Even to the local historian, indeed, their names have little importance beyond that attaching to them from their connection with notable transfers of land and with rivers, lakes, and localities to which they have been applied. In the geographical nomenclature of Westchester County, as well as of the whole country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are preserved numerous permanent memorials of the vanished aboriginal race. The following article on the pure or derived Indian names of our county has been compiled specially for this work. It is not, however, presented with any claim to minute completeness. AMERINDIAN

WESTCHESTER

i NAMES

WALLACE

WILLIAM

COUNTY.

TOOKER.

The Amerindian names of localities in Westchester County represent several dialectical dialect and variations of the great Algonquian language. While some are of the Mohegancharacteristics akin to those of Connecticut, others partake more of the Delaware or Lenape unchanged retained been as spoken in New Jersev and Pennsylvania. Where either of these have initial letter, the task of in their phonetic elements, and without the loss of a syllable orcomparatively easy. Many, identification and translation of their components has been however that have been handed down colloquially without having been recorded m deed or from the reappear record, have become so altered that even the Amerind himself, should he « happy hunting ground," would be utterly uuable to recognize the present sounds of the terms as part of his native speech. Those of the personal names bestowed on places are noted especially difficult to analyze, owing to their construction and the changes already and Many of the place names were translated many years ago by Schoolcraft, Trumbull, so erroothers, some correctlv, and others more often incorrectly. Some of the latter were are neous that thev have' been passed by the writer without notice. The present attempts not the based upon the comparative rules of Algonquian nomenclature, and are therefore and Schoolcraft by used often so hasty generalization of misapplied Chippeway root terms 1 Recently adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology.