20 , NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



I have frequently seen the Indian and hav^. heard him relate the 

 perilous occurrence or adventure. 



This agrees with the definitions of Spafford and Morgan. Zeis- 

 berger gives the Iroquois word gahuwa for canoe, and School- 

 craft's Mohawk vocabulary kahoweya is a hoai. On the other hand 

 Ruttenber said Cohoes was not the name of the falls, but of ar 

 island below, and he connected this with the Algonquin name of 

 the Coos country in New Hampshire, referring to pines. Masten's 

 History of Cohoes also quotes a statement from the Schenectady 

 Reiiector of 1857, that the name is Mohegan, and that the Canadian 

 Indians still call pitchholes in the road cahoos. The Mohawk defi- 

 nition is to be preferred. 



Ga-isch-ti-nic or Kaishtinic was a name for Albany, according 

 to Schoolcraft, used by the lower river Indians. It may have come 

 from Kish-ke-tuk, by the river side, but there seems no reference 

 in the word to door, capitol, or council fire, as implied in the 

 following story, recorded by Heckewelder. This was a tradition 

 of the Delawares that the northern door of their long house, or 

 confederacy, was at Gaasch-tinick or Albany, and the southern on 

 the Potomac. When the white people landed they began to tear 

 down this house at both ends, at last destroying the league. There 

 IS no known historic basis for such an alliance, but he was very 

 credulous on such points. The Mahicans had forts near Albany, 

 bi":t no apparent political relations with Indians near the sea. 



Hak-i-tak was mentioned by Schoolcraft as a stream below 

 Coeymans, called by others Hagguato and Aquetuck. Spafford 

 said: " The old Indian name of Hockatock, still occasionally heard, 

 is of Indian or Dutch origin, applied to a creek and neighborhood 

 along its borders." Its Indian origin is clear. 



I-os-co is Schoolcraft's name for a tributary of Norman's kill, 

 in Guilderland, but he elsewhere speaks of it as a small village. If a 

 Mohawk word it would mean a^ bridge, but it seems to have been 

 used by him alone. It appears among some Michigan names as 

 ivatcr of light. 



It-sut-che-ra is a name of his assigned to Trader's hill, once three 

 miles northwest of Albany. He prefixed Yonnondio, great moun- 

 tain, and then defined it hill of oil. This is not satisfactory, nor do 

 I find any §uch ^vord relating to oil in Iroquois dialects. If the 



