Schaghticoke, now so written as the name of a town in the northeast corner of Rensselaer County, and in other connections, is from Pishgachtigok Mohegan, meaning "Land on the branch or division of a stream." The locative of the name was at the mouth of Hoosick River on the Hudson, in Washington County. The earliest record (1685) reads, "Land at Schautecogue" (-ohke). It is a generic name and appears in several forms and at several places. Pishgachtigok is a form on the west side of the Housatonic at and near the mouth of Ten-Mile River. It was the site of an Indian village and the scene of labor by the Moravian mission-

'"At a creek called Tomheenecks, beginning at the southerly bounds of Hoosick, and so running up southerly, on both sides of said creek, over the goes to Sanckhaick." (Cal. N. Y. Land Papers, 194; petition of John which path de Peyster, 1730.)

66 INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES.

aries. In some cases the name is written with locative, "at," etc.,, in others, with substantive meaning land or place, and in others without sufifix. Writes Mr, Gerard, "The name would probably be correctly written P'skaghtuk-uk," when with locative "at." ^ Although first of record in 1685, its application was probably as early as 1675, when the Pennacooks of Connecticut, fleeing from the disasterous results of King Phillip's War in which they were allies, found refuge among their kindred Mahicans, and later were assigned lands at Schaghticoke by Governor Andros, w^ere they were to serve as allies of the Mohawks. They seem to have spread widely over the district and to have left their footprints as far south as the Katskill. It is a tradition that conferences were held with them on a plain subsequently owned by Johannes Knickerbocker, some six miles east of the Hudson, and that a veritable treaty tree was planted there by Governor Andros in 1676-7, although "planting a tree" was a figurative expression.