Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Greg Bergquist, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_, NOVEMBER, 1878. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Transcriber's Note: Variant spelling, dialect, and unusual punctuation have been retained. SEAWANHAKA, THE ISLAND OF SHELLS. [Illustration: WRECK OF THE CIRCASSIAN.] It is not by any means certain what was the name by which Long Island was known to the aboriginal dwellers in its "forest primeval," or indeed that they ever had a common name by which to designate it. It seems probable that each tribe bestowed upon it a different name, expressive of the aspect that appeared most striking to its primitive and poetical visitors and occupants. Among so many tribes--the Canarsees (who met Hudson when on September 4, 1609, he anchored in Gravesend Bay), the Rockaways, Nyacks, Merrikokes, Matinecocs, Marsapeagues, Nissaquages, Corchaugs, Setaukets, Secataugs, Montauks, Shinecocs, Patchogues, and Manhansetts, to say nothing of the Pequots and Narragansetts on the northern shore of the Sound--a community of usage in regard to nomenclature could hardly be expected. We accordingly find that one of the old names of the island was Mattenwake, a compound of _Mattai_, the Delaware for "island." It was also called Paumanacke (the Indian original of the prosaic Long Island), Mattanwake (the Narragansett word for "good" or "pleasant land"), Pamunke and Meitowax. For a name, however, at once beautiful and suggestive, appropriate to an island whose sunny shores are strewn with shells, and recalling Indian feuds and customs, savage ornament and tributes paid in wampum, no name equals that we have chosen--Seawanhaka or Seawanhackee, the "Island of Shells."