[Ossangwak] is written on Pownal's map as the name of what is known as the Great Binnenwater (Dutch, "Inland water") in the town of Lloyd. The orthography disguises the original, which may have been a pronunciation of Achsün (Minsi), "Stone," as in Otstónwakin, read by Reichel, "A high rock," or rocky hill. Perhaps the name referred to the rocky bluff which bounds the Hudson there, immediately west of which the lake is situated.
[Esopus]—so written on Carte Figurative of 1614-16, and also by De Laet in 1624-5; Sopus, contemporaneously; Sypous, Rev. Megapolensis, 1657, is from Sepuus (Natick), "A brook"; in Delaware, Sipoes (Zeisberger). It is from Sepu, "River," and -es, "small." On the Carte Figurative it is written on the east side of the river near a stream north of Wappingers' Creek, as it may have been legitimately, but in 1623 it came to be located permanently at what is now Rondout Creek, from which it was extended to several streams, [FN] to the Dutch settlement now Kingston, to the resident Indians, and to a large district of country. The chirographer of 1614-16 seems to have added the initial E from the uncertain sound of the initial S, and later scribes further corrupted it to the Greek and Latin Æ. (See Waronawanka.)
[FN] The streams entering the Hudson in proximity came to be known as the Kleine Esopus, south of Rondout; the Groot Esopus, now the Rondout, and the Esopus, now the Saugerties. In the valley west of old Kingston was a brook, called in records the "Mill Stream."
[Waronawanka,] Carte Figurative 1614-16—Warrawannan-koncks, Wassenaer, 1621-5; Warranawankongs, De Laet, 1621-5, and Waranawankcougys, 1633; Waranawankongs, Van der Donck, 1656; Waerinnewongh, local, 1677—is located on the Carte Figurative on the west side of the Hudson a few miles north of latitude 42. On Van der Donck's map it is placed on the west side between Pollepel's Island and the Dans Kamer. De Laet wrote in his "New World" (Leyden edition): "This reach [Vischer's, covering Newburgh Bay] extends to another narrow pass, where, on the west side of the river, there is a point of land juts out covered with sand, opposite a bend in the river on which another nation of savages called the Waoranecks, have their abode at a place called Esopus. A little beyond, on the west side of the river, where there is a creek, and the river becomes more shallow, the Waranawankongs reside. Here are several small islands." In his French and Latin edition, 1633-40, the reading is: "A little beyond where projects a sandy point and the river becomes narrower, there is a place called Esopus, where the Waoranekys have their abode. To them succeed, after a short interval, the Waranawancougys, on the opposite side of the river." Read together there would seem to be no doubt that the Waoranecks were seated on or around the cove or bay at Low Point and the estuary of Wappingers' Creek, and that the Waranatwankongs were seated at and around the cove or bay at Kingston Point, "Where a creek comes in and the river becomes more shallow."
Of the meaning of the name Dr. A. S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, wrote me: "If the Warana-wan-ka lived on a bay or cove of Hudson's River, their name is certainly from Walina, which means 'hollowing, concave site,' and 'cove, bay,' in several eastern languages. A good parallel are the Wawenocks of S. W. Maine, now living at St. Francis, who call themselves Walinaki, or those living on a cove—'cove dwellers'—in referring to their old home on the Atlantic coast near Portland. In the Micmac (N. S.) dialect Walini is 'bay, cove,' and even the large Bay of Fundy is called so. The meaning of k or ka is not clear, but ong, in the later forms, is the locative 'at, on, upon.'"
It is safe to say that at either the Dans Kamer, Low Point, or Kingston Point, the clan would have been seated on a bay, cove, recess or indentation shaped like a bay, and it is also safe to say that Warona and Walina may be read as equivalents, the former in the local dialect, and the latter in the Eastern, and that its general meaning is "Concave, hollowing site." Zeisberger wrote l instead of r in the Minsi-Lenape, hence Woalac, "A hollow or excavation"; Walóh, "A cove"; Walpecat, "Very deep water." The dialectic r prevails pretty generally on the Hudson and on the Upper Delaware. On the latter, near Port Jervis, is met of record Warin-sags-kameck, which is surely the equivalent of Walina-ask-kameck, "A hollowing or concave site, a meadow or field." It was written by Arent Schuyler, the noted interpreter, as the name of a field which he described as "A meadow or vly." Vly is a contraction of Dutch Vallei, meaning "A hollow or depression in which water stands in the rainy season and is dry at other times," hence "hollowing." Ask (generic), meaning "Green, raw," is the radical of words meaning "meadow," "marsh," etc., and -kameck stands for an enclosed field, or place having definite boundaries as a hollow. Awan (-awan, -wan, -uan, etc.), as Dr. Gatschet probably read the orthography, is an impersonal verb termination met on the Hudson in Matteawan, Kitchiwan, etc. Mr. Gerard writes that it was sometimes followed by the participial and subjunctive k. It may have been so written here, but it seems to be a form of the guttural aspirate gh, for which it is exchanged in many cases, here and in Kitchiwangh. In Connecticut on the Sound apparently the same name is met in Waranawankek, indicating that whoever wrote it on the Figurative of 1614-16 was familiar with the dialect of the coast Indians. As it stands the name is one of the oldest and most sonorous in the valley of Hudson's River.
[Ponkhockie] is the familiar form of the name of the point, cove or landing-place on the south side of Kingston Point. It is from Dutch Punthoekje, meaning, "Point of a small hook, or angle." The local interpretation, "Canoe harbor," is not in the name, except inferentially from the fact that the cove was a favorite landing place for canoes. [FN-1] After the erection of a stockaded redoubt there, the Dutch called the place Rondhout, meaning. "Standing timber," and the English followed with Redoubt, and extended the name to the creek, as of record in 1670. The present form is substantially a restoration of the early Dutch Rondhout. The stockade was erected by Director Stuyvesant, at the suggestion of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company, about 1660. There were Dutch traders here certainly as early as 1622, and presumably as early as 1614, but no permanent settlement appears of record prior to 1652-3, nor is there evidence that there was a Rondhout here prior to 1657-8. Compare Stuyvesant's letter of September, 1657, and Kregier's Journal of the "Second Esopus War" (Col. Hist N. Y., xiii, 73, 314, also page 189), showing that the Rondhout was not completed until the fall and winter of 1660. De Vries wrote in 1639-40, referring to Kingston Point probably: "Some Indians live here and have some corn-lands, but the lands are poor and stony." When Stuyvesant visited the place, in 1658, he anchored his barge "opposite to the two little houses of the savages standing near the bank of the kil." (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii, 82.) In the vicinity the war of 1658 had its initiative in an unwise attack by some settlers on a party of Indians who had been made crazy drunk on brandy furnished them by Captain Thomas Chambers. Two houses were burned belonging to settlers, and hostilities continued for eight or nine days. "At the tennis-court near the Strand," a company of eleven Dutch soldiers "allowed themselves to be taken prisoners," by the Indians, in 1659. It does not seem probable that the Dutch had a Tennis Court here at that early date, but the record so reads. [FN-2] The hook or cove, was the most desirable place for landing on the south side of the Point. It has since been the commercial centre of the town and city. Punthoekje is certainly not without interesting history.
[FN-1] In early times there were two principal landing places: One at Punthoekje and one north of the present steamboat landing, or Columbus Point as it is called. The Point is a low formation on the Hudson and was primarily divided from the main land by a marsh. It was literally "a concave, hollowing site." The marsh was later crossed by a corduroyed turnpike connecting with the old Strand Road, now Union Avenue. A ferry was established here in 1752 and is still operated under its original charter. The Point is now traversed by rail and trolley roads.