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Indian Names of Places
in Plymouth, Middleborough, Lakeville and Carver Plymouth County
Massachusetts
My object in collecting some of the Indian Place
Names of Plymouth County and attempting their translation, is the wish to
create an interest in the use of Indian names in New England.
Although of the following comparatively small
collection, few can be used, the early Massachusetts records and deeds
contain innumerable Indian Place Names, many of which are more euphonious.
The Algonkin language possesses also many euphonious words, which will
describe some natural characteristic of almost any locality.
We scarcely realize that this whole country was once
inhabited by a people whose history is almost unknown, but whose
characteristics, and traditions, and myths, and religions offer, in some
respects, almost as wide a field for interesting study and for research, as
the myths and traditions of the races of the old world. I am speaking of the
race before it was corrupted by European influences. This is not a country
without a past, and much may yet be revealed of great interest to the
historian.
The almost universal idea of the Indian is associated
with cruelty, torture and massacre, while all other traits are generally
unknown or forgotten. A very little study of the subject creates a broader
estimate of his character. It seems to me that the Indian has never been
given his true place in history. When condemning the "savage" to everlasting
obloquy for his methods of warfare, and judging him by this alone, we should
remember the civilized cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, of the French Revolution of the eighteenth, and
the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks, and the Jews by the Russians,
in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and nine.
Massachusetts was inhabited by different tribes of the great Algonkin
family, which "extended from Hudson Bay on the North to the Carolinas on the
South; from the Atlantic on the East to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on
the West." (Parkman.)
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth the territory was
occupied by a family of tribes known by the name of Pokanokets, all under
the dominion of Massasoit. The Pokanokets or possibly the Wampanoags alone,
at a little earlier elate, " numbered about three thousand warriors. "
(Samuel G. Drake.)
Some of the Sachems, Sagamores and Captains (Mugwomps)
of the Plymouth County tribes deserved admiration, respect, gratitude and
sympathy from the descendants of the Pilgrims. Massasoit, Metacomet (King
Philip), Iyanough, Tisquantum (Squanto), Hobomok, Tispequin, Sassamon, were
all important factors in the early days of the colony, between the years
1620 and 1675.
With a little investigation and study of the Algonkin
language, euphonious and locally characteristic Indian names can easily be
found for our country and seashore places and for our institutions. They
bear the hall-mark of our own country and are more consistent with our
national traits of independence and individuality than borrowed names from
England, France or Italy.
Imagination was rarely, if ever, used by the Indians in
New England in their place names, and any translation expressing anything
except a description of the locality to which it is affixed, must be
accepted with caution. In many other words, the Indian did use imagination,
sometimes almost poetically. They called the sunset, Wayont, "when he has
lost his way." The name of the belt of Orion was Shwishacuttowwaoug "The
wigwam with three fires." One of the names for the sun was
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