[FN-1] An ancient view of the shore-line represents it as a considerable elevation—a hill.
[FN-2] Castle Point is just below Wehawken Cove in which Hudson is supposed to have anchored his ship in 1609. In Juet's Journal this land is described as "beautiful" and the cliff as of "the color of white green, as though it was either a copper or silver mine." It has long been a noted resort for mineralogists.
[FN-3] Teunissed van Putten was the first white resident of Hoboken. He leased the land for twelve years from Jan. 1, 1641. The West India Company was to erect a small house for him. Presumably this house is referred to in the narrative. It was north of Hoboken Kill.
[FN-4] Now a commercial village of Belgium. The prevailing dialect spoken there was Flemish, usually classed as Low German. The Low German dialects of three centuries ago are imperfectly represented in modern orthographies. In and around Manhattan eighteen different European dialects were spoken, as noted of record—Dutch, Flemish, German, Scandinavian, Walloon, etc.
[Wehawken] and Weehawken, as now written, is written Awiehaken in deed by Director Stuyvesant, 1658-9. Other orthographies are Wiehacken, Whehockan, Weehacken, Wehauk, obvious corruptions of the original, but all retaining a resemblance in sound. The name is preserved as that of a village, a ferry, and a railroad station about three miles north of Jersey City, and is historically noted for its association with the ancient custom of dueling, the particular resort for that purpose being a rough shelf of the cliff about two and one-half miles north of Hoboken and about opposite 28th Street, Manhattan. The locative of the name is described in a grant by Director Stuyvesant, in 1647, to one Maryn Adriaensen, of "A piece of land called Awiehaken, situate on the west side of the North River, bounded on the south by Hoboken Kil, and running thence north to the next kil, and towards the woods with the same breadth, altogether fifty morgens of land." [FN] (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii, 22.) The "next kil" is presumed to have been that flowing to the Hudson in a wild ravine just south of the dueling ground, now called the Awiehackan. A later description (1710) reads: "Between the southernmost cliffs of Tappaen and Ahasimus, at a place called Wiehake." (Cal. N. Y. Land Papers, 98.) The petition was by Samuel Bayard, who then owned the land on both sides of Wiehacken Creek, for a ferry charter covering the passage "Between the southernmost cliffs of Tappaen and New York Island, at a place called Wiehake," the landing-place of which was established at or near the mouth of Awiehacken Creek just below what is now known as King's Point. Of the location generally Winfield (Hist.. Hudson Co., N. J.) wrote: "Before the iconoclastic hand of enterprise had touched it the whole region about was charming beyond description. Just south of the dueling ground was the wild ravine down which leaped and laughed the Awiehacken. Immediately above the dueling ground was King's Point looking boldly down upon the Hudson. From this height still opens as fair, as varied, as beautiful a scene as one could wish to see. The rocks rise almost perpendicularly to one hundred and fifty feet above the river. Under these heights, about twenty feet above the water, on a shelf about six feet wide and eleven paces long, reached by an almost inaccessible flight of steps, was the dueling ground." South of King's Point were the famed Elysian Fields, at the southern extremity of which, under Castle Point, was Sibyl's Cave, a rocky cavern containing a fine spring of water.
The place to which the name was applied in the deed of 1658 seems to have been an open tract between the streams named, presumably a field lying along the Hudson, from the description, "running back towards the woods," suggesting that it was from the Lenape radical Tauwa, as written by Zeisberger in Tauwi-échen, "Open;" as a noun, "Open or unobstructed space, clear land, without trees." Dropping the initial we have Auwi, Awie, of the early orthography; dropping A we have Wie and Wee, and from -échen we have -ákan, -haken, -hawking, etc. As the name stands now it has no meaning in itself, although a Hollander might read Wie as Wei, "A meadow," and Hacken as "Hooking," incurved as a hook, which would fairly describe Weehawking Cove as it was.
Submitted to him in one of its modern forms, the late Dr. Trumbull wrote that Wehawing "Seemed" to him as "most probably from Wehoak, Mohegan, and -ing, Lenape, locative, 'At the end (of the Palisades)'" and in his interpretation violated his own rules of interpretation which require that translation of Indian names must be sought in the dialect spoken in the district where the name appears. The word for "End," in the dialect spoken here, was Wiqui. Zeisberger wrote Wiquiechung, "End, point," which certainly does not appear in any form of the name. The Dr.'s translation is simply worthless, as are several others that have been suggested. It is surprising that the Dr. should quote a Mohegan adjectival and attach to it a Lenape locative suffix.
[FN] A Dutch "morgen"' was about two English acres.