99 
 
 ! .I7G2 
 x 
 
j 2- 
 
 From Me AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN, July, 1881. 
 
 THE MASSAWOMEKES. 
 
 BY ALBERT S. GATSCHET. ( ^ 
 // 
 
 The racial affinity of the Massawomekes cannot be established 
 on historical grounds alone, for these are too scanty, considering 
 the early period of discoveries in which this people is mentioned. 
 All that has a linguistic bearing on the subject must be also 
 carefully examined to arrive at a result. 
 
 When, in 1608, Capt. John Smith heard, for the first time, of 
 the above nation, the reports reached him through the tribes 
 settled upon the shores of Chesapeake Bay. These were all of 
 the Algonkiii race (excepting, perhaps, a few tribes living on 
 the northern shores), and we may, therefore, expect from them 
 appellations taken from their own dialects, even for tribes of 
 foreign affiliation, as they did, e. </., with the Maquas. We are 
 told by Smith that the Patawomekes, the Patuxents, the Sasque- 
 sahannocks and the Tockwoughes implored his assistance against 
 their tormentors, the Massawomekes, and that he had himself 
 an interview with a party of the latter, who were crossing the 
 head of Chesapeake Bay in seven canoes. 
 
 The names of these four tribes are certainly Algonkin, and 
 that of the Patawomekes or Potomaks coincides in its termina 
 tion so closely with that of the Massawomekes, that we can 
 assume the same origin for both. In the majority of the Algon 
 kin languages, a term like massa ineans large, great, and -ek is 
 either the locative ending, -ik, -k, -g, or, more probably, the suffix 
 of the anim. plural -gi, -ki, occurring, e. g., in Shawnee; ome is 
 supposed by A. L. Gruss, Esq., to mean lake, or water; unipe is 
 water in Paniptico, garni, kami, lake in Odjibwe, and s0//^q_uoiie 
 water in Etchemiu. Wome, ome, also composes the tribal name 
 Patawomeke, for Heckewelder explains it from the Delaware 
 language: "We have come by water." Thus the term ome cnn 
 be ascertained to mean water; this would make of the Mas 
 sawomekes "those on a great water" and this was the interpre 
 tation of the name given at the time to Capt. Smith. 
 
 But, fortunately for us, Smith is not our sole authority upon 
 this northern people. In 1632 Capt. H. Fleet visited the Chesa 
 peake Bay and sailed up the Potomac river to the upper end of 
 navigation; his report is published in Neill's "Founders, of 
 
Maryland," Albany, 1876. He relates that "the Emperor (of 
 the Powhatans) is fearful to punish the Nascotines (the Anacos- 
 tias, on and about the present site of Washington, D. C.), because 
 tliey are protected by the Massomacks or Cannyda (Canada) In 
 dians, who have used to convey all such English truck as com- 
 
 eth into the river (Potomac) to the Massomacks." "I find 
 
 the Indians of that populous place (the Massomacks) are gov 
 erned by four kings, whose towns are of several names, Tonhoga, 
 Mosticum, Shaunetowa and Usserahak, reported above 30,000 
 persons, and that they have palisades about the towns made with 
 great trees, and with scaffolds upon the walls." Fleet's brother, 
 a fur-trader, reached the country of the Massawomekes in seven 
 days from the tribal settlement of the Piscataway, on the Poto 
 mac, about eighteen miles below Washington, and returned from 
 there in five days; he was told that the Usserahak people counted 
 7,000 Indians. Oapt. Fleet also met a few "Hereckenes, who are 
 cannibals," live three days' journey from the Mosticums, and 
 sell their beaver "at the plantation in Cannida. " At this date 
 (K>32), the English under Kirk had conquered Canada, and Capt. 
 Fleet identified the axes in possession of the Herecheiies as of 
 the kind Kirk traded in Canada. 
 
 From the above we gather a few valuable points, from which 
 conclusions on the affinity of the Massawomekes can be drawn. It 
 appears that Massawomeke is a comprehensive term for a people 
 consisting of four chieftaincies, the names of which are trans 
 mitted to us, and can partly be identified with tribes mentioned 
 by writers of later epochs. The three first-named "towns" 
 traded beaver-skins with the English, and Fleet represents them 
 as being anthropophagists. 
 
 The first of these four "towns" Fleet calls Tonhoga and To- 
 hogebes. There is similarity in name with that of the Tongorias, 
 who are, identical with the- Eries (Erigas, Erigheks, Eriech- 
 roiions, Grakwagaono). In the Onondaga term tchu-eragak, 
 /ri[</ c<//, the origin of Erie, styled " </ens felina, Nation' of the 
 Cat" may still be recognized ; they were called so after a wild 
 cat, probably a sort of lynx, which abounded in one district of 
 their wide domain, and supplied them with furs for the trade. 
 The following passages may also be adduced from Pierre Margry, 
 De'couvertes, vol. I: "they (the Sonnontouans), were told that we 
 came from Oiinontio (the French Governor), to see the tribes called 
 by them Toagenha, living (situez) on the river Ohio, and that 
 we requested them to furnish us a slave, as a guide to these 
 parts." (p. 130.) "A prisoner, said to be of the Toaguenhas, 
 spoke Algonkin, but his dialect differed more from the good 
 Algonkin than that of the Outaouacs." (pp. 133-134.) "The 
 
Soimontouans told our Dutch interpreter that he was a fool to 
 act as our guide to the Toaguenha, who were very dangerous 
 people, and would certainly assail us at night, after lurking 
 around our camp-fires ; that we would run the danger of meet 
 ing the Antastoes along Ohio river, who would most certainly 
 "break our heads," and that on this account the Sonnontouans 
 declined to come with us, lest the extermination of the French 
 may be imputed to them." The distance from their town to 
 Ohio river was unanimously stated to be six days' land travel of 
 twelve leagues each day ; but if we travelled by water on lake 
 Erie, we could reach the Ohio by three days' portages (pp. 137- 
 138). Report of one of La Sailers travels by the Abbe de Gal- 
 linee, 16691670. To the name Tonhoga we may also compare 
 that of the Tohoa-irough-roonan, who lived within or north of 
 the Alleghany ridge, perhaps in West Virginia, and whom the 
 Iroquois claimed to have conquered (Treaty of Lancaster, 1744). 
 
 Fleet's Most'iGiwn were "forest Indians," for, in the eastern 
 Algonkin dialects mitik, me'htug, mishtuk, matchtok, is the 
 generic word for tree. It still lives in Mystic, a frequent local 
 name on the Connecticut and Massachusetts coasts. 
 
 Usserakak is too obscure a name to offer any opportunity for 
 conjectures. It was probably a generic term, for we see from 
 Wm. Byrd's Westover .Documents, vol. I., that the Catawba 
 towns on the Santee river were also called Usherees, although 
 these have nothing in. common with Fleet's Usserahak. If the 
 term was Iroquois, we might think of ahshare, knife, as a weapon 
 characteristic of some tribe ; cutlass, sword; as'hare in Mohawk ; 
 from this word was formed the name Assarigoe, quoted below. 
 
 The Shaunetoioa, who lived in the town most distant from the 
 Potomac, can, I think, readily be identified with the Tsonnon- 
 towans or Senecas; even now, from historic reminiscence, the 
 Wendot in the Indian Territory call the Mountain (?) Senecas, 
 "who had settled in the Alleghanies of Pennsylvania," Sonotua- 
 runu. Gallinee states (Margry Doc., vol. I., p. 128), that the 
 Sonnontouans were living in four towns, two of them larger 
 than the two others, with a total of about 1,200 warriors, and 
 that this tribe was the most populous of all the Five Nations. 
 These towns lay at considerable distance from each other. 
 
 The Herechenes, " haughty in their language," were not the 
 friends of the Usserahak, as the latter informed Capt. Fleet. 
 They are the "Hiro.cois" of Champlaiii; still we cannot decide 
 whether the Mohawks alone are meant by this term, or other 
 tribes of the eastern part of the Five Nations are included in it. 
 
 From all facts stated it becomes apparent that the "Hereche- 
 nes" were not included in the term Massawomeke, but that this 
 
term comprehended at least one of the Five Nations, the Senecas^ 
 and that the three others were allied or confederated with them. 
 Indian history sufficiently proves that it is more natural to suppose 
 racial and linguistic affinity between the four chieftaincies of 
 the Massawomekes, than to build them up of tribes of disparate 
 affinities and heterogeneous elements. What we cannot possibly 
 decide now, for want of sufficient information, is whether the 
 three other tribes formed, with the Shaunetowa, the four villages 
 of the Senecas mentioned by Gallinee, or whether they were 
 scattered all the way from Lake Ontario to the Ohio river, as 
 the name Tonhoga seems to indicate. 
 
 To assume that the Massawomekes were the Shawnees, would 
 be to assume that they had formed an alliance with the Shaune 
 towa, or Senecas. It is true that the Five Nations once con 
 cluded a treaty with the Governor of Virginia, in which the 
 Shawnees, or a portion of them, are included as a party stand 
 ing on the side of the Five Nations. But this was over one 
 hundred years later than the time we first hear of the Massa 
 womekes. By the treaty of Albany, concluded in September, 
 1722, the Five Nations and their allies engaged themselves not 
 to cross the Blue Ridge (viz., the easternmost ridge of the Alle- 
 ghanies), nor the Potomac river in a southward direction for 
 any purpose whatever, except when provided with English 
 passes. This section of the treaty runs as follows: "Brother 
 Assarigoe (Gov. Howard, of Virginia) : As you engaged for ten 
 nations, so do we, Vizt. (vice versa), for the Five Nations, and 
 for the Tuscaruros, and Connestogoes, Chuanoes, Ochtaghquan- 
 awroroones, Ostagankees, which live upon Sasquahana river." 
 William Byrd, of Westover, Va., History of the Dividing Line. 
 Richmond, 1866. Pp. 262, seq. 4to. 
 
LINGUISTIC NOTES. 
 
 BY ALB. S. GATSCHET, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 SHAWNEE. The four historical divisions of the Shawnee or 
 Shawano tribe of Indians, as given in their own language, are 
 as follows: (1) Pekui, or P'kui. (2) Menekut-thegi. (3) Tsalaj- 
 gasagi. (4) Kispogo'gi. These divisions must not be con 
 founded with the clans of the tribe, of which there are twelve 
 at least, each of them having members in every one of the 
 four divisions. The first of them, Pekui, means "ashes," plur., 
 pekuigi; it gave origin to the town of Piqua, in Ohio, where 
 this portion of the tribe was once settled, and probably refers to 
 their "camp-fire." The second division formed the historical 
 "Mackacheek towns," in Logan county, Ohio, destroyed in 1786 
 by General Logan. To the fourth division belonged Tecumseh 
 and his brother, the prophet. The signification of the other 
 iiames (besides Pekui) is not known, but the ending -gi shows 
 that they are given in the plural form. The name Tecumseh is 
 pronounced Tkamthi, Tkam'the, "going across," as,/". 0., through 
 the midst of a crowd, or across the path of another person; 
 from netkamathka, "I go across." 
 
 ON the numeral classifiers occurring in MAYA, and in the 
 cognate QUICKC, of Guatemala, Count Hyacinthe de Charencey 
 has inserted an exhaustive article in the Itevue de Linguiztique, 
 Vol. XIII., pp. 339-386. These "expletives," as he calls them, 
 do not add anything to the meaning of the sentence ; they only 
 show that these Indians are classing the objects of which they 
 speak, into certain concrete categories. In the Maya the author 
 has discovered thirty-three of these classifiers. Another series 
 of classifiers, called "collectives," is more numerous in Quiche 
 than in Maya, and we find here a term for globular, another for 
 flat, disk-shaped, another for pliant objects, others for objects 
 suspended, standing in a file, etc. In this and in many other 
 respects, Quiche shows a more archaic structure than the Maya 
 of the peninsula of Yucatan. 
 
 SARAKHOLE is the name of an African people inhabiting both 
 sides of the Upper Senegal River, and engaged in commercial 
 pursuits. Its language pertains to the Bambarra stock ; all its 
 words end in one of the vowels u, e, i, a, the nouns usually 
 
showing the termination e (French e). The pronoun, verb and 
 noun do not inflect for gender, but the noun forms a plural, gen 
 erally ending in -u. The personal and the possessive pronoun 
 are identical. No cases exist for the inflection of the noun, only 
 postpositions. Nothing seems to have been published upon this 
 Western African language, except the article written for the 
 Revue de Linyuistique, XIV., pp. 80-96, by General L. Faid- 
 herbe, who gives verbal inflections, syntactic examples, and a 
 very curious and instructive war-song of the tribe. 
 
 KHASIA is a language spoken in the mountain ridge separat 
 ing Eastern Bengal from the valley of the Middle Brahmaputra, 
 by 200,000 half-civilized natives. The literary specimens pub 
 lished in this tongue are mainly of a religious character, and 
 were partly transcribed by means of the Bengali alphabet. 
 Khasia, with its six dialects, forms a linguistic family for itself, 
 and is most remarkable on account of forming a transitory stage 
 between the isolating or monosyllabic languages of the Asiatic 
 continent, and the agglutinative order of tongues, as Abel 
 Hovelacque has shown in a very instructive article printed in 
 the Revue de Linguistique, XIV., pp. 20-47. Some linguistic 
 specimens are given, with translation and partial analysis, from 
 the Khasia New Testament. Some twenty years ago, Prof. Cu.no 
 von der Gabelentz had published a l\hasia grammar and vocab 
 ulary in German.