Credit has been given for interpretations where the authors were known, and especially to the late eminent Algonquian authority, J. Hammond Trumbull. Special acknowledgment of valuable assistance ismade to the late Dr. D. G. Brinton, of Philadelphia ; to the late Horatio Hale, M. A., of Clinton, Ontario, Canada; to the late Prof. J. W. Powell, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C, and his successor, William H. Holmes, and their co-laborers, Dr. Albert S. Gatschet and J. B. N. Hewitt, and to Mr. William R. Gerard, of New York. The compilation of names and the ascertaining of their locatives and probable meanings has interested me. Where those names have been preserved in place they are certain descriptive landmarks above all others. The results of my amateur labors may be useful to others in the same field of inquiry as well as to professional

PRIMARY EXPLANATIONS. 9

linguists. Primarily the work was not undertaken with a view to pubHcation. Gentlemen of tlie New York Historical Association, with a view to preserve what has been done, and which may never

be again undertaken, have asked the manuscript for publication, and it has been given to them for that purpose. E. M. RUTTENBER. Newburgh, January, 1906.

INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES.

Hudson's River and Its Islands.

Muhheakun'nuk, " The great waters or sea, which are constantly in motion, either ebbing or flowing," was written by Chief Hendrick Aupaumut, in his history of the Muhheakun'nuk nation, as the name of Hudson's River, in the Stockbridge dialect, and its meaning. The first word, Muhheakiin, was the national name of the people occupying both banks of the river from Roelof Jansen's Kill, a few miles south of Catskill, on the east side of the river, north and east with limit not known, and the second -nuk, the equivalent of Massachusetts -titk.