Class _ 
 Book 
 
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 SOME INDIAN NAMES. 
 
 At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical 
 Society, on Thursday, May 9, 1889, Dr. Samuel A. 
 Green made the followino; remarks on certain sreo- 
 graphical names of Indian origin : — 
 
 The Reverend John Wilson, first minister of Boston, 
 owned two large tracts of land in what is now Merrimack, 
 New Hampshire, but which then came within the limits of 
 Massachusetts. They contained, both together, one thousand 
 acres ; and Mr. Wilson's title was confirmed by the General 
 Court, at a session beginning on October 16, 1660. A grant 
 was made to him during the summer of 1639, more than 
 twenty years previousl}'' ; but, owing to " seuerall disappoint- 
 ments," the land had been neither surveyed nor selected. 
 
 In the Suffolk Registry of Deeds there is a record of the 
 sale of tins land, on December 3, 1660, to Simon Lynde, 
 a merchant of Boston ; and as the description of the prop- 
 erty mentions three Indian names, of which two are still 
 in use, I make the following extract from the deed, in order 
 to show their antiquity and to prolong their continued 
 application : — 
 
 one thousand acres of land bee it more or lesse scittuated lying & 
 beinff about tenn miles more or lesse from Groatteu being laid out in 
 
two seuerall places (to witt) three hundred acres of meadow & vpland 
 lying at or vpon pennechuck brooke neere South eggenocke Riuer 
 bounded w*** the wildernes & a pond lying towards the southwest .Cor- 
 ner thereof and the bound tree marked w"' the Letter L and seuen 
 hundred acres of meadow & vpland and entervaile scittuat lying &, 
 being about one mile & halfe Distant from the aforementioned three 
 hundred acres of laud vpon Southheaganock Riuer aforesajd the Riuer 
 Runiug thr° the Same and the place Called by the Indians Quo=quuna= 
 pussackessa uay=noy bounded vpon the westward w"' the land or farme 
 of Cap' w'" Dauis of Boston easterly : 
 (Suffolk Deeds, Liber III. page 449.) 
 
 Both Pennichuck Pond in Hollis, New Hampshire, and 
 Pennichuck Brook, running from the pond into the Merri- 
 mack River and forming the boundary line between the city 
 of Nashua and the town of Merrimack, keep one of these 
 three names familiar to the present generation. " South 
 eggenocke " and " Southheaganock " — different forms of 
 the same word — represent another of these names, which 
 is now known as " Souhegan " and applied to a well-known 
 river in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. The name 
 " Quo=qunna=pussackessa nay=noy," as given in the deed, 
 is written " quohquima=paskessa=nahnoy " in the General 
 Court records ; and these two forms of an Indian word are 
 sufficiently similar to establish their identity. I am not 
 aware that any trace of this name still survives in the geo- 
 graphical nomenclature of the neighborhood. The " pond 
 lying towards the southwest Corner " of the first parcel of 
 land mentioned in the deed, is Pennichuck Pond, and so 
 called in the Colonial records. 
 
 Geographical names of Indian origin furnish now one of 
 the few links in New England that connect modern times 
 with the prehistoric period. In the absence of any correct 
 
standard either of pronunciation or spelling, which always 
 characterizes an unwritten language, these words have been 
 greatly distorted and changed, and thus liave lost much of 
 their original meaning, but their root generally remains. 
 As the shards that lie scattered around the sites of old Indian 
 dwellings are eagerly picked up by the archaeologist for criti- 
 cal examination, so any fragmentary facts about the Indian 
 names of places are worth saving by the antiquary and scholar 
 for their historical and philological value. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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