Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/196

 tooker] THE TERM "POQUOS/N" 1 67

counties, Pennsylvania, — which, he wrote, was corrupted from " Poqucsink, the place of mice." The late Dr J. H. Trumbull 1 regarded Poaetquessing — an Indian village at the mouth of this creek mentioned by Campanius — as a disguised Pawtuxet, where- in he was mistaken, for the latter name belonged to the falls at Trenton.

On Long island, New York, four miles south of Sag Harbor, near Sagaponack, is a locality and a pond called " Poxabog" but more correctly termed Paugasaboug according to aboriginal pronunciation. Its main stem was variously written Pougoso-, Pogase-y and as Pockgase-, which accounts for the modern sur- vival. A survey of 1712, laying out the land thereabouts, reads : " Runs into a Litel slade for water ner paugaseboug" This name is not a compound of Indian and English, neither is the terminal a " bog," as might be assumed, but is the Algonquian generic paug, which, in Long island Indian names, has the form boug, " a pond, or a water-place," the whole " an opening- out water-place " — a translation accurately describing the low boggy tract where " Poxabog pond " spreads out, as it is doing at the present time, being wider and more open than has been ob- served in some years. " Poxabog road," very good in dry seasons, is now three feet under water and impassable. " Poxabog brook, a ditch dug in the last century connecting with " Sagg pond, carries off the surplus water, otherwise the whole neighborhood would be flooded. Quassapaug pond, in the northwestern part of Middlebury, partly in Woodbury, Connecticut, the source of Eight-mile river, 9 is probably the equivalent of our Paugasaboug, and was originally Poquassapaug, and not, as Trumbull suggested, from " k'che-paug, i. e., the greatest pond."

Pocasset pond and Boggy meadow at Portland, Connecticut, have the same natural features. On modern maps it is " Pecaus- set." In a deed of 1678, it is the " boggy meadow in Pacousett."

1 Indian Geographical Names, p. 9.

8 Trumbull, Names in Connecticut, pp. 56, 60.

��»»

��»»

��I

�� �