The name is sufficiently explained by the description, "On the west side of a hill," or a hill-side, but descriptive of a hill resembling a head -- "high, erect" -- with the accessory meaning of superiority. "Indian Head" is now applied to one of the peaks of the Catskills. The parts of the body were sometimes applied by the Indians to inanimate objects just as we apply them in English -- head of a cove, leg of a table, etc. (See Wawayanda.) Kiskatom, a village and a stream of water so called in Greene County, appears in two forms in original records, Kiskatammeeche and Kiskatamenakoak. The abbreviated form, Kiskatom, appears in 1708, more particularly describing "A certain tract by a place called Kiskatammeeche, beginning at a turn of Catrick's Kill ten chains below where Kiskatammeeche Kill watereth into Catrick's Kill," and "Under the great mountain called Kiskatameck." Dr. Trumbull wrote: "Kiskato-minuk-aiike, 'Place of thin-shelled nuts,' or shag-bark hickory nuts." He explained: "Shag-bark hickory nuts," 'nuts to be cracked by the teeth,' are the 'Kiskatominies' and 'Kisky Thomas nuts' of the descendants of the Dutch colonists of New Jersey and New York." (Comp. Ind. Geographical Names.) Kaniskek, or Caniskek, of record as the name of Athens, is described in orignal deeds : "A certain tract o^f land on the west side of North River opposite Claverack, called Caniskek, which stretches along the river from the lands of Peter Bronck down to the valley lying near the point of the main land behind the Barren Island, called Mackawameck," now known as Black Rock, at the south part of Athens. The description covers the long marshy flat in front of Athens, or between Athens and Hudson. The name seems to be from Quana {Quinnih, Eliot), "Long"; -ask, the radical of all names meaning grass, marsh, meadow, etc., and -ek, formative-- literally, "Long marsh or meadow." The early settlement at Athens was called Loonenburgh, from one Jan van Loon, who located there in 1706.