Ralph Wisner, of Florida, Orange County, recently reproduced in the Warwick Advertiser, an affidavit made by Adam Wisner, May 19th, 1785, at a hearing in Chester, in the contention to determine the boundary line of the Cheesec-ock Patent, in which he stated that he was 86 years old on the 15th of April past; that he had lived on the Wawayanda Patent since 1715; that he "learned the Indian language" when he was a young man ; that the Indians "had told him that Wawayanda signified 'the egg-shape,' or shape of an egg." Adam Wisner was an interpreter of the local Indian dialect; he is met as such in records. His interpretations, as were those of other interpreters, were mainly based on signs, motions, objects. V/away, "Winding about many times," would describe the lines of an egg, but it is doubtful if the suffix, -anda, had the meaning of "shape." The familiar reading of Wawayanda, "Away-over-yonder," is a word-play, like Irving's "Manhattan, IMan-with-a-hat-on." Dr. Schoolcraft's interpretation, "Our homes or places of dwelling," quoted in "History of Orange County," is pronounced by competent

authority to be "Dialectically and grammatically untenable." It has poetic merit, but nothing more. Schoolcraft borrowed it from Gallatin.

Hudson's river on the west. 137

Woerawin, given by Dr. Staats as the name of his second purchase, isalso a verbal noun. By dialectic exchange of / for r and giving to the Dutch oe its English equivalent ii as in bull, it is probably from the root Wul, "Good, fine, handsome," etc., with the verbal termination -wi (Chippeway -zvin), indicating "objective existence," hence "place," a most appropriate description for many places in the Wawayanda or Warwick Valley. Monhagen, the name of a stream in the town of Wallkill, is, if Indian as claimed, an equivalent of Monheagan, from Maingan, "A wolf," the totem of the Mohegans of Connecticut.