The Name of DC's Native Tribe – How “Anacostan” Grew Out of the Original Mistake, “Nacotchtanck.”

 

In the summer of 1608, when Captain John Smith and his mapmakers sailed up the Potomac to the area where Bolling Airforce Base now sits, they labeled the Piscataway tribe they found there, “Nacotchtanck.”

The proximity of this tribe to the confluence of a second river that joined with the Potomac (now “The Anacostia”) put them in a choice location to be traders, and the name Nacotchtanck was meant to mean “a town of traders.”

Within 20 years of the publication of Smith's map, Father Andrew White, who came to the colonies in 1634 to convert the Natives along the Potomac, changed the name used for the tribe of traders by adding an “a” sound to beginning of the name. This led to a number of variations for the name among the other English settlers, but one of the most popular derivative forms became “Anacostan.”

White studied the Piscataway dialect of the Algonquin language, so he could preach in their native language. He noticed, as have other commentators after him (Burr, 1920; Tooker, 1894), that the word for “a town of traders,” would be "anaquashatanik" which is based on the Algonquin words, “anaquash,” meaning "to trade," and "tanik," indicating a town.

Public interest in the Native tribe of DC often starts with reference to Captain Smith's 1608 map, and it isn't hard to find citations online with the name “Nacotchtanck,” or a variation of that name, including the entry on Wikipedia (2022).

The current Wikipedia description of the origin of the Anacostan name seems to come from this statement by James Mooney in an important collection of 1899 articles on the First People of DC (Mooney, 1899):

"Nacochtank, which was the residence of a chief and contained eighty warriors, was the principal settlement within or adjoining the District. The Jesuits, who came out later with Lord Baltimore, latinized the name as Anacostan, ..." p. 260.

Mooney's linguistic studies involved the Native languages of the Southwest, not Piscataway or other Algonquin languages. The one Jesuit who changed the name was Andrew White, described above. "Latinizing" the name was not his goal. In 1920, Burr gave a description of the origin of the name consistent with the Algonquin "town of traders" phrase "anaquash - tanik," made by Fr. Andrew White (Burr, 1920).

The 1894 article by Tooker, cited above, points out that Captain Smith never used the spelling from his map when he wrote about the tribe. He did use 5 other names: Nacotchtanke, Nacothtank, Nacotchtant, Nacotchtanks, and Necosts (Tooker, p. 391).

The error in the original name isn't surprising, since Algonquin languages do not have an alphabet, Smith's mapmakers couldn't just ask “how do you spell that?” Variations on the names of Native tribes are common. A 1787 document on the transcription of Native languages by English settlers includes a comment “almost every man who writes Indian words, spells them in a peculiar manner…” (Edwards, 1787).

The Native Americans weren't the only group who got their names mangled by local English speakers. For example, the Amish people who migrated from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania would have told English speakers they were “Deutsch.” Now, the Amish are commonly referred to as the “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

Since the name “Anacostia” refers to a major neighborhood and river in Washington, DC, referring to its Native tribe as the Anacostans (Tayac, 2004) pulls together these names, and helps listeners understand their association.

Bottom line: Forget the map name! Remember the Anacostans!

References

Burr, Charles R. (1920). "A Brief History of Anacostia, Its Name, Origin and Progress". Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 23: 168.

Jonathan Edwards, Observations of the Language OF the Muhhekaneew Indians. Communicated to the Connecticut Society of Arts and Sciences (New Haven: Josiah Meigs, 1787

Mooney, James. “INDIAN TRIBES OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.”. p. 259-266.
In "The Aborigines of the District of Columbia and the Lower
Potomac - A Symposium, under the Direction of the Vice President of Section D." American
Anthropologist 2, no. 3 (1889): 225-68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/658373.

Tayac, G. 2004. Keeping the Original Instructions. In Native Universe: Voices of Indian America, McMaster G, ed. p. 77-8.

Tooker, WW. On the Meaning of the name Anacostia. Am Anthrop., os VII, 1894, pp. 389-83.

Wikipedia. Nacotchtank. November 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacotchtank

(note: The wiki spelling is not the same as seen on the map. Anacostine is a variation of Anacostan, with an added “i”, which does not occur in any of the original forms of the name.)