_Aurie's,_ the present name of the stream, otherwise written _Arie's,_ is Dutch for _Adrian_ or _Adrianus_ (Latin) "Of or pertaining to the sea." It is suggestive of the name _Adriochten,_ written by Van Curler as that of the ruling sachem of the castle which he visited and called _Onekagoncka_ in 1635. The only tangible fact, however, is that the stream took its present name from Aurie, a ruling sachem who resided on or near it.
In this connection the several names by which the castle was called, viz: _Onekagoncka, Carenay_ or _Caneray, Osserueñon, Assarue,_ and _Oneugiouré,_ may be again referred to. As already stated, the "best expert authority" of the Bureau of Ethnology reads _Onekagoncka_ as signifying, "At the junction of the waters," and _Osserueñon,_ in any of its forms, as signifying "At the beaver-dam." Possibly the names might be read differently by a less expert authority, but _Oneka_ certainly means "Water," and _Ossera_ means "Beaver-dam." Add the reading by the late Horatio Hale of _Oghracke,_ "At the beaver-dam," and the locative chain is complete at the mouth of Aurie's Creek (Oghracke). _Tribally,_ the names referred to one and the same castle, as has been noted, and the evidence seems to be clear that the location was the same. There is no evidence whatever that any other than one and the same place was occupied by the "first castle" between the years 1635 and 1667. It is not strictly correct to say that "castles were frequently removed." Villages that were not palisaded may have been frequently changed to new sites, but the evidence is that palisaded towns remained in one place for a number of years unless the tribe occupying was driven out by an enemy or by continued unhealthfulness, as the known history of all the old castles shows; nor were they ever removed to any considerable distance from their original sites.
Van Curler's description of the castle has been quoted. He did not say that it was palisaded, but he did call it a "fort," which means the same thing. Rev. Megapolensis wrote, in 1644: "These [the Tortoise tribe] have built a fort of palisades and call their castle _Assarue._" It was not an old castle when Van Curler visited it in 1635, or when Father Jogues was a prisoner in it in 1642, but in its then short existence it had had an incident in the wars between the Mohawks and the Mahicans of which there is no mention in our written histories. On his return trip Van Curler wrote that after leaving _Onekagoncka_ and walking about "two miles," or about six English miles, his guide pointed to a high hill on which the immediately preceding castle of the tribe had stood and from which it had been driven by the Mahicans "nine years" previously, _i. e._ in 1627, when the war was raging between the Mohawks and the Mahicans of which Wassenaer wrote. It was obviously about that time that the tribe, retreating from its enemies, rallied west of Schohare Creek and founded the castle of which we are speaking, and there it remained until it was driven out by the French under De Tracey in 1666, when its occupants gathered together at Caughnawaga on the north side of the Mohawk, where they remained until 1693 when their castle was again destroyed by the French, and the tribe found a resting place on the west side of the mouth of Schohare Creek. The remarkable episode in the early history of the castle, the torture and murder of Father Jogues in 1646, is available in many publications. The location in Brodhead's and other histories of the castle in which he suffered as at Caughnawaga, is now known to be erroneous. Caughnawaga was not occupied by the tribal castle until over twenty years later.