Y., iv, 15, 16.) In Prime's and other local histories the date is given as 1653, on the authority of " Hubbard's Indian Wars," and Capt. Underbill is assigned to the command in the attack on the largest fort. The official Dutch record, however, assigns that honor to Capt. Pieter Cock. The year was surely 1644, (Brodhead's Hist. N. Y., i, 91.) The prefix Mass, appears in many forms -- Massa, Marsa, Marsha, Rassa, Mesa, Missi, Mas, Mes, etc., and also Mat, an equivalent of Mas. Massepe, quoted in Dutch records as the name of the Indian fort on Fort Neck, where it seems to have been the name of Stony Brook, is also met in Jamaica Records (Col. Hist.
N. Y., xiv, 505) as the name of a creek forming a mowing boundary or division line extending from a certain place " Eastward to ye great creek called Massepe." The name is fully explained by the description, " Great creek." Massepe-auke means " Great creek (or river) land," or place ; Mas-sepe-ink, " At or on the great creek." The Indian residents came to be known as the Marsepincks. Maskutchoung, a neck of land so called forming one of the boundaries of Hempstead Patent as entered in confirmatory deed of "Takapousha, sachem of Marsapeage," and "Wantagh, the Montauke sachem," July 4th, 1657: "Beginning at a marked tree standing at the east side of the Great Plain, and from thence running on a due south line, and at the South Sea by a marked tree in a neck called Maskutchoimg, and thence upon the same line to the South Sea." (Col.
Hist. N. Y., xiv, 38, 416.) "By a marked tree in a neck called Maskachoung." (Thompson's Hist. L. I., 9, 15, 47.) It is probably an equivalent of Mask-ek-ong, "A grassy swamp or marsh." A local interpretation reads: "Grass-drowned brook," a small stream flowing through the long marsh-grass, to which the name was extended.