The Composition of Indian Geographical Names | Page 5

'Teghtacutt,' 'Teightaquid,' 'Tetiquet,' &c.[15]
[Footnote 15: See Hist. Magazine, vol. iii. p. 48.]
(2). The other substantival component of river-names, -HANNE or -HAN (Abn.
-ts[oo]a[n]n or -ta[n]n; Mass. -tchuan;) denotes 'a rapid stream' or 'current;' primarily,
'flowing water.' In the Massachusetts and Abnaki, it occurs in such compounds as
anu-tchuan (Abn. ari'ts[oo]a[n]n), 'it over-flows:' kussi-tchuan (Abn. kesi'ts[oo]a[n]n),
'it swift flows,' &c.
In Pennsylvania and Virginia, where the streams which rise in the highlands flow down
rapidly descending slopes, -hanné is more common than -tuk or sepu in river names.
Keht-hanné (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-hanné, 'noisy stream;' the Lackawanna,
Lechau-hanné, '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-hanné or
[oo]lik-hanné, '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'neü" [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 Gä-hun´-dä, "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, Alligéwi Sipu,"--"the river of the Alligewi" as he chooses
to translate it. In one form, we have wulik-hannésipu, 'best rapid-stream long-river;' in the
other, wuliké-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 gä 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