Beyond Manhattan: A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History
[Robert S. Grumet (2014)] the Beyond Manhattan, Robert S. Grumet form as the name of a one-square-mile-sized tract in a December 26, 1686, Indian deed in northern Fairfield, and as Ompaquag in a deed dated September 12, 1687 (in Wojciechowski 1985:111). The name was first applied to the present-day pond in the form of Umpewange in a September 30, 1708, deed to land in the locale (in Robert Bolton 1881 1:329-333). Umpawaug Hill was first noted in a colonial patent dated May 1, 1723. The Umpawaug District School, opened in 1790 and closed in 1931, is preserved as a historic site. WAHACKME. Today, Wahackme Road and Wahackme Lane are names of streets in the Town of New Canaan. Wahackme is a somewhat altered spelling of the name of a sachem, identified as Mahackemo in the February 26, 1640, Indian deed to land at Norwalk, and as Mahackem two months later in a deed to an adjacent tract (in Robert Bolton 1881 1:389-390). WAMPUS. Wampus Way in the Lake Hills development built in Fairfield in 1952 bears the name of a local Indian leader commemorated in several place names in neighboring New York (see above). chased by the state in 1920 on the lake’s north shore. East Aspetuck Creek (see above) carries water from the lake to the Housatonic River at New Milford. The name Waramaug originally appeared in colonial records documenting the participation of a sachem variously identified as Weramaug and Weromaug in land sales in the area negotiated between 1716 and 1720 (in Wojciechowski 1985:138-140). WEBATUCK (Litchfield County). Webatuck Creek winds its way between the borders of Connecticut and New York (see above) for most of its ten-mile-length. WINNEPOGE. See WINNIPAUK WINNIPAUK. An Indian identified as Winnapucke first appeared in colonial records as one of the signatories to a deed conveying title to land in Norwalk (see above) to colonists on February 15, 1651 (Hurd 1881:483-484). This man was almost certainly the person identified as Winnepoge, a brother of Nonopoge who, along with another noted as Craucreeco (see Cockenoe and Cricker above and Kensico in New York in Part 1), acceded to demands made on May 5, 1684, that they acknowledge colonial sovereignty over their lands as the price paid for their people’s support of the Pequots defeated in their war against the English nearly 50 years earlier (J. Davis 1885:121-122). The sachem’s name appeared in its presentday form in a deed of gift presenting the Norwalk Islands to a settler signed on December 2, 1690 (Selleck 1896:28). Today, Winnipauk is the name of a neighborhood, a millpond, and a street in the City of Norwalk. Winnepoge Road is one of the Indian names provided by the Fairfield Historical Society to the developer of the Lake Hills subdivision in 1952. Similar-looking Winnipaug in Rhode Island (see in Part 3) is an otherwise unrelated Southern New England Eastern Algonquian cognate. WYANTENOCK (Litchfield County). The Wyantenock Indian town located in the Housatonic River valley near New Milford was a mixed community made up of Wampano-speaking people from the area, Wappinger Indian people from New York, Mahican-speakers living farther to the northwest, and Mohegan-Pequot and other speakers of Southern New England Algonquian languages farther eastward. Most of the inhabitants of these towns ultimately joined the similarly multi-cultural nearby Schaghticoke and Stockbridge Indian communities by the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Today, the name most notably adorns the more than 4,000-acre Wyantenock State Forest that extends across lands first acquired by the State of Connecticut in 1925 in the towns of Warren, Kent, and Cornwall. Slightly differently spelled Weantinock is a street name NEW JERSEY NORTH ACQUACKANONK (Passaic and Sussex counties). Heckewelder (1834:376) thought that Acquackanonk sounded much like a Delaware Indian word, tachquahacannéna, referring to a place where people made pounding blocks from tachquahcaniminschi, “gum trees.” Brinton and Anthony (1888:11) suggested another Delaware etymology; achquanican, “fish dam.” Whritenour thinks that Acquackanonk sounds almost exactly like a Munsee word, *axkwaakahnung, “at the stream of lampreys.” Acquackanonk was originally a general name for the upper tidewater section of the Passaic River between the modern-day City of Passaic and the Great Falls at Paterson. The word first appeared as Gweghkongh and Hweghkongh, a community represented by several sachems who signed the July 15, 1657, deed to Staten Island (Gehring 2003:141142). Three deeds to places in and near the City of Passaic signed between April 4, 1678, and April 9, 1679, used the names Aquickanucke, Haquequenunck, Aquenongue, and Aqueguonke to identify land in the area (Budke 1975a:47A-47E). Residents retained the name when they incorporated a part of that land as a township in 1693, only to abandon it in favor of Passaic, another Delaware name, when they adopted a city form of government in 1873. Popular during the nineteenth century, the name today survives on New Jersey maps as