ABORIGINAL PLACE NAMES OF NEW YORK • I9 



but for their safety they lived mostly on the east side of the Hudson 

 and the Mohawks had names only for prominent places. Those 

 given by Schoolcraft alone may be of his own invention. 



Ach-que-tuck or Aquetuck was an early name for Coeymans 

 Hollow. It is usually applied to the flats there, but appears to be 

 the Hagguato of the map of the New Hampshire grants and the 

 stream mentioned by Schoolcraft as Hakitak, below Coeymans. It 

 may be derived from Ahque, he leaves oif, and tuk, a river; i. e. a 

 river at a boundary. 



Ba-sic creek may be a corruption of quassik, a stone. 



Ca-ho-ha-ta-te-a is a name assigned to Hudson river by Dr 

 Samuel Mitchel. Schoolcraft . thought this great river having 

 mountains beyond Cohoes, but the word does not refer to the falls 

 or include mountains. It is an Iroquois word for river, appearing 

 in Zeisberger's dictionary as Gef-hate and Geihutatie. No adjec- 

 tive appears in this, but when used alone one was implied. It was 

 the river. Hoffman • abbreviated it to Atatea, and Sanatatea is a 

 personal variation of the word. Sylvester thought it an Algonquin 

 name, which it is not. 



Ches-co-don-ta is given by Schoolcraft as a Mohawk name for 

 Albany, meaning hill of the great council fire. I have seen no use 

 of this, but he may have derived it from otschista, Ure, and onont, 

 hill or mountain. 



For Co-hoes Morgan has Ga'-ha-oos, which he defines as ship- 

 wrecked canoe. Spafford said [549], "This name is of Indigenal 

 origin, and like the most such, has an appropriate allusion : Cah- 

 hoos or Ca-hoos, a canoe falling, as explained by the late Indian 

 sachem, Brandt." In his account of the Chahoes, about 1656, 

 Adriaen Van der Donck said : 



An Indian whom I have known, accompanied his wife and child, 

 with 60 beaver skins, descended the river in his canoe in the spring, 

 when the water runs rapid and the current is strongest, for the pur- 

 pose of selling his beavers to the Netherlanders. This Indian care- 

 lessly approached too near the falls before he discovered his danger, 

 and notwithstanding his utmost efforts to gain the land, his frail 

 bark, with all on board, was swept over by the rapid current and 

 down the falls, his wife and child were killed, his bark shattered to 

 pieces, his cargo of furs damaged. But his life was preserved. 



