Ma-hai-we.—The Mohegan term, as given by Mr. Bryant [N.Y.E.P.] for Great Barrington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Massachusetts.—This was not the name of a particular tribe, but a geographical term applied, it should seem, to that part of the shores of the North Atlantic, which is swept by the tide setting into, and around the peninsula of Cape Cod, and the wide range of coast trending southerly. It became a generic word, at an early day, for the tribes who inhabited this coast. It is said to be a word of Narragansett origin, and to signify the Blue Hills. This is the account given of it by Roger Williams, who was told, by the Indians, that it had its origin from the appearance of an island off the coast. It would be more in conformity to the general requisitions of ethnography, to denominate the language the New England-Algonquin, for there are such great resemblances in the vocabulary and such an identity in grammatical construction, in these tribes, that we are constantly in danger, by partial conclusions as to original supremacy, of doing injustice. The source of origin was doubtless west and south west, but we cannot stop at the Narragansetts, who were themselves derivative from tribes still farther south. The general meaning given by Williams seems, however, to be sustained, so far as can now be judged. The terminations in ett, and set, as well as those in at and ak, denoted locality in these various tribes. We see also, in the antipenultimate Chu, the root of Wudjo, a mountain.
Ta-ha-wus, a very commanding elevation, several thousand feet above the sea, which has of late years, been discovered at the sources of the Hudson, and named Mount Marcy. It signifies, he splits the sky.—[Charles F. Hoffman, Esq.]
Mong, the name of a distinguished chief of New England, as it appears to be recorded in the ancient pictorial inscription on the Dighton Rock, in Massachusetts, who flourished before the country was colonized by the English. He was both a war captain, and a prophet, and employed the arts of the latter office, to increase his power and influence, in the former. By patient application of his ceremonial arts, he secured the confidence of a large body of men, who were led on, in the attack on his enemies, by a man named Piz-hu. In this onset, it is claimed that he killed forty men, and lost three. To the warrior who should be successful, in this enterprize, he had promised his younger sister. [Such are the leading events symbolized by this inscription, of which extracts giving full details, as interpreted by an Indian chief, now living, and read before the Am. Ethnological Society, in 1843, will be furnished, in a subsequent number.]
Tioga.—A stream, and a county of the State of New-York. From Teoga, a swift current, exciting admiration.
Dionderoga, an ancient name of the Mohawk tribe, for the site at the mouth of the Schoharie creek, where Fort Hunter was afterwards built [Col. W.L. Stone.]
Almouchico, a generic name of the Indians for New England, as printed on the Amsterdam map of 1659, in which it is stated that it was thus "by d inwoonders genaemt." (So named by the natives.)
Irocoisia, a name bestowed in the map, above quoted, on that portion of the present state of Vermont, which lies west of the Green Mountains, stretching along the eastern bank of Lake Champlain. By the application of the word, it is perceived that the French were not alone in the use they made of the apparently derivative term "Iroquois," which they gave to the (then) Five Nations.
NAMES OF THE SEASONS.