[Robert S. Grumet (2014)] excavated from sites along the creek around Hurley and Kingston corroborates colonial accounts of intensive Indian settlements along the lower course of the creek first noted in a Dutch map drawn in 1616. Violent encounters between Indians and settlers in the area between 1658 and 1664, and the Nicolls Treaty made in 1665 (named for English governor Richard Nicolls, who presided over the treaty that established a framework for lasting peace in the area after seizing New Netherland) helped secure a place for the Esopus nation in the memories of successive generations of mid-Hudson Valley residents. Less well-remembered are the many dispute resolutions made at the annually mandated renewals of peace and friendship required under the terms of the Nicolls Treaty (Scott and Baker 1953). These and other get-togethers put Esopus Indians into close contact with colonists in and around Ulster County for more than a century after their war with the Dutch. Most Esopus Indians continued to support the British Crown in accordance with their Nicolls Treaty obligations when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775. Colonists responded by forcing the Esopus Indians to abandon places where they lived near colonial settlements in the mid-Hudson Valley and along the upper Delaware River in and around Cookhouse (present-day Deposit, New York). Moving first to Oquaga (see in New York in Part 2) on the far side of the Catskills, the Esopus joined other Loyalist Indians taking refuge at Fort Niagara after American militiamen burned the town and the other upper Susquehanna River Indian settlements in 1778. Most of these people ultimately found new homes on lands set aside for them by British authorities in Upper Canada (now Ontario) after the end of the war, where later writers encountered the aforementioned So psi w at the 11 the Indians, had been in continuous use since the 1600s. The decision to give the name Esopus to the newly incorporated town was made at the height of the classical revival that saw New York communities adopt names such as Rome, Syracuse, and Utica. The similarity of Esopus to Aesopus, the name of the Greek author of wisdom literature, doubtless helped keep the Indian name on the maps. Esopus has since been applied to nearly every conceivable place capable of bearing a name in the greater Kingston area. FORT NECK (Nassau County). Fort Neck is an English word for a Delaware Indian place. Today, Fort Neck is the name of a neighborhood in the hamlet of Seaford at the southeastern corner of the Town of Oyster Bay. Archaeological remains, including patterns of soil stains preserving evidence of a ditch and postholes filled with the carbonized remains of palings that constituted the place’s palisade walls, have fueled folklore traditions identifying the site as the location of a community subjected to a Mohawk attack after failing to make tribute payments. The place is also identified as either Matsepe (see Maspeth below) or another otherwise unnamed fort attacked by colonial troops in 1644 during Governor Kieft’s War (Anonymous 1909:282). While colonial records are silent on these subjects, deeds still on file in Oyster Bay town records show that Massapequa Indians (see below) living at Fort Neck sold their last lands there between 1686 and 1697 (Grumet 1995). The suburban residential Harbor Green development built during the late 1930s now occupies most of the land at Fort Neck above the high tide line. GOWANUS (Kings County). Whritenour finds that Gowanus sounds much like the Munsee word akauwunnis, “loon.” Today, Gowanus is the name of a Brooklyn neighborhood, creek, canal, expressway, and bay. The name first appeared as a tract of land called Gouwanes in a deed dated April 5, 1642 (Gehring 1980:1314). Subsequent colonial chroniclers variously referred to the stream as the Gouwanisse Kill and Gouwanus Creek. The name’s resemblance to Gouwe, a swampy river in the Netherlands, probably accounts for settlers’ early acceptance of its Indian name. Persistent Dutch colonists continued using the name even after English settlers moving into the area after 1664 started calling the stream Mill Creek. The nineteenth-century romantic revival of interest in Indian place names kept Gowanus on the maps just as use of the name have kept the name Gowanus on the minds of city officials, corpo12 rate executives, conservationists, and copy editors, who see to it that news of the latest run-ins pitting contending interest groups against one another reaches their readers. HACKENSACK (Rockland County). The headwaters of the Hackensack River rise in the New York county of Rockland before flowing south into New Jersey. See the entry for Hackensack in New Jersey for further information. HAVERSTRAW (Rockland County). Haverstraw is a Dutch word meaning “oat straw,” also spelled Averstraw and Heardstroo in deeds dating to the 1680s. The name has been used since colonial times to identify Indians whose