[Footnote 32: Mass. Records, i. 147, 226.]
[Footnote 33: _Squantam_, the supposed name of an Algonkin deity, is only a corrupt form of the verb _m'squantam_, = _musqui-antam_, 'he is angry,' literally, 'he is _red_ (bloody-) minded.']
_Penobscot_, a corruption of the Abnaki _pa[n]na[oo]a[n]bskek_, was originally the name of a locality on the river so called by the English. Mr. Moses Greenleaf, in a letter to Dr. Morse in 1823, wrote '_Pe noom´ ske ook_' as the Indian name of Old Town Falls, "whence the English name of the River, which would have been better, _Penobscook_." He gave, as the meaning of this name, "Rocky Falls." The St. Francis Indians told Thoreau, that it means "Rocky River."[34] 'At the fall of the rock' or 'at the descending rock' is a more nearly exact translation. The first syllable, _pen-_ (Abn. _pa[n]na_) represents a root meaning 'to fall from a height,'--as in _pa[n]n-tek[oo]_, 'fall of a river' or 'rapids;' _pena[n]-ki_, 'fall of land,' the descent or downward slope of a mountain, &c.
[Footnote 34: Maine Woods, pp. 145, 324.]
_Keht-ompskqut_, or 'Ketumpscut' as it was formerly written,[35]--'at the greatest rock,'--is corrupted to _Catumb_, the name of a reef off the west end of Fisher's Island.
[Footnote 35: Pres. Stiles's Itinerary, 1761.]
_Tomheganomset_[36]--corrupted finally to 'Higganum,' the name of a brook and parish in the north-east part of Haddam,--appears to have been, originally, the designation of a locality from which the Indians procured stone suitable for making axes,--_tomhegun-ompsk-ut_, 'at the tomahawk rock.' In 'Higganompos,' as the name was sometimes written, without the locative affix, we have less difficulty in recognizing the substantival _-ompsk_.
[Footnote 36: Conn. Col. Records, i. 434.]
QUSSUK, another word for 'rock' or 'stone,' used by Eliot and Roger Williams, is not often--perhaps never found in local names. _Hassun_ or _Assun_ (Chip. _assin´_; Del. _achsin_;) appears in New England names only as an adjectival (_assuné_, _assini_, 'stony'), but farther north, it occasionally occurs as the substantival component of such names as _Mistassinni_, 'the Great Stone,' which gives its name to a lake in British America, to a tribe of Indians, and to a river that flows into St. John's Lake.[37]