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places in Maryland and neighboring States. The trouble with Mr. Heckewelder was that he made too much out of resemblances to the language of the Lenni-Lenape Indians, among whom he labored. Nowadays it is believed, that almost without exception, the key to our Maryland Indian names is to be found in a comparative study of the Algonquian dialects and especially of those tribes who furnished Capt. John Smith's guides and informants as he explored the Chesapeake and its tributaries in 1608.

Mr. Tooker has been working in this field for many years. His theories have been presented in papers read before the American Antiquarian Association and kindred bodies, and the most important of them published in a set of attractive booklets, entitled "The Algonquian Series." Many bear on the Indian names of his own neighborhood and State, but a valuable part of his work has been obtained by trailing John Smith and pondering over the names Smith records, in the light of a study of the Algonquian dialects of Virginia and southern New England, which are closely related.

In explaining his methods in general terms, Mr. Tooker points out that the errors of former interpreters have most often grown out of their not getting sufficiently close to the original spelling, and, where possible, to the exact facts under which the name was first told to the English. "The Indians did not generalize," he says, "Their names were invariably descriptive. Every name described the spot or subject to which it was applied;" but the English have so often transferred the applications of the names that the difficulty of understanding the sense of the original is greatly increased.

With these main principles of Mr. Tooker in mind, let us see how he explains the name Patapsco. Heckewelder said it was originally Petapsqui,' and that it meant 'a back or tide water where waves cause a froth.' Knowing how generally Heckewelder has been discarded, I addressed Mr. Tooker a letter of inquiry a few weeks ago. I explained that Patapsco first appears on a map as the name of the river on that of Alsop-1660-and in the land records of a few years before, when the first grants were located here, I gave him 19 variations in spelling, as

found by me in the colonial archives. In reply I received the following very kind and detailed explanation :—

"It happens that I have devoted some study to the name Patapsco, and believe I can give you its true etymology and meaning, which is pota 'to jut out,' 'to bulge'; -psk ‘a ledge of rock'; and the locative ut 'at'; hence Pota-psk-ut 'at the jutting ledge of rock,' which may be translated 'at the rocky point or corner.'

"This, as you will observe, applies to a locality on the river, and not to the river itself. As you are familiar with the river and the records of the State, you may be able to identify the exact location which gave birth to the name."

And in a subsequent letter he added:

"The name was bestowed by the Indians, and adopted by the settlers without regard for the meaning, like all Indian names which have been retained. Same way with the Pawtuxent of John Smith, which described an Indian town 'at the falls on a tidal stream,' and not the river itself. This name appears in Rhode Island as Pawtucket, showing that the names in Maryland and Virginia are very closely related to the Narragansett and Massachusetts, and, like them, belong to the Algonquian lan

guage.

"Smith probably never heard the name Patapsco, as he called the river Bolus. It may have been in use long before it was recorded, to designate a well-known landmark on the river.

"My etymology Patapskut or Potapskut at the jutting rock' or at the projecting rock' is in accordance with Algonquian ideas and is easily identified. Its prefix Pota- is found in another Maryland name, viz., Potopaco of Smith, 'a jutting of the water inland,' 'a bay'; Potuppog, (Natick, Eliot), Petapagh (Unkechaug, Jefferson), 'a bay,' with a narrow entrance from the sea.

"The second element -psk is very persistent in all dialects of the family, and is an inseparable generic appearing in compound words only, with a very little variation. In some of the Canadian dialects, like the Cree, Nipissing and Otchipwe, as modified by contact with the whites, the element has reference to metals, or something metallic, as indicated by its prefix. It is used by Eliot

in such words as Chippipsk or Chippisqut, 'a separate rock,' Chippi meaning 'separate'; Pumipsk 'along a rock,' etc. Examples can be quoted quite numerously.

"The locative ut is common in all dialects, and sometimes it is dropped entirely by use in the alien tongue, like the name Montauk, which was early Meantauk-ut. It sometimes is found as -et, -ot, -oot, etc.

"The above will give you some idea as to how I arrived at my etymology of the name."

And now arises the question of identification. What was the locality called Potapskut, whose name in course of time was appropriated for the entire river? To any one familiar with the river near its outlet into the bay, the question, it seems to me, is satisfactorily answered at once. Is not Potapskut the 'White Rocks,' so well known to local fishermen of this and past generations, that group of limestone rocks jutting out of the river opposite where Rock Creek joins the Patapsco ?-To-day they are a prominent natural feature in a river whose bed is mainly mud and sand, and whose banks are clay bluffs. But in past centuries, -say when the red men held sway and the white men were about to come, they rose higher out of the water and showed themselves above the surface over a larger area. Dr. P. R. Uhler, who confirms me in this opinion, points out that they are steadily disintegrating under weather conditions and chemical action, and also makes the interesting point that they are the outcropping of a stratum that extends across the river and which may have shown itself above the water in bygone days at other points than 'White Rocks.' In every essential, it seems to me, 'White Rocks' answers to the Indian Potapskut,' as we understand it from the interpretation of Mr. Tooker. When I wrote to him, mentioning my conjecture and explaining my reasons for it, he replied:

"There is no doubt in my mind but that you have discovered the original Potapskut in the White Rocks.' It was just such natural objects that an Indian would name so that it could be easily identified. I congratulate you on fixing the spot to which the name belongs."

Let us take it then that the Indians called the White Rocks'

Potapskut and that the white pioneers appropriated the native name to the entire river. It is a process similar to that which has given us hundreds of other names in American geography of Indian derivation, and there seems little doubt that Mr. Tooker's etymology is the proper explanation of the derivation of our Baltimore waterway.

In this connection I regard it as quite fitting to recall some of Mr. Tooker's earlier conclusions as to other familiar Maryland names. You have heard how he explains Patuxent as originally applied to an Indian village 'at the falls on a tidal stream,' and not to the river itself; and how he regards Port Tobacco as originally Potopaco 'a jutting of the water inland,' 'a bay.' In both of these instances he was reading his John Smith. And he did the same with Potomac and Susquehanna in the booklets he published concerning those two famous rivers. Potomac, he pointed out, was originally Patawomeke and was the designation applied not to the river, but to the tribe Smith found on the Virginia banks and later encountered by Leonard Calvert when the Ark and Dove arrived. Separated into its parts it is Patow'to bring again,'-- -om 'go,'--eke 'people,'-literally 'the people who go and bring again'; freely translated the people who travel and trade.' And what was it these Potomac Indians trafficked in? Why, graphite or plumbago, according to Mr. Tooker. They sold it to other tribes far and near to paint their bodies, faces and emblems. That antimony mine of which Smith and other Potomac explorers got vague ideas was, according to Mr. Tooker, who quotes government ethnologists who have traced the point, a deposit of plumbago. And these Patowomekes sold the output, among others, to those particular red men who told Smith the Potomacs were trading Indians.

The Massawomekes whom Smith met in the upper Chesapeake and described at some length have a name of somewhat similar derivation. They were, says Mr. Tooker, 'the people who come and go in great canoes.' A reading of Smith's text about them. will elucidate this point.

Susquehanna, too, is derived not from any Indian name for the river, but from the Susquehannocks, the tribe that dwelt along

its banks. Smith had a Tockwogh Indian guide when he met the Susquehannocks. They had, so he narrates, hatchets and knives and pieces of iron and brass, which, according to Mr. Tooker, they had captured from some more northern people who got these articles of European manufacture from the French in Canada. Who are these people?' asked Smith, and his guide replied: "They are the Sasquesa-hanoughs--' the people with the booty obtained in war.'" At least that is the way Mr. Tooker puts it.

The name Nanticoke, he says, was originally Nai-taqu-ack and meant 'a point of land on a tidewater stream,' i. e., the village where Smith first encountered these Eastern Shore Indians.

His explanation as to the name of our bay is another interesting one. It goes back to a period antedating that of John Smith, for the Chesapeake was so recorded on maps before the Jamestown colony. The Spaniards called it Santa Maria, but after the ill-fated English attempt at colonization on Roanoke Island in 1584-5, the English at least knew it as the Chesapeake, variously spelled. Again, according to Mr. Tooker, we have a case where the name of the seat of an Indian tribe has been greatly extended. Originally, he says, the word was K'che-sepi-ack and was furnished to the first English colonists in America as the designation of a tribe living on Elizabeth River, which, as we know, empties into the lower bay. K'che means 'great'; sepi or sepu 'a river'; and -ack is a locative or termination signifying land, or place, or country. So that the K'che-sepi-ack Indians were the Indians living at the place on the great river,' Elizabeth River being the 'great river' to its immediate Indian neighbors. From this small and obscure tribe the name, with the aid of sixteenth-century mapmakers, became affixed to the bay. Mr. Tooker's reasoning on this derivation may be pursued at length in another of his booklets.

We have so many Indian geographic names in Maryland-from Sinepuxent and Chincoteague to Antietam and Alleghany, that there is a great field for further investigation by Mr. Tooker or by local scholars who have the time and patience to familiarize themselves with the Indian dialects and pursue Mr. Tooker's methods. It is a laborious mental effort involving days of concen