I am no expert on the Lenape language. In fact, like most people, I am clueless. Recently someone asked me if I knew the meaning of a Lenape creek name, Octoraro. This is the answer I sent him:
I don’t have a good answer for you. The meanings are lost in the mists of time, partly because the English who wrote down the names as they heard them were not good at catching the sounds of Lenape as spoken. So the creek names do not really correspond to the original Lenape names. Example: “Lockatong” was written as “Laogaland” and other variations long before it became “Lockatong.” Anyone who claims that an old Lenape name means something in particular is just taking someone else’s word for it, as was commonly done in the 19th century. The meanings that people give for these names usually came from people who would ask Lenape speakers who had moved to Oklahoma, so they were generations removed from the original speakers. What this boils down to is that I would not give any credence to anyone’s claim for a meaning of a creek’s name. The word they translate is probably not the original word, and later definitions are doubtful because the Lenape language probably evolved just as English has.
I would love to hear from anyone who has a different opinion about this. People may point to Lenape dictionaries that were compiled in the 18th century, but I doubt that a truly reliable one exists for all the Lenape of New Jersey and Pennsylvania in colonial times, because there were many different Lenape dialects.
There is a description of the Lenape language by Gabriel Thomas in his “Account of Pennsylvania and West New Jersey” written in 1698:
Their Language is Lofty and Elegant but not Copious; One Word serveth in the stead of Three, imperfect and ungrammatical, which defects are supply’d by the Understanding of the Hearers. Sweet, of Nobel Sound and Accent. Take here a Specimen.
Hodi hita nee huska a peechi, nee, machi
Pensilvania huska dogwachi, keshow a peechi
Nowa, huska hayly, Chentana koon peo.Thus in English: Farewell Friend, I will very quickly to to Pensilvania [sic], very cold Moon will come presently, And very great hard frosts will come quickly.
Thomas probably didn’t realize that what he was hearing was a sort of pidgin Lenape, the sort of language one would use for someone who could not understand the sounds and subtleties of the real thing. By the way, Thomas was paraphrasing William Penn’s much earlier description, in Penn’s Letter to the Society of Traders.
Thomas also wrote down an imagined dialogue between a Lenape and a European that tells as much about life in the late 17th century as it does about the language as Thomas heard it. To the European’s question, “What do you have in your house?”, the Lenape answers “I have very fat venison, and good strong skins, and good fat turkeys.” To the Lenape’s question of what the European has in his house, the answer is “I have very good powder, and very good shot, with red and blue matchcoats.” The Europeans wanted food, and the Lenape need ammunition to hunt for that food, as well as manufactured cloth to replace the skins they were selling to the Europeans.
You can find that dialogue reprinted in An Ancient New Jersey Indian Jargon by J. Dyneley Prince (Merchantville, NJ, 1997). Prince described the trading jargon used by the Lenape living around the lower Delaware valley, just as Thomas did. The book has a useful reading list for those interested in the subject. Since my interest is more with the Lenape who lived north of the Falls at Trenton, I cannot assume that the jargon used in south Jersey would be the same for them. It seems that no one took the trouble to write down how they talked.
The Lenape haunt us, for we still use a facsimile of their names for the creeks and mountains we live with, the true meaning of which we will never really know.
Jerseyman
February 14, 2011 @ 1:52 pm
Marfy:
As you well noted, obtaining reliable translations of the Lenape or Algonquin-based language is a slippery slope. There are a few sources compiled by Europeans present during the Contact Period and shortly thereafter, but they are more curiosity than dialectal treatises. In checking a couple of sources in my library, I find that Amandus Johnson, in preparing the Appendix section of his edited version of Peter Lindström’s Geographia Americae, reported the following:
Ottohohako (?), Otteraroe (Iroq.) (Henry, Names).
1. Octoraro Creek, Lancaster County, Pa. 2. Octoraro town, Lancaster County, Pa. (p. 367)
Johnson indicates the toponym’s origins is Iroquoian, not Lenape, but then he cites “Henry, Names.” Of this source, Johnson notes:
Henry, Matthew S.,
A bound manuscript volume of Indian Geographical Names of Pennsylvania, and their meanings, with an Introduction and a series of MS. Maps of counties in Pennsylvania, showing location of paths, villages, rivers, places, etc., which have Indian names. Must be used with great care; not reliable. In Hist. Society of Pennsylvania. Quoted: Henry, Names.
So Johnson found the same issue of reliability when he sought sources. Despite his misgivings about Henry, one possibly useful section of Johnson’s Appendix is a bibliography of the various sources he used in compiling the Indian toponyms contained with this section of the book. Some of the works cited may be helpful to your inquirer.
George P. Donehoo’s work is another standard compiled/derivative source for Pennsylvania Indian place names and here is his text:
Octoraro. The name of a creek which enters the Susquehanna from the east at Rolandville, Maryland. Its headwaters are in Chester County, and its course is on the line between Chester and Lancaster Counties. When the Dutch and Swedes made their settlements on the Delaware, they carried on a trade with the Minquas, or Susquehannas, from the region of the Octoraro Creek. These Indians reached the Delaware by way of Octoraro Creek, Christina and Minquas Creek. John Smith in his map and Description of Virginia, locates a village of the Susquehannas above the mouth of this creek. This was the site of the “Susquehannock Fort.” the exact situation of which had much to do with the dispute between the Penns and Calverts, as the southern boundary of Pennsylvania was marked by it. This fort is mentioned by Vice-Director Alrichs, in a letter to Director Stuyvesant, in 1657. He says, “Afterwards a Miquaas savage with some other savages came here into the Colony [at Chester], who commands in the fort nearest here in the Minquaas’ country, and brought some wampum and other things, which they had taken from the savage there, who had perpetrated the crime,” which was the killing of Lourens Hansen, a trader from Christina, or Altena, as it was called by the Dutch (Archives, Sec. Ser., VII, 512). In the Documents relating to the Boundary Dispute, a number of statements were taken from various persons concerning the exact situation of this fort. James Hendricks, in his statement, says, “That the Affirmant was then told, by some of the Indians there residing (at the mouth of the creek), that they called the same place Meanock, which they said in English, signified a Fortification or Fortified Town. Has also seen the Ruins of another such Fortified Town on the East side of Susquehannah River aforesaid, opposite to a Placed where one Thomas Cresap lately dwelt. That the land there on both sides of the said River was formerly call Conajocula.” This latter fort was the one which stood on the western side of the Susquehanna, a few miles below the present Wrightsville, York County, opposite Washington Borough, Lancaster County. This was the site of Cresap’s Fort, and also of the Susequehanna Fort of 1670. The name which Hendricks gives to the village at the mouth of Octoraro Creek, “Meanock,” is used of other fortified places. Meachk, is an enclosed place, hence a fortification. Menachkhasu, is the word which Zeisberger gives for “fortified place.” The papers relating to the situation of this fort are found in Archives of Penna,. Second Series, XVI. 522-525 (the entire vol. is taken up with the Boundary dispute). The line due west, from the most southern part of Philadelphia (old city) crosses the Susquehanna a few miles south of Cresap’s Fort; the line agreed upon by His Majesty’s order in 1739 crosses the Susquehanna above the mouth of Octoraro Creek, about 15 and a quarter miles due south of the other line (Map of the Survey of 1739, in Archives, I, 564). The Temporary line run by Talbot, in 1683, ran from the mouth of Namaan’s Creek, on the Delaware, to the mouth of Octorara Creek. The dispute concerning this line caused much bitter strife between the settlers along the lower Susquehanna, and was the cause of much feeling between the two Colonies. In 1684 it was reported to William Penn that “Jonas Askins heard Coll. Talbot say, that if Govr. Penn should come into Maryland, he would Seize him & his retairee (retinue) in their Journey to Susquehannah fort: (Col. Rec. I. 114). The Minquas, or Susquehannas (Conestoga), who lived along the Susquehanna River, at the time of John Smith and the Dutch and Swedish settlement of the Delaware, were conquered and almost blotted out by the Iroquois in 1675. Consult; Hanna, Wilderness Trail, I. 29 et esq. Archives, I. 348 et seq.; Archives, Sec. Ser. XVI. (entire vol.). IN 1707 Governor Evans, when on his way to hold a Council with the Indians at Conestoga and other villages, when from New Castle, Del. to the mouth of Octorara Creek, where he was given various presents by the Indians then living there (Col. Rec. II. 386).
Aucheraroe.—Keith (1722), Colonial Records, III. 179. Octarara.—Hamilton (1734), Colonial Records, III. 561. Octararoe.—Board of Prop. (1713), Archives, Sec. Ser., XIX. 571; Octoraro.—Wright (1732), Archives I. 364; Boundary Map (1739), 564. Otararoe.—Board of Prop. (1717), Archives, Sec. Ser., XIX. 626. Otteraroe.—Evans (1707), Col. Rec., II. 386. Ouchteraroe.—Keith (1722), Col. Rec., III. 179.
Text above extracted from:
Donehoo, Dr. George P.
1928 A History of the Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania…. The Telegraph Press, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, p. 131.
Modern sources include The Origin an Meaning of the Indian Place Names of Maryland by Kenny Hamill, published by Waverly Press, Baltimore, Maryland, in 1961. Hamill notes on page 99:
Beauchamp (Indian Names in New York…[1893], p. 104) translates Octarora as ‘Where presents were given.’ Citing Elias Johnson (Indian informant, 1883), the BAE (Smithsonian) card index derives it from Iroquoian (Tuscarora) yuxtawakard-ru ‘Where the water is shallow and swift.’ Maryland A Guide (p. 301) has ‘Rushing waters.’
While modern linguists are working on compiling indigenous languages based on extensive interviews of elderly tribe members, their scholarship is not necessarily applicable to the various language groups in use during the seventeenth century Contact Period and prior.
While much of the information imparted above may prove to be useless to your quest, perhaps it will lead someone to dig a bit deeper.
Best regards,
Jerseyman