[lit-ideas] Native-American Place-Names
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:22:20 EDT
Hi all,
I'm fascinated by my current reading, "Native American Places in
Connecticut" -- a reprint of Applewood Books of R. A Douglas-Lithgow, "Indian
Place
Names of New England", covering the Connecticut Section only (1909).
The place names are listed alphabetically, with spelling ('ortographic')
variants. The term orthography makes little sense here since the Native
Americans never used a pen (or pencil) to express their meanings. They relied
on
speech and memory.
There is for example this brook, that enters the Housatonic (that marks the
boundary, on Long Island Sound, between Fairfield County -- Diana Ross county
-- and New-Haven County -- the late Kathryn Hebpurn county). This brook was
called, by the Native Americans:
The Naromiyocknowhusunkatankshunk Brook.
I wonder why the name became obsolete (Locals seem refer to it as "the
brook" simpliciter).
I see that Guilford, Madison, Faulkner's Island (off Guilford), etc. had all
Native American names, and this has motivated to reconstruct a map using
only the Native-American names (plus a few markings for MacDonalds and other
fast food venues).
Guilford, for example, was called "Manunkatuck" by the Mohigans. The English
thought "Guilford" would make for a better name (perhaps they could not
pronounce 'manuntatuck' with a straight face -- The renaming was said to be
done
in memory of the town of Guildford (with a "d") in Surrey -- where Whitfield,
Leete and others possessed some farms.
(Why the 'd' got dropped did not seem to catch anyone's attention).
Sarah Brown McCulloch writes:
"Whitfield and his associates negotiated the purchase of land in Guilford
(then called Menuncatuck) from the sachem squaw Shaumpishuh, ...their early
living conditions must have been very primitive, certainly unlike anything they
had been used to." GUILFORD, Guilford Preservation Alliance, p. vii.
That was 1639 -- and since they have been crossing the Atlantic for a couple
of years, I wonder WHAT is it that they had been used to. I don't think West
End and Piccadilly. There's this idea that England was so elaborate and
sophisticated, but I don't think this applied to 'country' squires like the
adventurous Pilgrims...
I wonder if other parts in the States are so intersting (as they are in
Connecticut) as to the toponymy and their stories behind. Tennessee for
example,
sounds like a nice Native American Name to me, and so do others. "Indiana"
also sounds "Indian".
Your local experience with Native American place names welcome.
The most intersting bit in the Guilford area seems to be "Sachem's Head"
that memorials the death of a Pequot indian in the hands of a Mohigan indian in
1638 -- one year before Guiford was officially settled in 1639.
JL
linguist
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