The Composition of Indian Geographical Names, Illustrated From the Algonkin Languages

Part 1

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THE COMPOSITION OF

INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES,

ILLUSTRATED FROM THE

ALGONKIN LANGUAGES.

BY J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL.

PRESS OF CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD, Hartford, Conn.

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1. A macron is represented by an =, e.g. [=a]

2. A breve is represented by a ), e.g., [)a]

3. represents a superscripted n (see Footnote 4).

4. represents an oo ligature (see Footnote 4.)]

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ON THE COMPOSITION OF

INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES.

A proper name has been defined to be "a mere mark put upon an individual, and of which it is the characteristic property to be destitute of meaning." If we accept this definition, it follows that there are no proper names in the aboriginal languages of America. Every Indian synthesis--names of persons and places not excepted--must "preserve the consciousness of its roots," and must not only have a meaning but be so framed as to convey that meaning with precision, to all who speak the language to which it belongs. Whenever, by phonetic corruption or by change of circumstance, it loses its self-interpreting or self-defining power, it must be discarded from the language. "It requires tradition, society, and literature to maintain forms which can no longer be analyzed at once." In our own language, such forms may hold their places by prescriptive right or force of custom, and names absolutely unmeaning, or applied without regard to their original meaning, are accepted by common consent as the distinguishing marks of persons and places. We call a man William or Charles, Jones or Brown,--or a town, New Lebanon, Cincinnati, Baton Rouge, or Big Bethel--just as we put a number on a policeman's badge or on a post-office box, or a trademark on an article of merchandise; and the number and the mark are as truly and in nearly the same sense proper names as the others are.

Not that personal or proper names, in any language, were originally mere arbitrary sounds, devoid of meaning. The first James or the first Brown could, doubtless, have given as good a reason for his name as the first Abraham. But changes of language and lapse of time made the names independent of the reasons, and took from them all their significance. Patrick is not now, eo nomine, a 'patrician;' Bridget is not necessarily 'strong' or 'bright;' and in the name of Mary, hallowed by its associations, only the etymologist can detect the primitive 'bitterness.' Boston is no longer 'St. Botolph's Town;' there is no 'Castle of the inhabitants of Hwiccia' (Hwic-wara-ceaster) to be seen at Worcester; and Hartford is neither 'the ford of harts,' (which the city seal has made it,) nor 'the red ford,' which its name once indicated.

In the same way, many Indian geographical names, after their adoption by Anglo-American colonists, became unmeaning sounds. Their original character was lost by their transfer to a foreign tongue. Nearly all have suffered some mutilation or change of form. In many instances, hardly a trace of true original can be detected in the modern name. Some have been separated from the localities to which they belonged, and assigned to others to which they are etymologically inappropriate. A mountain receives the name of a river; a bay, that of a cape or a peninsula; a tract of land, that of a rock or a waterfall. And so 'Massachusetts' and 'Connecticut' and 'Narragansett' have come to be proper names, as truly as 'Boston' and 'Hartford' are in their cis-Atlantic appropriation.

The Indian languages tolerated no such 'mere marks.' Every name described the locality to which it was affixed. The description was sometimes topographical; sometimes historical, preserving the memory of a battle, a feast, the dwelling-place of a great sachem, or the like; sometimes it indicated one of the natural products of the place, or the animals which resorted to it; occasionally, its position or direction from a place previously known, or from the territory of the nation by which the name was given,--as for example, 'the land on the other side of the river,' 'behind the mountain,' 'the east land,' 'the half-way place,' &c. The same name might be, in fact it very often was, given to more places than one; but these must not be so near together that mistakes or doubts could be occasioned by the repetition. With this precaution, there was no reason why there might not be as many 'Great Rivers,' 'Bends,' 'Forks,' and 'Water-fall places' as there are Washingtons, Franklins, Unions, and Fairplays in the list of American post-offices.

With few exceptions, the structure of these names is simple. Nearly all may be referred to one of three classes:

I. Those formed by the union of two elements, which we will call adjectival and substantival; with or without a locative suffix or post-position meaning 'at,' 'in,' 'by,' 'near,' &c.

II. Those which have a single element, the substantival or 'ground-word,' with its locative suffix.

III. Those formed from verbs, as participials or verbal nouns, denoting a place where the action of the verb is performed. To this class belong, for example, such names as Mushauwomuk (Boston), 'where there is going-by-boat,' i.e., a ferry, or canoe-crossing. Most of these names, however, may be shown by rigid analysis to belong to one of the two preceding classes, which comprise at least nine-tenths of all Algonkin local names which have been preserved.

The examples I shall give of these three classes, will be taken from Algonkin languages; chiefly from the Massachusetts or Natick (which was substantially the same as that spoken by the Narragansetts and Connecticut Indians), the Abnaki, the Lenni-Lenape or Delaware, the Chippewa or Ojibway, and the Knisteno or Cree.

The character _ (oo in 'food;' w in 'Wabash,' 'Wisconsin'), used by Eliot, has been substituted in Abnaki words for the Greek [Greek: ou ligature] of Rale and the Jesuit missionaries, and for the [Greek: omega] of Campanius. A small placed above the line, shows that the vowel which it follows is nasal_,--and replaces the n employed for the same purpose by Rale, and the short line or dash placed under a vowel, in Pickering's alphabet.

In Eliot's notation, oh usually represents the sound of o in order and in form,--that of broad a; but sometimes it stands for short o, as in not.]

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Of names of the first class, in central and southern New England, some of the more common substantival components or 'ground-words' are those which denote Land or Country, River, Water, Lake or Pond, Fishing-place, Rock, Mountain, Inclosure, and Island.

Part 2

1. The Massachusetts OHKE (Narr. auke; Delaware, hacki; Chip. ahke; Abnaki, 'ki;) signifies LAND, and in local names, PLACE or COUNTRY. The final vowel is sometimes lost in composition. With the locative suffix, it becomes ohkit (Del. hacking; Chip. ahki; Abn. kik;) at or in a place or country.

To the Narragansetts proper, the country east of Narragansett Bay and Providence River was wapan-auke, 'east land;' and its people were called by the Dutch explorers, Wapenokis, and by the English, Wampanoags. The tribes of the upper St. Lawrence taught the French, and tribes south of the Piscataqua taught the English, to give the name of East-landers--Abenaquis, or Abinakis--to the Indians of Maine. The country of the Delawares was 'east land,' Wapanachki, to Algonkin nations of the west.

The 'Chawwonock,' or 'Chawonocke,' of Capt. John Smith,--on what is now known as Chowan River, in Virginia and North Carolina,--was, to the Powhattans and other Virginian tribes, the 'south country,' or sowan-ohke, as Eliot wrote it, in Gen. xxiv. 62.

With the adjectival sucki, 'dark-colored,' 'blackish,' we have the aboriginal name of the South Meadow in Hartford,--sucki-ohke, (written Sicaiook, Suckiaug, &c.), 'black earth.'

Wuskowhanan-auk-it, 'at the pigeon country,' was the name (as given by Roger Williams) of a "place where these fowl breed abundantly,"--in the northern part of the Nipmuck country (now in Worcester county, Mass.).

'Kiskatamenakook,' the name of a brook (but originally, of some locality near the brook) in Catskill, N.Y., is kiskato-minak-auke, 'place of thin-shelled nuts' (or shag-bark hickory nuts).

2. RIVER. Seip or sepu (Del. sipo; Chip. s[=e]p[=e]; Abn. sip;) the Algonkin word for 'river' is derived from a root that means 'stretched out,' 'extended,' 'become long,' and corresponds nearly to the English 'stream.' This word rarely, if ever, enters into the composition of local names, and, so far as I know, it does not make a part of the name of any river in New England. Mississippi is missi-sipu, 'great river;' Kitchi-sipi, 'chief river' or 'greatest river,' was the Montagnais name of the St. Lawrence; and Miste-shipu is their modern name for the Moise or 'Great River' which flows from the lakes of the Labrador peninsula into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Near the Atlantic seaboard, the most common substantival components of river names are (1) -tuk and (2) -hanne, -han, or -huan. Neither of these is an independent word. They are inseparable nouns-generic, or generic affixes.

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