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Footprints of the Red Men: Indian Geographical Names — Passage 2 (part 2)

Edward Manning Ruttenber (1906) 228 words View original →

[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1906)] There is no poetry in them--no "glittering waterfalls," no "beautiful rivers," no "smile of the Great Spirit," no "Holy place of sacred feasts and dances," but plain terms that have their equivalents in our own language for a small hill, a high hill, a mountain, a brook, a creek, a kill, a river, a pond, a lake, a swamp, a large stone, a place of small stones, a split rock, a meadow, or whatever the objective feature may have been as recognized by the Indian. Many of them were particular names in the form of verbals indicating a place where the action of the verb was performed; occasionally the name of a sachem is given as that of his place of residence or the stream on which he resided, but all are from generic roots. To the Algonquian dialects spoken in the valley of Hudson's River at the time of the discovery, was added later the Mohawk--Iroquorian, to some extent, more particularly on the north, where it appears about 1621-6, as indicated in the blanket deed given by the Five Nations to King George in 1726. Territorially, in the primary era of European invasion, the Eastern Algonquian prevailed, in varying idioms, on both sides of the river, from a northern point to the Katskills, and from thence south to the Highlands a type of the Unami-Minsi-Lenape or Delaware.