fact that they come to us in corrupt forms. The same name may be
found, in early records, written in a dozen different ways, and some
three or four of these may admit of as many different translations.
Indian grammatical synthesis was _exact_. Every consonant and every
vowel had its office and its place. Not one could be dropped or
transposed, nor could one be added, without _change of meaning_. Now
most of the Indian local names were first written by men who cared
nothing for their meaning and knew nothing of the languages to which
they belonged. Of the few who had learned to speak one or more of
these languages, no two adopted the same way of writing them, and no
one--John Eliot excepted--appears to have been at all careful to write
the same word twice alike. In the seventeenth century men took
considerable liberties with the spelling of their own surnames and
very large liberty with English polysyllables--especially with local
names. Scribes who contrived to find five or six ways of writing
'Hartford' or 'Wethersfield,' were not likely to preserve uniformity
in their dealings with Indian names. A few letters more or less were
of no great consequence, but, generally, the writers tried to keep on
the safe side, by putting in as many as they could find room for;
prefixing a _c_ to every _k_, doubling every _w_ and _g_, and tacking
on a superfluous final _e_, for good measure.
In some instances, what is supposed to be an Indian place-name is in
fact a _personal_ name, borrowed from some sachem or chief who lived
on or claimed to own the territory. Names of this class are likely to
give trouble to translators. I was puzzled for a long time by
'_Mianus_,' the name of a stream between Stamford and Greenwich,--till
I remembered that _Mayano_, an Indian warrior (who was killed by Capt.
Patrick in 1643) had lived hereabouts; and on searching the Greenwich
records, I found the stream was first mentioned as _Moyannoes_ and
_Mehanno's_ creek, and that it bounded 'Moyannoe's neck' of land.
_Moosup_ river, which flows westerly through Plainfield into the
Quinebaug and which has given names to a post-office and factory
village, was formerly _Moosup's_ river,--Moosup or _Maussup_ being one
of the aliases of a Narragansett sachem who is better known, in the
history of Philip's war, as Pessacus. Heckewelder[79] restores
'Pymatuning,' the name of a place in Pennsylvania, to the Del.
'_Pihmtónink_,' meaning, "the dwelling place of the man with the
crooked mouth, or the crooked man's dwelling place," and adds, that he
"knew the man perfectly well," who gave this name to the locality.
[Footnote 79: On Indian Names (_ut supra_), p. 365.]
Some of the examples which have been given,--such as _Higganum_,
_Nunkertunk_, _Shawmut_, _Swamscot_ and _Titicut_,--show how the
difficulties of analysis have been increased by phonetic corruption,
sometimes to such a degree as hardly to leave a trace of the original.
Another and not less striking example is presented by _Snipsic_, the
modern name of a pond between Ellington and Tolland. If we had not
access to Chandler's Survey of the Mohegan Country, made in 1705, who
would suppose that 'Snipsic' was the surviving representative of
_Moshenupsuck_, 'great-pond brook' or (literally) 'great-pond outlet,'
at the south end of _Moshenups_ or _Mashenips_ 'great pond?' The
territories of three nations, the Muhhekans, Nipmucks and River
Indians, ran together at this point.
'_Nameroake_,' '_Namareck_' or '_Namelake_,' in East Windsor, was
transformed to _May-luck_, giving to a brook a name which 'tradition'
derives from the 'luck' of a party of emigrants who came in 'May' to
the Connecticut.[80] The original name appears to have been the
equivalent of 'Nameaug' or 'Nameoke' (New London), and to mean 'the
fishing place,'--_n'amaug_ or _nama-ohke_.
[Footnote 80: Stiles's History of Ancient Windsor, p. 111.]
But none of these names exhibits a more curious transformation than
that of '_Bagadoose_' or '_Bigaduce_,' a peninsula on the east side of
Penobscot Bay, now Castine, Me. Williamson's History of Maine (ii.
572) states on the authority of Col. J. Wardwell of Penobscot, in
1820, that this point bore the name of a former resident, a Frenchman,
one 'Major Biguyduce.' Afterwards, the historian was informed that
'_Marche bagyduce_' was an Indian word meaning 'no good cove.' Mr.
Joseph Williamson, in a paper in the Maine Historical Society's
Collections (vol. vi. p. 107) identifies this name with the
_Matchebiguatus_ of Edward Winslow's quitclaim to Massachusetts in
1644,[81] and correctly translates the prefix _matche_ by 'bad,' but
adds: "What _Biguatus_ means, I do not know." Purchas mentions
'_Chebegnadose_,' as an Indian town on the 'Apananawapeske' or
Penobscot.[82] Râle gives, as the name of the place on "the river
where M. de Gastin [Castine] is," _Matsibig[oo]ad[oo]ssek_, and on his
authority we may accept this form as nearly representing the original.
The analysis now becomes more easy. _Matsi-a[n]baga[oo]at-ek_, means
'at the bad-shelter place,--bad _covert_ or cove;' and
_matsi-a[n]baga[oo]at[oo]s-ek_ the diminutive, 'at the small
bad-shelter place.' About two miles and a half above the mouth of the
Kenebec was a place called by the Indians '_Abagadusset_' or
'_Abequaduset_'--the same name without the prefix--meaning 'at the
cove, or place of shelter.'
[Footnote 81: Printed in note to Savage's Winthrop's Journal, ii.
180.]
[Footnote 82: See Thornton's Ancient Pemaquid, in Maine Hist.
Collections, v. 156.]
* * * * *
The adjectivals employed in the composition of Algonkin names are very
numerous, and hardly admit of classification. Noun, adjective, adverb
or even an active verb may, with slight change of form, serve as a
prefix. But, as was before remarked, every prefix, strictly
considered, is an adverb or must be construed as an adverb,--the
synthesis which serves as a name having generally the verb form. Some
of the most common of these prefixes have been mentioned on preceding
pages. A few others, whose meanings are less obvious and have been
sometimes mistaken by translators, may deserve more particular notice.
1. POHQUI, POHQUAE´; Narr. _pâuqui_; Abn. _p[oo]'k[oo]ié_; 'open,'
'clear' (primarily, 'broken'). In composition with _ohke_, 'land,' or
formed as a verbal in _-aug_, it denotes 'cleared land' or 'an open
place:' as in the names variously written 'Pahquioque,' 'Paquiaug;'
'Pyquaag;' 'Poquaig,' 'Payquaoge,' &c., in Danbury and Wethersfield,
and in Athol, Mass.
2. PAHKE (Abn. _pa[n]g[oo]i_,) 'clear,' 'pure'. Found with _paug_,
'standing water' or 'pond,' in such names as 'Pahcupog,' 'Paquabaug,'
&c. See page 16.
3. PÂGUAN-AÜ, 'he destroys,' 'he slaughters' (Narr. _paúquana_, 'there
is a slaughter') in composition with _ohke_ denotes 'place of
slaughter' or 'of destruction,' and commemorates some sanguinary
victory or disastrous defeat. This is _probably_ the meaning of nearly
all the names written 'Poquannoc,' 'Pequannoc,' 'Pauganuck,' &c., of
places in Bridgeport (Stratfield), Windsor and Groton, Conn., and of a
town in New Jersey. Some of these, however, may possibly be derived
from _paukunni_ and _ohke_, 'dark place.'
4. PEMI (Abn. _pemai-[oo]i_; Del. _pimé-u_; Cree, _peemé_;) denotes
deviation from a straight line; 'sloping,' 'aslant,' 'twisted.'
PUMMEECHE (Cree, _pimich_; Chip. _pemiji_; Abn. _pemetsi_;)
'crosswise; traverse.' Eliot wrote '_pummeeche may_' for 'cross-way,'
Obad. 14; and _pumetshin_ (literally, 'it crosses') for 'a cross,' as
in _up-pumetshin-eum_, 'his cross,' Luke xiv. 27. _Pemiji-gome_ or
_Pemiji-guma_, 'cross water,' is the Chippewa name for a lake whose
longest diameter crosses the general course of the river which flows
through it,--which stretches _across_, not _with_ the stream. There is
such a lake in Minnesota, near the sources of the Mississippi, just
below the junction of the two primary forks of that river; another
('Pemijigome') in the chain of small lakes which are the northern
sources of the Manidowish (and Chippewa) River in Wisconsin, and still
another near the Lacs des Flambeaux, the source of Flambeau River, an
affluent of the Manidowish.
The same prefix or its equivalent occurs in the name of a lake in
Maine, near the source of the Alligash branch of St. John's River. Mr.
Greenleaf, in a list of Indian names made in 1823,[83] gave this as
"BAAM´CHE_nun´gamo_ or _Ah_P´MOOJEE`_negmook_." Thoreau[84] was
informed by his Penobscot guide, that the name "means 'Lake that is
crossed;' because the usual course lies across, not along it." There
is another "Cross Lake," in Aroostook county, near the head of Fish
River. We seem to recognize, and with less difficulty, the same prefix
in _Pemigewasset_, but the full composition of that name is not clear.
[Footnote 83: Report of American Society for Promoting Civilization of
the Indian Tribes, p. 52.]
[Footnote 84: Maine Woods, 232.]
PEMI- denotes, not a _crossing of_ but _deviation from_ a straight
line, whether vertical or horizontal. In place-names it may generally
be translated by 'sloping' or 'aslant;' sometimes by 'awry' or
'tortuous.' _Pemadené_, which Râle gives as the Abnaki word for
'mountain,' denotes a _sloping_ mountain-side (_pemi-adené_), in
distinction from one that is steep or precipitous. '_Pemetiq_,' the
Indian name of Mount Desert Island, as written by Father Biard in
1611, is the Abnaki _peme'teki_, 'sloping land.' _Pemaquid_ appears to
be another form of the word which Râle wrote '_Pemaa[n]kke_,' meaning
(with the locative suffix) 'at the place where the land slopes;' where
"le terre penche; est en talus."[85] _Pymatuning_, in Pennsylvania, is
explained by Heckewelder, as "the dwelling place of the man with the
crooked mouth; _Pihmtónink_" (from _pimeu_ and _'t[oo]n_).
[Footnote 85: Abnaki Dictionary, s.v. PENCHER. Compare, p. 545,
"_bimk[oo]é_, il penche naturellement la tête sur un côte."]
WANASHQUE, ANASQUI, 'at the extremity of,' 'at the end;' Abn.
_[oo]anask[oo]i[oo]i_, 'au bout;' Cree, _wánnusk[oo]tch_; Chip.
_ishkuè_, _eshqua_. See (pp. 18, 19,) _Wanashqu-ompsk-ut_,
_Wonnesquam_,[86] _Winnesquamsaukit_, _Squamscot_. _Wonasquatucket_, a
small river which divides North Providence and Johnston, R.I., retains
the name which belonged to the point at which it enters an arm of
Narragansett Bay (or Providence River), 'at the end of the
tidal-river.' A stream in Rochester, Mass., which empties into the
head of an inlet from Buzzard's Bay, received the same name.
_Ishquagoma_, on the upper Embarras River, Minnesota, is the 'end
lake,' the extreme point to which canoes go up that stream.
[Footnote 86: _Wonnesquam_ (as should have been mentioned on the page
referred to) may possibly represent the Abnaki
_[oo]anask[oo]a[n]a[n]mi[oo]i_ or _-mek_ 'at the end of the peninsula'
('au bout de la presqu'ile.' Râle).]
Names of _fishes_ supply the adjectival components of many place-names
on the sea-coast of New England, on the lakes, and along
river-courses. The difficulty of analyzing such names is the greater
because the same species of fish was known by different names to
different tribes. The more common substantivals are _-amaug_, 'fishing
place; _-tuk_ or _sipu_, 'river;' _ohke_, 'place;' Abn. _-ka[n]tti_,
'place of abundance;' and _-keag_, _-keke_, Abn. _-khigé_, which
appears to denote a peculiar _mode of fishing_,--perhaps, by a
_weir_;[87] possibly, a _spearing-place_.
[Footnote 87: Schoolcraft derives the name of the _Namakagun_ fork of
the St. Croix river, Wisc., from Chip. "_namai_, sturgeon, and
_kagun_, a yoke or weir."]
From the generic _namaus_ (_namohs_, El.; Abn. _namés_; Del.
_namees_;) 'a fish'--but probably, one of the _smaller_ sort, for the
form is a diminutive,--come such names as _Nameoke_ or _Nameaug_ (New
London), for _namau-ohke_, 'fish country;' _Namasket_ or _Namasseket_
(on Taunton River, in Middleborough, Mass.) 'at the fish place,' a
favorite resort of the Indians of that region; _Namaskeak_, now
Amoskeag, on the Merrimack, and _Nam'skeket_ or _Skeekeet_, in
Wellfleet, Mass.
_M'squammaug_ (Abn. _mesk[oo]amék[oo]_), 'red fish,' i.e. salmon, gave
names to several localities. _Misquamacuck_ or _Squamicut_, now
Westerly, R.I., was 'a salmon place' of the Narragansetts. The initial
_m_ often disappears; and sometimes, so much of the rest of the name
goes with it, that we can only guess at the original synthesis.
'_Gonic_,' a post office and railroad station, near Dover, N.H., on
the Cocheco river, was once '_Squammagonic_,'--and probably, a
salmon-fishing place.
_Kaúposh_ (Abn. _kabassé_, plu. _kabassak_), 'sturgeon,' is a
component of the name _Cobbosseecontee_, in Maine (page 26, ante),
'where sturgeons are plenty;' and _Cobscook_, an arm of Passamaquoddy
Bay, Pembroke, Me., perhaps stands for _kabassakhigé_,
'sturgeon-catching place.'
_Aumsuog_ or _Ommissuog_ (Abn. _a[n]ms[oo]ak_), 'small
fish,'--especially alewives and herrings,--is a component of the name
of the Abnaki village on the Kennebec, _A[n]mes[oo]k-ka[n]tti_; of
_Mattammiscontis_, a tributary of the Kennebec (see p. 25, ante), and
_probably_, of _Amoscoggin_ and _Amoskeag_.
_Qunnôsu_ (pl. _-suog;_ Abn. _k[oo]n[oo]sé;_ Old Alg. _kino[n]jé_;
Chip. _keno´zha_;) is found in the name of _Kenosha_, a town and
county in Wisconsin; perhaps, in _Kenjua_ or _Kenzua_ creek and
township, in Warren county, Pa. _Quinshepaug_ or _Quonshapauge_, in
Mendon, Mass., seems to denote a 'pickerel pond' (_qunnosu-paug_).
_Maskinongé_, i.e. _massa-kino[n]jé_, 'great pike' or maskelunge,
names a river and lake in Canada.
_Pescatum_, said to mean 'pollock,' occurs as an adjectival in
_Peskadamioukka[n]tti_, the modern _Passamaquoddy_ (p. 26).
_Naha[n]m[oo]_, the Abnaki name of the 'eel,' is found in
"_Nehumkeag_, the English of which is _Eel Land_, ... a stream or
brook that empties itself into Kennebec River," not far from
Cobbissecontee.[88] This brook was sometimes called by the English,
_Nehumkee_. The Indian name of Salem, Mass., was _Nehumkeke_ or
_Naümkeag_, and a place on the Merrimac, near the mouth of Concord
River (now in Lowell, I believe,) had the same name,--written,
_Naamkeak_.
[Footnote 88: Col. William Lithgow's deposition, 1767,--in New England
Historical and General Register, xxiv. 24.]
* * * * *
In view of the illustrations which have been given, we repeat what was
stated in the beginning of this paper, that Indian place-names are not
_proper names_, that is unmeaning marks, but significant
_appellatives_, each conveying a _description_ of the locality to
which it belongs. In those parts of the country where Indian languages
are still spoken, the analysis of such names is comparatively easy.
Chippewa, Cree, or (in another family) Sioux-Dakota geographical names
may generally be translated with as little difficulty as other words
or syntheses in the same languages. In New England, and especially in
our part of New England, the case is different. We can hardly expect
to ascertain the meaning of all the names which have come down to us
from dead languages of aboriginal tribes. Some of the obstacles to
accurate analysis have been pointed out. Nearly every geographical
name has been mutilated or has suffered change. It would indeed be
strange if Indian polysyntheses, with their frequent gutturals and
nasals, adopted from unwritten languages and by those who were
ignorant of their meanings, had been exempted from the phonetic change
to which all language is subject, as a result of the universal
disposition "to put more facile in the stead of more difficult sounds
or combination of sounds, and to get rid altogether of what is
unnecessary in the words we use."[89] What Professor Haldeman calls
_otosis_, 'that error of the ear by which words are perverted to a
more familiar form,'[90] has effected some curious transformations.
_Swatara_,[91] the name of a stream in Pennsylvania, becomes 'Sweet
Arrow;' the _Potopaco_ of John Smith's map (_p[oo]tuppâg_, a bay or
cove; Eliot,) on a bend of the Potomac, is naturalized as 'Port
Tobacco.' _Nama'auke_, 'the place of fish' in East Windsor, passes
through _Namerack_ and _Namalake_ to the modern 'May Luck.'
_Moskitu-auke_, 'grass land,' in Scituate, R.I., gives the name of
'Mosquito Hawk' to the brook which crosses it.[92]
[Footnote 89: Whitney's Language and the Study of Language, p.
69.--"Ein natürliches Volksgefühl, oft auch der Volkswitz, den nicht
mehr verstandenen Namen neu umprägte und mit anderen lebenden Wörtern
in Verbindung setzte." Dr. J. Bender, _Die deutschen Ortsnamen_ (2te
Ausg.) p. 2.]
[Footnote 90: Haldeman's Analytic Orthography, §279, and "Etymology as
a means of Education," in Pennsylvania School Journal for October,
1868.]
[Footnote 91: "Swatawro," on Sayer and Bennett's Map, 1775.]
[Footnote 92: "Whiskey Jack," the name by which the Canada Jay
(Perisoreus Canadensis) is best known to the lumbermen and hunters of
Maine and Canada, is the Montagnais _Ouishcatcha[n]_ (Cree,
_Ouiskeshauneesh_), which has passed perhaps through the transitional
forms of 'Ouiske Jean' and 'Whiskey Johnny.' The Shagbark Hickory
nuts, in the dialect of the Abnakis called _s'k[oo]skada´mennar_,
literally, 'nuts to be cracked with the teeth,' are the
'Kuskatominies' and 'Kisky Thomas' nuts of descendants of the Dutch
colonists of New Jersey and New York. A contraction of the _plural_
form of a Massachusetts noun-generic,--_asquash_, denoting 'things
which are eaten green, or without cooking,' was adopted as the name of
a garden vegetable,--with conscious reference, perhaps, to the old
English word _squash_, meaning 'something soft or immature.' Sometimes
etymology overreaches itself, by regarding an aboriginal name as the
corrupt form of a foreign one. Thus the _maskalongé_ or 'great
long-nose' of the St. Lawrence (see p. 43) has been reputed of French
extraction,--_masque elongé_: and _sagackomi_, the northern name of a
plant used as a substitute for or to mix with tobacco,--especially, of
the Bearberry, _Arctostaphylos uva-ursi_,--is resolved into
_sac-à-commis_, "on account of the Hudson's Bay officers carrying it
in bags for smoking," as Sir John Richardson believed (Arctic
Searching Expedition, ii. 303). It was left for the ingenuity of a
Westminster Reviewer to discover that _barbecue_ (denoting, in the
language of the Indians of Guiana, a wooden frame or grille on which
all kinds of flesh and fish were dry-roasted, or cured in smoke,)
might be a corruption of the French _barbe à queue_, i.e. 'from snout
to tail;' a suggestion which appears to have found favor with
lexicographers.]
In Connecticut and Rhode Island special causes operated to corrupt and
transform almost beyond possibility of recognition, many of the Indian
place names. Five different dialects at least were spoken between
Narragansett Bay and the Housatonic River, at the time of the first
coming of the English. In early deeds and conveyances in the colonial
and in local records, we find the same river, lake, tract of land or
bound-mark named sometimes in the Muhhekan, sometimes in the
Narragansett, or Niantic, or Nipmuck, or Connecticut valley, or
Quinnipiac (Quiripee) dialect. The adopted name is often
_extra-limitary_ to the tribe by which it was given. Often, it is a
mixture of, or a sort of compromise between, two dialects; half
Muhhekan, half Narragansett or Nipmuck. In the form in which it comes
to us, we can only guess from what language or languages it has been
corrupted.
The analysis of those names even whose composition appears to be most
obvious must be accepted as _provisional_ merely. The recovery of a
lost syllable or of a lost guttural or nasal, the correction of a
false accent even, may give to the synthesis another and hitherto
unsuspected meaning. It would be surprising if some of the
translations which have been hazarded in this paper do not prove to be
wide of their mark. Even English etymology is not reckoned among the
exact sciences yet,--and in Algonkin, there is the additional
disadvantage of having no Sanskrit verbs "to go," to fall back on as a
last resort.
Recent manifestations of an increasing interest in Indian onomatology,
or at least of awakened curiosity to discover the meanings of Indian
names, may perhaps justify the writer in offering, at the close of
this paper, a few suggestions, as to the method of analysis which
appears most likely to give correct results, and as to the tests by
which to judge of the _probability_ that a supposed translation of any
name is the true one.
1. The earliest recorded form of the name should be sought for, and
every variation from it should be noted. These should be taken so far
as possible from original manuscripts, not from printed copies.
2. Where the difference of forms is considerable, knowledge of the
character and opportunities of the writer may sometimes determine the
preference of one form to others, as probably the most accurate. A
Massachusetts or Connecticut name written by John Eliot or Experience
Mayhew--or by the famous interpreter, Thomas Stanton--may safely be
assumed to represent the original combination of sounds more exactly
than the form given it by some town-recorder, ignorant of the Indian
language and who perhaps did not always write or spell his own
correctly.
3. The name should be considered with some reference to the
topographical features of the region to which it belongs. These may
sometimes determine the true meaning when the analysis is doubtful, or
may suggest the meaning which would otherwise have been unsuspected
under the modern form.
4. Remembering that every letter or sound had its value,--if, in the
analysis of a name, it becomes necessary to get rid of a troublesome
consonant or vowel by assuming it to have been introduced 'for the
sake of euphony,'--it is probable that the interpretation so arrived
at is _not_ the right one.
5. The components of every place-name--or to speak more generally, the
elements of every Indian synthesis are _significant roots_, not mere
_fractions of words_ arbitrarily selected for new combinations. There
has been no more prolific source of error in dealings with the
etymology and the grammatical structure of the American languages than
that one-sided view of the truth which was given by Duponceau[93] in
the statement that "one or more syllables of each simple word are
generally chosen and combined together, in one compound locution,
often leaving out the harsh consonants for the sake of euphony,"--and
repeated by Heckewelder,[94] when he wrote, that "in the Delaware and
other American languages, parts or parcels of different words,
sometimes a single sound or letter, are compounded together in an
artificial manner so as to avoid the meeting of harsh or disagreeable
sounds," &c. The "single sound or letter" the "one or more syllables,"
were chosen not as "part or parcel" of a word but because of their
_inherent significance_. The Delaware "_Pilape_, a youth," is
_not_--as Heckewelder and Duponceau represented it to be[95]--"formed
from _pilsit_, chaste, innocent, and _lenape_, a man," but from PIL-
(Mass. _pen-_, Abn. _pir-_,) strange, novel, _unused_ (and hence)
pure,--and -A[N]PE (Mass. _-omp_, Abn. _a[n]bé_) a male, _vir_. It is
true that the same roots are found in the two words PIL-_sit_ (a
participle of the verb-adjective _pil-esu_, 'he is pure,') and
_len_-A[N]PE, 'common man:' but the statement that "one or more
syllables" are _taken from_ these words to form _Pilape_ is inaccurate
and misleading. It might with as much truth be said that the English
word _boyhood_ is formed from selected syllables of boy-ish and
man-hood; or that purity 'compounds together in an artificial manner'
fractions of _pur_ify and qual_ity_.