Massapeage--_Massapeag,_ 1636; _Massapeague, Rassapeage_--a place-name from which extended to an Indian clan whose principal seat is said to have been on Fort Neck, in the town of Oyster Bay, was translated by Dr. Trumbull from _Massa,_ "great"; _pe,_ the radical of water, and _auke,_ "land," or "Land on the great cove." Thompson (Hist. L. I.) assigns the name to "a swamp on the south side of Oyster Bay," now South Oyster Bay, and it is so applied in Indian deeds. There were two Indian forts or palisaded towns on the Neck. Of one the name is not given; it was the smallest of the two; its site is said to be now submerged by water. The second, or largest, is called in Dutch records _Matsepe,_ "Great river." It is described as having been situated on the most southerly point of land adjoining the salt meadows. Both forts were attacked by Dutch forces under Capt. Pieter Cock and Capt. John Underhill, in the summer of 1644 (a local record says August) and totally destroyed with heavy loss to the Indians. (Doc. Hist. N. Y., iv, 15, 16.) In Prime's and other local histories the date is given as 1653, on the authority of "Hubbard's Indian Wars," and Capt. Underhill is assigned to the command in the attack on the largest fort. The official Dutch record, however, assigns that honor to Capt. Pieter Cock. The year was surely 1644, (Brodhead's Hist. N. Y., i, 91.) The prefix _Mass,_ appears in many forms--Massa, Marsa, Marsha, Rassa, Mesa, Missi, Mas, Mes, etc., and also _Mat,_ an equivalent of _Mas._ Massepe, quoted in Dutch records as the name of the Indian fort on Fort Neck, where it seems to have been the name of Stony Brook, is also met in Jamaica Records (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiv, 505) as the name of a creek forming a mowing boundary or division line extending from a certain place "Eastward to ye great creek called Massepe." The name is fully explained by the description, "Great creek." _Massepe-auke_ means "Great creek (or river) land," or place; _Mas-sepe-ink,_ "At or on the great creek." The Indian residents came to be known as the Marsepincks. Maskutchoung, a neck of land so called forming one of the boundaries of Hempstead Patent as entered in confirmatory deed of "Takapousha, sachem of Marsapeage," and "Wantagh, the Montauke sachem," July 4th, 1657: "Beginning at a marked tree standing at the east side of the Great Plain, and from thence running on a due south line, and at the South Sea by a marked tree in a neck called Maskutchoimg, and thence upon the same line to the South Sea." (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiv, 38, 416.) "By a marked tree in a neck called Maskachoung." (Thompson's Hist. L. I., 9, 15, 47.) It is probably an equivalent of _Mask-ek-oug,_ "A grassy swamp or marsh." A local interpretation reads: "Grass-drowned brook," a small stream flowing through the long marsh-grass, to which the name was extended.