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
waters,' and _Osserueñon, Osserrion, Assarue,_ etc., signifies 'At the
beaver-dam.'" Accepting these interpretations, the particular place where
the two names seem to come together is at the mouth of Aurie's Creek
"where it falls into Mohawk's river." (See Oghracke.) As generic terms,
however, they would be applicable at any place where the features were
met and would only become specific here from other locative testimony,
which we seem to have.
The first castle or town was that of the Tortoise tribe; the second, that
of the Bear tribe; the third, that of the Beaver (probably), and the
fourth, that of the Wolf tribe. On Van der Donck's map there are four,
and Greenhalgh, in 1677, noted four. In a Schenectady paper of the same
year the names of two sachems are subscribed who acted "for themselves"
and as "the representatives of ye four Mohock's castles." The French
invaded the valley in 1666, and burned all the castles of the early
period, and the tribes retreated to the north side of river and
established themselves, the first at Caughnawaga; the second about one
and one-half miles west of the first; the third, west of the second, and
the fourth beyond the third, in their ancient order as Greenhalgh found
them in 1677. The French destroyed them again in 1693, [FN-5] and the
tribes returned to and rebuilt on the south side of the river in proximity
to their ancient seats. After the changes which had swept over the
nation, three castles are noted in later records--the "Upper" at
Canajohare, the "Lower" at the mouth of Schohare Creek, and the "Third"
on the Schohare some sixteen miles inland.
While the early castles were known to the Dutch traders prior to 1635,
and their locations marked, approximately, on their rude charts which
formed the basis of Van der Donck's and other early maps, it was not
until the recovery and publication in 1895, of Van Curler's Journal
[FN-6]that much was known concerning them prior to 1642-44, when the
Jesuit missionaries and the Dutch minister at Fort Orange, Rev.
Megapolensis, went into the field. Van Curler's Journal, supplemented by
the Relations of the Jesuit Fathers and Rev. Megapolensis's notes,
enables us now to almost look in upon the early homes of the "barbarians,"
as they were called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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