CLAVERACK is not Indian. Clove, in the Hollandais, is an opening or side-gorge in the valley. Rack, is a reach or bend in the river, the whole length of which was known, as we see, to the old skippers as separate racks. The reach of cloves began at what is now the city of Hudson, the old Claverack landing.
TAWASENTHA.--Normanskill is the first Iroquois name noticed. It means the hill of the dead. Albany itself has taken the name of a Scottish dukedom for its ancient Iroquois cognomen, Ske-nek-ta-dea: of this compound term, Ske is a propositional particle, and means beyond; nek is the Mohawk name for a pine; and the term ta-dea is descriptive of a valley.
18th. Reached Detroit in the steamer "Gen. Wayne," and assumed the duties of my new appointment. One of the earliest Washington papers I opened, gave an account of the death of Mr. William Ward, a most valuable clerk in the Indian Bureau; a man of a fine literary taste, who formerly edited and established the North-west Journal, at the City of Detroit.
19th. A singular denouement is made this morning, which appeals strongly to my feelings. On getting in the stage at Vernon, in Western New York, a gentleman of easy manners, good figure, and polite address, whom we will call Theodoric, kindly made way for me and my family, which led us to notice him, and we traveled together quite to Detroit, and put up at the same hotel. This morning a note from him reveals him to be a young Virginian, seeking his fortune west, and out of funds, and makes precisely such an appeal as it is hard, and wrong in fact, to resist. I told Theodoric to take his trunk and go, by the next steamer, to my house at Mackinack, and I should be up in a short time, and furnish him employment in the Indian department.
25th. Rev. Mr. Lukenbach, of the Moravian towns, Canada, writes, that the proportional annuity of the Christian Indians, for 1838, is unpaid. He says they were paid 33/100ths, in 1837, being one-third of the original annuity. He states that Mr. Vogler and Mr. Mickeh arrived on the Kanzas with upwards of seventy souls, having left nearly one hundred at Green Bay, who are to follow them; and that these two men have commenced a new mission among the Delawares. Mr. L. says that there are but about one hundred and twenty souls left, who propose to remain in Canada with him.
30th. Ke-bic! An exclamation of the Algonquins in passing dangerous rocky shores in their canoes, when the current is strong. Query. Is not this the origin of the name Quebec?
May 2d. Major Garland, my predecessor in the disbursements, writes from Washington: "You have a heavy task on your hands for this season; and, in addition to the hands of Briareus, you will need the eyes of Argus."
3d. I made the payments to the Saginaw chiefs in specie, under the treaty of the 14th of January, 1837.
10th. Mr. F.W. Shearman, the able and ingenious editor of the Journal of Education, writes from Marshall, that it receives an increased circulation and excites a deeper interest in the people, with his plans for further improvements.
16th. Letters from Mackinack informs me that the Ottawas design leaving their location in the United States for the Manitouline Islands, in Canada, where inducements are held out to them by agents of the British government. They fear going west: they cling to the north.