On a map of Lake Superior, made by Jesuit missionaries and published in Paris in 1672, the stream which is marked on modern maps as ‘Riviere aux Traines’ or ‘Train River,’ is named ‘R. Mataban.’  The small lake from which it flows is the ‘end of portage’ between the waters of Lake Michigan and those of Lake Superior.

7.  CHABENUK, ‘a bound mark’; literally, ’that which separates or divides.’  A hill in Griswold, Conn., which was anciently one of the Muhhekan east bound-marks, was called Chabinu[n]k, ‘Atchaubennuck,’ and ‘Chabunnuck.’  The village of praying Indians in Dudley (now Webster?) Mass., was named Chabanakongkomuk (Eliot, 1668,) or _-ongkomum_, and the Great Pond still retains, it is said, the name of Chaubenagungamaug (chabenukong-amaug?), “the boundary fishing-place.”  This pond was a bound mark between the Nipmucks and the Muhhekans, and was resorted to by Indians of both nations.

* * * * *

III.  Participials and verbals employed as place-names may generally, as was before remarked, be referred to one or the other of the two preceding classes.  The distinction between noun and verb is less clearly marked in Indian grammar than in English.  The name Mushauwomuk (corrupted to Shawmut) may be regarded as a participle from the verb mushau[oo]m (Narr. mishoonhom) ’he goes by boat,’—­or as a noun, meaning ’a ferry,’—­or as a name of the first class, compounded of the adjectival mush[oo]-n, ‘boat or canoe,’ and wom[oo]-uk, habitual or customary going, i.e., ’where there is going-by-boat.’

The analysis of names of this class is not easy.  In most cases, its results must be regarded as merely provisional.  Without some clue supplied by history or tradition and without accurate knowledge of the locality to which the name belongs, or is supposed to belong, one can never be certain of having found the right key to the synthesis, however well it may seem to fit the lock.  Experience Mayhew writing from Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard, in 1722, gives the Indian name of the place where he was living as Nimpanickhickanuh.  If he had not added the information that the name “signifies in English, The place of thunder clefts,” and that it was so called “because there was once a tree there split in pieces by the thunder,” it is not likely that any one in this generation would have discovered its precise meaning,—­though it might have been conjectured that neimpau, or nimbau, ‘thunder,’ made a part of it.

Quilutamende was (Heckewelder tells us[78]) the Delaware name of a place on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, where, as the Indians say, “in their wars with the Five Nations, they fell by surprise upon their enemies.  The word or name of this place is therefore, Where we came unawares upon them, &c.”  Without the tradition, the meaning of the name would not have been guessed,—­or, if guessed, would not have been confidently accepted.