Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/197

 168 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

Rhode Island has its quota in two *' Pocasset " rivers : The one in Tiverton gave the name to a hill as well as to the country there- abouts, where the "Pocasset" sachemship had its home in former times; the other is in Johnston, and empties into Pawtucket river, just above the city of that name. There are also "Pocasset meadows" in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Pequusset, and Pigs- gusset, were the meadows " at the widening " of Charles river, Watertown, Massachusetts, and represent other variations. u Pe- cowsic" brook, flowing down " Pecowsic" valley, through the " Agawam " meadows, at Springfield, Massachusetts, is another. Pawgasett (1642), Paugasset (1672), the low land and meadows at the junction of Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers at Derby, Con- necticut, gave the name to the " Paugasset " tribe in the annals of Housatonic valley. President Stiles ! of Yale College wrote the name, as pronounced by a Paugasset Indian, Pawghkeesuck?

Among the correspondences are some with an additional pre- fix. For instance, at Montauk, Long island, near the ** Ditch plain " Life-saving station, bordering Camp Wikoff on the south- east, lies another low tract of marsh and bog, through which a ditch was dug in the seventeenth century in order to carry off more expeditiously the " backwater," from " Great pond " into the ocean. This locality formed a boundary described in an Indian deed of 1670, and was then called Choppausha-paugasuk, i. e., " a place of separation where the outlet opens out or widens." The marsh was no doubt impassable in early days, and even now travel over it is by a bridge and a filled-in road.

On the northern side of Martha's Vineyard, in the town of Tisbury, is a marshy section through which flows a brook once called Weechpoguasset. In a deed of May 28, 1669, for the " Christian Town," it is stated : " The bounds of the said land is on the north side of Island bounded by the land called Ichpoguas- sett" In 1699 the same was " bounded on the East by Ichpoguas- sett the black water." We believe " black water," as here written

1 Manuscript, 1761. * Trumbull, Names in Connecticut, p. 46.

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