The Composition of Indian Geographical Names | Page 5

rise in the highlands flow down rapidly descending slopes, -hann�� is more common than -tuk or sepu in river names. Keht-hann�� (kittan, Zeisb.; kithanne, Hkw.) was a name given to the Delaware River as 'the principal or greatest stream' of that region: and by the western Delawares, to the Ohio.[16] With the locative termination, Kittanning (Penn.) is a place 'on the greatest stream.' The Schuylkill was Ganshow-hann��, 'noisy stream;' the Lackawanna, Lechau-hann��, 'forked stream' or 'stream that forks:'[17] with affix, Lechauhannak or Lechauwahannak, 'at the river-fork,'--for which Hendrick Aupamut, a Muhhekan, wrote (with dialectic exchange of n for Delaware l) 'Naukhuwwhnauk,' 'The Forks' of the Miami.[18] The same name is found in New England, disguised as Newichawanock, Nuchawanack, &c., as near Berwick, Me., 'at the fork' or confluence of Cocheco and Salmon Fall rivers,--the 'Neghechewanck' of Wood's Map (1634). Powhatan, for Pauat-hanne, 'at the Falls on a rapid stream,' has been previously noticed.
[Footnote 16: Heckewelder, on Indian names, in Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. vol. iv.]
[Footnote 17: Ibid.]
[Footnote 18: Narrative, &c., in Mem. Hist. Society of Pennsylvania, vol. ii. p. 97.]
Alleghany, or as some prefer to write it, Allegheny,--the Algonkin name of the Ohio River, but now restricted to one of its branches,--is probably (Delaware) welhik-hann�� or [oo]lik-hann��, 'the best (or, the fairest) river.' Welhik (as Zeisberger wrote it)[19] is the inanimate form of the adjectival, meaning 'best,' 'most beautiful.' In his Vocabulary, Zeisberger gave this synthesis, with slight change of orthography, as "Wulach'ne��" [or [oo]lakhanne[oo], as Eliot would have written it,] with the free translation, "a fine River, without Falls." The name was indeed more likely to belong to rivers 'without falls' or other obstruction to the passage of canoes, but its literal meaning is, as its composition shows, "best rapid-stream," or "finest rapid-stream;" "La Belle Riviere" of the French, and the Oue-yo�� or O hee�� yo G?-hun��-d?, "good river" or "the beautiful river," of the Senecas.[20] For this translation of the name we have very respectable authority,--that of Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian of Pennsylvania, who lived seventeen years with the Muhhekan Indians and was twice married among them, and whose knowledge of the Indian languages enabled him to render important services to the colony, as a negotiator with the Delawares and Shawanese of the Ohio, in the French war. In his "Journal from Philadelphia to the Ohio" in 1758,[21] after mention of the 'Alleghenny' river, he says: "The Ohio, as it is called by the Sennecas. Alleghenny is the name of the same river in the Delaware language. Both words signify the fine or fair river." La Metairie, the notary of La Salle's expedition, "calls the Ohio, the Olighinsipou, or Aleghin; evidently an Algonkin name,"--as Dr. Shea remarks.[22] Heckewelder says that the Delawares "still call the Allegany (Ohio) river, Allig��wi Sipu,"--"the river of the Alligewi" as he chooses to translate it. In one form, we have wulik-hann��sipu, 'best rapid-stream long-river;' in the other, wulik��-sipu, 'best long-river.' Heckewelder's derivation of the name, on the authority of a Delaware legend, from the mythic 'Alligewi' or 'Talligewi,'--"a race of Indians said to have once inhabited that country," who, after great battles fought in pre-historic times, were driven from it by the all-conquering Delawares,[23]--is of no value, unless supported by other testimony. The identification of Alleghany with the Seneca "De o�� na g? no, cold water" [or, cold spring,[24]] proposed by a writer in the Historical Magazine (vol. iv. p. 184), though not apparent at first sight, might deserve consideration if there were any reason for believing the name of the river to be of Iroquois origin,--if it were probable that an Iroquois name would have been adopted by Algonkin nations,--or, if the word for 'water' or 'spring' could be made, in any American language, the substantival component of a river name.
[Footnote 19: Grammar of the Lenni-Lenape, transl. by Duponceau, p. 43. "Wulit, good." "Welsit (masc. and fem.), the best." "Inanimate, Welhik, best."]
[Footnote 20: Morgan's League of the Iroquois, p. 436.]
[Footnote 21: Published in London, 1759, and re-printed in Appendix to Proud's Hist. of Penn., vol. ii. pp. 65-132.]
[Footnote 22: Shea's Early Voyages on the Mississippi, p. 75.
La Metairie's 'Olighinsipou' suggests another possible derivation which may be worth mention. The Indian name of the Alleghanies has been said,--I do not now remember on whose authority,--to mean 'Endless Mountains.' 'Endless' cannot be more exactly expressed in any Algonkin language than by 'very long' or 'longest,'--in the Delaware, Eluwi-guneu. "The very long or longest river" would be _Eluwi-guneu sipu, or, if the words were compounded in one, Eluwi-gunesipu_.]
[Footnote 23: Paper on Indian names, ut supra, p. 367; Historical Account, &c., pp. 29-32.]
[Footnote 24: Morgan's League of the Iroquois, pp. 466, 468.]
From the river, the name appears to have been transferred by the English to a range of the "Endless Mountains."
3. NIPPE, NIPI (= n'pi;