[FN] "Wohwayen (Moh.), where the brook 'winds about,' turning to the west and then to the east." (Trumbull.) Wowoaushin, "It winds about." (Eliot.) Woweeyouchwan. "It flows circuitously, winds about." (Ib.)
Mr. Ralph Wisner, of Florida, Orange County, recently reproduced in the Warwick Advertiser, an affidavit made by Adam Wisner, May 19th, 1785, at a hearing in Chester, in the contention to determine the boundary line of the Cheesec-ock Patent, in which he stated that he was 86 years old on the 15th of April past; that he had lived on the Wawayanda Patent since 1715; that he "learned the Indian language" when he was a young man; that the Indians "had told him that Wawayanda signified 'the egg-shape,' or shape of an egg." Adam Wisner was an interpreter of the local Indian dialect; he is met as such in records. His interpretations, as were those of other interpreters, were mainly based on signs, motions, objects. Waway, "Winding about many times," would describe the lines of an egg, but it is doubtful if the suffix, -anda, had the meaning of "shape."
The familiar reading of Wawayanda, "Away-over-yonder," is a word-play, like Irving's "Manhattan, Man-with-a-hat-on." Dr. Schoolcraft's interpretation, "Our homes or places of dwelling," quoted in "History of Orange County," is pronounced by competent authority to be "Dialectically and grammatically untenable." It has poetic merit, but nothing more. Schoolcraft borrowed it from Gallatin.
[Woerawin,] given by Dr. Staats as the name of his second purchase, is also a verbal noun. By dialectic exchange of l for r and giving to the Dutch æ its English equivalent ü as in bull, it is probably from the root Wul, "Good, fine, handsome," etc., with the verbal termination -wi (Chippeway -win), indicating "objective existence," hence "place," a most appropriate description for many places in the Wawayanda or Warwick Valley.
[Monhagen,] the name of a stream in the town of Wallkill, is, if Indian as claimed, an equivalent of Monheagan, from Maingan, "A wolf," the totem of the Mohegans of Connecticut. The name, however, has the sound of Monagan—correctly, Monaghan, the name of a county in Ireland, and quite an extensive family name in Orange County.
[Long-house,] Wawayanda, and Pochuck are local names for what may be regarded as one and the same stream. It rises in the Drowned Lands, in New Jersey, where it is known as Long-house Creek; flows north until it receives the outlet of Wickham's Pond, in Warwick, Orange County, and from thence the united streams form the Wawayanda or Warwick Creek, which flows southwesterly for some miles into New Jersey and falls into Pochuck Creek, which approaches from the northwest, and from thence the flow is northwest into Orange County again to a junction with the Wallkill, which, rising in Pine Swamp, Sparta, N. J., flows north and forms the main drainage channel of the Drowned Lands. In addition to its general course Wawayanda Creek is especially sinuous in the New Milford and Sandfordville districts of Warwick, the bends multiplying at short distances, and also in the vicinity of the De Kay homestead in Vernon. In Warwick the stream has been known as "Wandering River" for many years. The patented lands are on this stream. Its name, Long-house Creek, was, no doubt, from one of the peculiar dwellings constructed by the Indians known as a Long House, [FN] which probably stood on or near the stream, and was occupied by the clan who sold the lands. Pochuck is from a generic meaning "A recess or corner." It is met in several places. (See Wawayanda and Pochuck.)
[FN] The Indian Long House was from fifty to six hundred and fifty feet in length by twenty feet in width, the length depending upon the number of persons or families to be accommodated, each family having its own fire. They were formed by saplings set in the ground, the tops bent together and the whole covered with bark. The Five Nations compared their confederacy to a long house reaching, figuratively, from Hudson's River to Lake Erie.
[Gentge-kamike,] "A field appropriated for holding dances," may reasonably have been the Indian name of the plateau adjoining the rocky point, at the head of Newburgh Bay, which, from very early times, has been known as The Dans Kamer (Dance Chamber), a designation which appears of record first in a Journal by David Pietersen de Vries of a trip made by him in his sloop from Fort Amsterdam to Fort Orange, in 1639, who wrote, under date of April 15: "At night came by the Dans Kamer, where there was a party of Indians, who were very riotous, seeking only mischief; so we were on our guard." Obviously the place was then as well known as a landmark as was Esopus (Kingston), and may safely be claimed as having received its Dutch name from the earliest Dutch navigators, from whom it has been handed down not only as "The Dans Kamer," but as "t' Duivel's Dans Kamer," the latter presumably designative of the fearful orgies which were held there familiarly known as "Devil worship." During the Esopus War of 1663, Lieut. Couwenhoven, who was lying with his sloop opposite the Dans Kamer, wrote, under date of August 14th, that "the Indians thereabout on the river side" made "a great uproar every night, firing guns and Kintecaying, so that the woods rang again." There can be no doubt from the records that the plateau was an established place for holding the many dances of the Indians. The word Kinte is a form of Géntge (Zeisb.), meaning "dance." Its root is Kanti, a verbal, meaning "To sing." Géntgeen, "To dance" (Zeisb.), Gent' Keh'n (Heck.), comes down in the local Dutch records Kinticka, Kinte-Kaye, Kintecaw, Kintekaying (dancing), and has found a resting place in the English word Canticoy, "A social dance." Dancing was eminently a feature among the Indians. They had their war dances, their festival dances, their social dances, etc. As a rule, their social dances were pleasant affairs. Rev. Heckewelder wrote that he would prefer being present at a social Kintecoy for a full hour, than a few minutes only at such dances as he had witnessed in country taverns among white people. "Feast days," wrote Van der Donck in 1656, "are concluded by old and middle aged men with smoking; by the young with a Kintecaw, singing and dancing." Every Indian captive doomed to death, asked and was granted the privilege of singing and dancing his Kintekaye, or death song. War dances were riotous; the scenes of actual battle were enacted. The religious dances and rites were so wonderful that even the missionaries shrank from them, and the English government forbade their being held within one hundred miles of European settlements. The holding of a war dance was equivalent to opening a recruiting station, men only attending and if participating in the dance expressed thereby their readiness to enter upon the war. It was probably one of these Kantecoys that Couwenhoven witnessed in 1663.