, then, exhausted and determined that the Indians should not see him die, he crawled into one of the farthest recesses and died there. The brothers weighed his body with stones and dropped it into the deepest water of the cavern. Many years later, people who know the legend say that on still summer nights an echo rings through the cavern sounding like “Nita-nee, Nita-nee.” In central Pennsylvania, Nita-nee's name was bestowed on Nittany Mountain and Nittany Valley, as well as the Nittany Lion at the Penn State University campus.