Part 5

Saganaum, Sagana, now Saginaw Bay, on Lake Huron, received its name from the mouth of the river which flows through it to the lake.

The Mississagas were people of the missi-sauk, missi-sague, or (with locative) missi-sak-ing, that is 'great outlet.' In the last half of the seventeenth century they were seated on the banks of a river which is described as flowing into Lake Huron some twenty or thirty leagues south of the Sault Ste. Marie (the same river probably that is now known as the Mississauga, emptying into Manitou Bay,) and nearly opposite the Straits of Mississauga on the South side of the Bay, between Manitoulin and Cockburn Islands. So little is known however of the history and migrations of this people, that it is perhaps impossible now to identify the 'great outlet' from which they first had their name.

The Saguenay (Sagnay, Sagne, Saghuny, etc.), the great tributary of the St. Lawrence, was so called either from the well-known trading-place at its mouth, the annual resort of the Montagnars and all the eastern tribes, or more probably from the 'Grand Discharge' of its main stream from Lake St. John and its strong current to and past the rapids at Chicoutimi, and thence on to the St. Lawrence. Near Lake St. John and the Grand Discharge was another rendezvous of the scattered tribes. The missionary Saint-Simon in 1671 described this place as one at which "all the nations inhabiting the country between the two seas (towards the east and north) assembled to barter their furs." Hind's Exploration of Labrador, ii. 23.

In composition with -tuk, 'river' or 'tidal stream,' sauki (adjectival) gave names to 'Soakatuck,' now Saugatuck, the mouth of a river in Fairfield county, Conn.; to 'Sawahquatock,' or 'Sawkatuck-et,' at the outlet of Long Pond or mouth of Herring River, in Harwich, Mass.; and perhaps to Massaugatucket, (missi-saukituk-ut?), in Marshfield, Mass., and in South Kingston, R.I.,--a name which, in both places, has been shortened to Saquatucket.

'Winnipiseogee' (pronounced Win' ni pe sauk' e,) is compounded of winni, nippe, and sauki, 'good-water discharge,' and the name must have belonged originally to the outlet by which the waters of the lake pass to the Merrimack, rather than to the lake itself. Winnepesauke, Wenepesioco and (with the locative) Winnipesiockett, are among the early forms of the name. The translation of this synthesis by 'the Smile of the Great Spirit' is sheer nonsense. Another, first proposed by the late Judge Potter of New Hampshire, in his History of Manchester (p. 27),--'the beautiful water of the high place,'--is demonstrably wrong. It assumes that is or es represents kees, meaning 'high;' to which assumption there are two objections: first, that there is no evidence that such a word as kees, meaning 'high,' is found in any Algonkin language, and secondly, that if there be such a word, it must retain its significant root, in any synthesis of which it makes part,--in other words, that kees could not drop its initial k and preserve its meaning. I was at first inclined to accept the more probable translation proposed by 'S.F.S.' [S.F. Streeter?] in the Historical Magazine for August, 1857,--"the land of the placid or beautiful lake;" but, in the dialects of New England, nippisse or nips, a diminutive of nippe, 'water,' is never used for paug, 'lake' or 'standing water;' and if it were sometimes so used, the extent of Lake Winnepiseogee forbids it to be classed with the 'small lakes' or 'ponds,' to which, only, the diminutive is appropriate.

4. NASHAUE (Chip. nassawaii and ashawiwi), 'mid-way,' or 'between,' and with ohke or auk added, 'the land between' or 'the half-way place,'--was the name of several localities. The tract on which Lancaster, in Worcester county (Mass.) was settled, was 'between' the branches of the river, and so it was called 'Nashaway' or 'Nashawake' (nashaue-ohke); and this name was afterwards transferred from the territory to the river itself. There was another Nashaway in Connecticut, between Quinnebaug and Five-Mile Rivers in Windham county, and here, too, the mutilated name of the nashaue-ohke was transferred, as Ashawog or Assawog, to the Five-Mile River. Natchaug in the same county, the name of the eastern branch of Shetucket river, belonged originally to the tract 'between' the eastern and western branches; and the Shetucket itself borrows a name (nashaue-tuk-ut) from its place 'between' Yantic and Quinebaug rivers. A neck of land (now in Griswold, Conn.) "between Pachaug River and a brook that comes into it from the south," one of the Muhhekan east boundaries, was called sometimes, Shawwunk, 'at the place between,'--sometimes Shawwamug (nashaue-amaug), 'the fishing-place between' the rivers, or the 'half-way fishing-place.'

5. ASHIM, is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for 'fountain.' It denoted a spring or brook from which water was obtained for drinking. In the Abnaki, asiem nebi, 'il puise de l'eau;' and ned-a'sihibe, 'je puise de l'eau, fonti vel fluvio.' (Rasles.)

Winne-ashim-ut, 'at the good spring,' near Romney Marsh, is now Chelsea, Mass. The name appears in deeds and records as Winnisimmet, Winisemit, Winnet Semet, etc. The author of the 'New English Canaan' informs us (book 2, ch. 8), that "At Weenasemute is a water, the virtue whereof is, to cure barrennesse. The place taketh his name of that fountaine, which signifieth quick spring, or quickning spring. Probatum."

Ashimuit or Shumuit, an Indian village near the line between Sandwich and Falmouth, Mass.,--Shaume, a neck and river in Sandwich (the Chawum of Capt. John Smith?),--Shimmoah, an Indian village on Nantucket,--may all have derived their names from springs resorted to by the natives, as was suggested by the Rev. Samuel Deane in a paper in Mass. Hist. Collections, 2d Series, vol. x. pp. 173, 174.

6. MATTAPPAN, a participle of mattappu (Chip. namatabi), 'he sits down,' denotes a 'sitting-down place,' or, as generally employed in local names, the end of a portage between two rivers or from one arm of the sea to another,--where the canoe was launched again and its bearers re-embarked. Rale translates the Abnaki equivalent, matabe, by 'il va au bord de l'eau,--a la greve pour s'embarquer,' and metabeniganik, by 'au bout de dela du portage.'

Mattapan-ock, afterwards shortened to Mattapan, that part of Dorchester Neck (South Boston) where "the west country people were set down" in 1630, may have been so called because it was the end of a carrying place from South Bay to Dorchester Bay, across the narrowest part of the peninsula, or--as seems highly probable--because it was the temporary 'sitting-down place' of the new comers. Elsewhere, we find the name evidently associated with portage.

On Smith's Map of Virginia, one 'Mattapanient' appears as the name of the northern fork (now the Mattapony) of Pamaunk (York) River; another (Mattpanient) near the head waters of the Pawtuxunt; and a third on the 'Chickahamania' not far above its confluence with Powhatan (James) River.

Mattapoiset, on an inlet of Buzzard's Bay, in Rochester, Mass.,--another Mattapoiset or 'Mattapuyst,' now Gardner's Neck, in Swanzea,--and 'Mattapeaset' or 'Mattabesic,' on the great bend of the Connecticut (now Middletown), derived their names from the same word, probably.

On a map of Lake Superior, made by Jesuit missionaries and published in Paris in 1672, the stream which is marked on modern maps as 'Riviere aux Traines' or 'Train River,' is named 'R. Mataban.' The small lake from which it flows is the 'end of portage' between the waters of Lake Michigan and those of Lake Superior.

7. CHABENUK, 'a bound mark'; literally, 'that which separates or divides.' A hill in Griswold, Conn., which was anciently one of the Muhhekan east bound-marks, was called Chabinuk, 'Atchaubennuck,' and 'Chabunnuck.' The village of praying Indians in Dudley (now Webster?) Mass., was named Chabanakongkomuk (Eliot, 1668,) or -ongkomum, and the Great Pond still retains, it is said, the name of Chaubenagungamaug (chabenukong-amaug?), "the boundary fishing-place." This pond was a bound mark between the Nipmucks and the Muhhekans, and was resorted to by Indians of both nations.

* * * * *

III. Participials and verbals employed as place-names may generally, as was before remarked, be referred to one or the other of the two preceding classes. The distinction between noun and verb is less clearly marked in Indian grammar than in English. The name Mushauwomuk (corrupted to Shawmut) may be regarded as a participle from the verb mushaum (Narr. mishoonhom) 'he goes by boat,'--or as a noun, meaning 'a ferry,'--or as a name of the first class, compounded of the adjectival mush-n, 'boat or canoe,' and wom-uk, habitual or customary going, i.e., 'where there is going-by-boat.'

The analysis of names of this class is not easy. In most cases, its results must be regarded as merely provisional. Without some clue supplied by history or tradition and without accurate knowledge of the locality to which the name belongs, or is supposed to belong, one can never be certain of having found the right key to the synthesis, however well it may seem to fit the lock. Experience Mayhew writing from Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard, in 1722, gives the Indian name of the place where he was living as Nimpanickhickanuh. If he had not added the information that the name "signifies in English, The place of thunder clefts," and that it was so called "because there was once a tree there split in pieces by the thunder," it is not likely that any one in this generation would have discovered its precise meaning,--though it might have been conjectured that neimpau, or nimbau, 'thunder,' made a part of it.

Quilutamende was (Heckewelder tells us) the Delaware name of a place on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, where, as the Indians say, "in their wars with the Five Nations, they fell by surprise upon their enemies. The word or name of this place is therefore, Where we came unawares upon them, &c." Without the tradition, the meaning of the name would not have been guessed,--or, if guessed, would not have been confidently accepted.

The difficulty of analyzing such names is greatly increased by the 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 restores 'Pymatuning,' the name of a place in Pennsylvania, to the Del. 'Pihmtonink,' 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.

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. 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.

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, 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. Rale gives, as the name of the place on "the river where M. de Gastin [Castine] is," Matsibigadssek, and on his authority we may accept this form as nearly representing the original. The analysis now becomes more easy. Matsi-abagaat-ek, means 'at the bad-shelter place,--bad covert or cove;' and matsi-abagaats-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.'

* * * * *

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. pauqui; Abn. p'kie; '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. pagi,) 'clear,' 'pure'. Found with paug, 'standing water' or 'pond,' in such names as 'Pahcupog,' 'Paquabaug,' &c. See page 16.