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 to convert
the Natives along the Potomac in 1634, 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 (Tooker, 1894), that
the word for “a town of traders,” would be "anaquashatanik"
which is based on the Algonquin word, “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 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
Jonathan Edwards, Observations of the
Language OF the Muhhekaneew Indians. Communicated to the Connecticut
Society of Arts and Sciences (New Haven: Josiah Meigs, 1787
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. May 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.)
