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
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.)
