Footprints of the Red Men: Indian Geographical Names
It is an equivalent of Machaak-sok,^ meaning, "The great outlet," or mouth of a river. Although specific in application to the mouth of the river, it is more strictly the name of the stream than that which it now bears. (See JViagaat-Ramis.) Maghagh-kamieck, so written in patent to Arent Schuyler in 1694, and described therein as "A certain tract of land at a place called Maghaghkamieck," which "Place" was granted, in 1697, to Swartwout, Coddebeck, and others, has been handed down in many orthographies. The precise location of the "Place" was never ascertained bysurvey, but by occupation it consisted of some portion of a very fine section of bottom-land extending along the northeast side of Neversink River from near or in the vicinity of the junction of that stream and the Delaware at Carpenter's Point to the junction of Basha's KilP and the Neversink, in the present county of Sullivan, a distance of about eleven miles. In general terms its boundaries are described in the patent as extending from "The western bounds of the lands called Nepeneck to a small run of water called by the Indian name Assawaghkemek, and so along the same and the lands of Mansjoor, the Indian." It matters not that in later years it was reported by a commission that the patent "Contained no particular botmdaries, but appeared rather to be a description of a certain tract of country in which 1,200 acres were to be taken up, "the name nevertheless was that of a certain field or place so distinct in character as to become a general locative of the whole, as in the Schuyler grant of 1694. It may reasonably be presumed that the district to which it was extended began at Carpenter's Point (Nepeneck) and ended on the north side of Basha's Kill. (See Assawaghkemek.) The same name is met in New Jersey on the Peaquaneck River, where it is of record in 1649, "Mechgachamik, or Indian field" (Col.