Footprints of the Red Men: Indian geographical names in the valley of Hudson's river, the valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware: their location and the probable meaning of some of them.Ruttenber, Edward Manning
History
Footprints of the Red Men: Indian geographical names in the valley of Hudson's river, the valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware: their location and the probable meaning of some of them.
Ruttenber, Edward Manning
Indians of North America -- New York (State); Names, Geographical -- New York (State); Names, Indian -- North America
Magowasinghinck, so written in its earliest form in treaty deed of 1677
(Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii) as the name of an Indian family, and also as the
name of a certain kill, or river--"Land lying on both sides of Rondout
Kill, or river, and known by the name of Moggewarsinck," in survey for
Henry Beekman, 1685--"Land on this side of Rondout Kill named
_Ragowasinck,_ from the limits of Frederick Hussay, to a kill that runs
in the Ronduyt Kill, or where a large rock lies in the kill," grant to
George Davis, 1677. The Beekman grant was on both sides of Rondout Creek
west and immediately above Honk Falls, where a large rock lying in the
kill was the boundmark to which the name referred and from which it was
extended to the stream and place. The George Davis grant has not been
located, and may never have been taken up. Beekman sold to Peter Lowe in
1708, and the survey of the latter, in 1722, described his boundary as
running west from "the great fall called Heneck." In Mr. Lindsay's
History of Ulster County it is said that the grant was half a mile wide
on the southeast side of the stream and a mile wide on the northwest
side. Hon. Th. E. Benedict writes me: "The Rondout is eminently a river
of rocks. It rises on the east side of Peekamoose, Table, and Lone
mountains, and west side of Hanover Mountain of the Catskills, and flows
through chasms of giant rocks. All the way down there are notable rocks
reared in midstream. The rock above Honk Falls is hogback shape, a
hundred or more feet long. It lies entirely in the stream and divides
it into two swift channels which join together just above the falls.
Here, amid the roar, the swirl and dash of waters breaking through rocky
barriers, with the rapids at the falls, the Great Rock was an object to
be remembered as a boundmark."
Without knowledge of the locative of the name or of the facts of record
concerning it, the late Dr. D. G. Brinton, replying to inquiry, wrote
me: "I take _Magow_ or _Moggew-assing-ink_ to be from _Macheu_ (Del.),
'It is great, large'; _achsün,_ 'stone', and _ink_ locative; literally
'at the place of the large stone'." The name does not describe the place
where the rock lies. The Davis grant in terms other than the Indian name
located one as lying "in the kill," and the other is described in the
survey of the patent to Beekman: "Land situate, lying and being upon both
sides of Rondout Kill or river, and known by the name of Moggewarsinck,
beginning at a great rock stone in the middle of the river and opposite
to a marked tree on the south side of the river, between two great rock
stones, which is the bounds betwixt it and the purchase of Mr. William
Fisher," etc.; both records confirm Dr. Brinton's interpretation. As a
generic the name may, like Kahanksan, be found in several places, but the
particularly certain place in the Beekman grant was at the falls called
Honneck, now Honk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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