Piscataway, or Pascatoway, as it is spelled in the early narratives, also recurs as a local name in various parts of the Northern States. It is from, the root _pashk_, which means to separate, to divide. Many derivatives from it are in use in the Delaware tongue. In the Cree we have the impersonal form, _pakestikweyaw_, or the active animate _pasketiwa_, in the sense of "the division or branch of a river."[31] The site of Kittamaquindi (_kittamaque-ink_, Great Beaver Place,) the so-called "metropolis of Pascatoe,"[32] was where Tinker's creek and Piscataway creek branch off from their common estuary, about fifteen miles south of Washington city. The "emperor" Chitomachen, Strong Bear (_chitani_, strong, _macha_, bear), who bore the title _Tayac_ (Nanticoke, _tallak_, head chief) ruled over a dominion which extended about 130 miles from east to west. The district was thinly peopled. On the upper shores of the west side of the Chesapeake Captain John Smith and the other early explorers found scarcely any inhabitants. In 1631 Captain Henry Fleet estimated the total number of natives "in Potomack and places adjacent," at not over 5000 persons.[33] This included both sides of the river as high up as the Falls, and the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Chitomachen, with his family, was converted to the Catholic faith in 1640, by the exertions of the Jesuit missionary, Father Andrew White, but died the year after. When the English first settled at St. Mary's, the tribe was deserting its ancient seats, through fear of the Susquehannocks, and diminished rapidly after that date. Father White was among them from 1634 to 1642, and composed a grammar, dictionary and catechism of their tongue. Of these, the catechism is yet preserved in manuscript, in the library of the Domus Professa of the Jesuits, in Rome. It would be a great benefit to students of Algonkin dialects to have his linguistic works sought out and published. How far his knowledge of the language extended is uncertain. In a letter from one of the missionaries, dated 1642, who speaks of White, the writer adds: "The difficulty of the language is so great that none of us can yet converse with the Indians without an interpreter."[34] That it was an Algonkin dialect, closely akin to the Nanticoke, is clear from the words and proper names preserved in the early records and locally to this day. The only word which has created doubts has been the name of "a certain imaginary spirit called _Ochre_."[35] It has been supposed that this was the Huron _oki_. But it is pure Algonkin. It is the Cree _oki-sikow_ (_être du ciel_, _ange_, Lacombe), the Abnaki _ooskoo_ (_katini ooskoo_, Bon Esprit, _matsini ooskoo_, Mauvais Esprit, Rasles). It was nearly allied to that spoken in Virginia among Powhatan's subjects, as an English boy who had lived with that chieftain served as an interpreter between the settlers and the Patuxent and neighboring Indians.[36]