ABORIGINAL PLACE NAMES OF NEW YORK 1 5 



adds ke. Sometimes the plural has okoii, okonha, son or sonha, 

 following the noun ; in other cases the number appears from the 

 context. 



Local relations of nouns appear from affixed particles, like ke, 

 ne, kon, akon, akta, etc., as kanonsa, Iioiisc, kanonskon, in the house. 

 There are many perplexing affixes. The adjective follows the noun, 

 but they often coalesce. Pronouns are more numerous than in 

 European languages, and he gave five conjugations to nouns and 

 verbs. Verbs have three moods, with seven tenses in the indicative, 

 and they take a passive form by inserting the syllable at after the 

 pronoun. M. Cuoq thought there were 12 forms of the verb, but 

 Mr Hale reckoned more. Particles were many and freely used. 

 There are other early vocabularies by unknown authors, but Mr Hale 

 regarded M. Cuoq's as the best. The work of the Rev. Asher 

 Wright among the Senecas of New York he also esteemed highly. 



The dictionary of German, English, Onondaga and Delaware 

 words, compiled by David Zeisberger, useful as it is, is not as satis- 

 factory in one way as could be wished. He commenced with the 

 study of Mohawk, following this with the Onondaga more thor- 

 oughly, but adding something from the Seneca and Cayuga. As a 

 consequence his words should be classed as Iroquois rather than 

 Onondaga. His Delaware vocabulary is one of the best we have, 

 and preferable to others in analyzing or defining Algonquin place 

 names in most of New York. On Long Island the New England 

 dialects were influential in forming names and Williams and Eliot 

 are often quoted on these. As all these writers are frequently re- 

 ferred to in considering names, it seemed proper to give some brief 

 attention to them. 



While the Dutch held New York, many Algonquin place names 

 were in use and put on record, but their knowledge of Iroquois 

 names was very small, the Jesuit Relations of that period having 

 many of which they knew nothing. With the English in power this 

 knowledge rapidly increased, Greenhalgh's journey in 1677 giving 

 the names of most Iroquois towns and some lakes and rivers. Most 

 of those near the Pennsylvania line were not known till the next 

 century, ^nd some were recorded only in Moravian journals. Sul- 

 livan's campaign added many, and later visitors and settlers greatly 

 increased our knowledge of Seneca local names. Important work 



