Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/194

 tooker] THE TERM "POQUOSIN" 1 65

Virginia, by Frey and Jefferson ; Poquosin river, and Poquosin flat, Coast Survey chart.]

Many similar examples, from these and other early sources could be quoted to show that the term was invariably applied to low tracts of land in close proximity to creeks or other bodies of water, and occasionally to land subject to overflow from one cause or another.

By consulting the foregoing authorities, it will be observed that the opinions of the lexicographers and others as to the meaning of poquosin have been based on the supposition that it was an Indian word for "a swamp or marsh/' In most cases, certainly, as the extracts have indicated, such is the meaning apparently attached to it in English ; but the question has lately been presented for a decisive opinion as to whether such was the actual meaning attached to it by the Indians. We say it was not, and in order to substantiate our opinion, and to show the true signification of the term, this paper has been prepared.

The word undoubtedly had its origin among the natives of the coast who spoke the Algonquian language, for it was these people with whom the colonists first came in contact. More- over, the same identical elements, in varying dialectal or corrupt forms, employed with precisely the same descriptive meaning, and applied to similar topographic features, abound as place- name designations throughout the whole eastern Algonquian area.

Not only is this a fact, but in the lonely forests of Maine the radical again appears in its generalized sense in pokeloken, a word used by hunters and lumbermen to denote a marshy place or stagnant water extending into the land from a stream or lake. 1

The question now claiming our attention relates to the analy- sis and etymologic derivation of the term. The first component, poquo, as commonly employed and as first written by Semmes in 1635, or percoar, as rendered by Lawson in 1709, is paralleled

1 W. R. Gerard in N. Y. Sun, June 30, 1895.

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