[FN-1] "This fifth day of May, 1683, appeared before me . . . a Highland Indian called Massang, who declared herewith that he has given as a free gift, a bouwery (farm) to Pieter Lansingh, and a bouwery to Jan Smeedes, a young glazier, also a waterfall near the bank of the river, to build a mill thereon. The waterfall is called Pooghkeepesingh and the land Minnisingh, situated on the east side of the river." (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii, 571.)
[FN-2] Cal. N. Y. Land Papers, 71. There are forty-nine record orthographies of the term, from which a selection could be made as a basis of interpretation. _Poghkeepke,_ for example, might be accepted as meaning, "Muddy Pond," although there is neither a word or particle in it that would warrant the conclusion.
Wynogkee, Wynachkee, and Winnakee are record forms of the name of a district of country or place from which it was extended to the stream known as the Fall Kill "Through which a kill called Wynachkee runs, . . . including the kill to the second fall called Mattapan," is the description in a gift deed to Arnout Velie, in 1680, for three flats of land, one on the north and two on the south side of the kill. "A flat on the west side of the kil, called Wynachkee" (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii, 545, 572), does not mean that the kill was called Wynachkee, but the flat of land, to which the name itself shows that it belonged. The derivatives are _Winne,_ "good, fine, pleasant," and _-aki_ (auke, ohke), "land" or place; literally, "land." [FN]
[FN] From the root _Wulit,_ Del. From the same root _Winne, Willi, Wirri, Waure, Wule,_ etc. The name is met in equivalent forms in several places. _Wenaque_ and _Wynackie_ are forms of the name of a beautiful valley in Passaic county, N. J. (Nelson.) _Winakaki,_ "Sassifras land--rich, fat land." _Winak-aki-ng,_ "At the Sassifras place," was the Lenape name of Eastern Pennsylvania. (See Wanaksink.) Eliot wrote in the Natick (Mass.) dialect, "_Wunohke,_ good land." The general meaning of the root is pleasurable sensation.
Mattapan, "the second fall," so called in the deed to Arnout Velie (1680), was the name of a "carrying place," "the end of a portage, where the canoe was launched again and its bearers reembarked." (Trumbull.) A landing place. [FN] "At a place called Matapan, to the south side thereof, bounded on the west by John Casperses Creek." (Cal. Land Papers, 108.) (See Pietawick-quasick.)