Footprints of the Red Men: Indian Geographical Names
Its name appears first in French notation, in Jesuit Relations (1667), Gandaouague} Contemporaneous Dutch scribes wrote it Kaghnuzvaga and Caughnazvaga, and Green'halgh, an English trader, who visited the castle in 1677, wrote it Cahaniaga, and described it as "about a bowshot from the river, doubly stockaded around, with four ports, and twenty-four houses." The most salient points in its history are in connection with its wars with the French and with the labors of the Jesuit missionaries, who, after the murder of Father Jogues and the destruction of the castle in which he suffered and the peace of 1667, were very successful, so much so that in 1671 the occupants of the castle erected in its public square a Cross, and a year later a very large number of the tribe under the lead of the famous warrior Krin, removed to Canada and became allies of the French. The members of the tribe who remained occupied the castle until the winter of 1693, when it was captured and burned by the French, and the tribe returned to the south side of the river and located on the flats on the west side of Schohare Creek, where they were especially known as "The Praying Maquaas," and where they remained until 1779, when they were dispersed by the Revolutionary forces under General Clinton. Caughnawaga is accepted as meaning "At the rapids," more correctly "At the rapid current." It is from the Huron radical Gannazva (Bruyas), for which M. Cuoq wrote in his Lexicon Ohnaivagh, "Swift current," or very nearly the Dutch Kaghnazva; with locative particle -ge or -ga, "At the rapids." It is a generic term and is met of record in several places. As has been noted elsewhere, the rapids of the Mohawk extend at intervals fifteen in number from Schenectady to Little Falls, the