Map
(1634). _Powhatan_, for _Pauat-hanne_, 'at the Falls on a rapid
stream,' has been previously noticed.

[Footnote 16: Heckewelder, on Indian names, in Trans. Am. Phil. Soc.
vol. iv.]

[Footnote 17: Ibid.]

[Footnote 18: Narrative, &c., in Mem. Hist. Society of Pennsylvania,
vol. ii. p. 97.]

_Alleghany_, or as some prefer to write it, Allegheny,--the Algonkin
name of the Ohio River, but now restricted to one of its
branches,--is probably (Delaware) _welhik-hanne_ or _[oo]lik-hanne_,
'the best (or, the fairest) river.' _Welhik_ (as Zeisberger wrote
it)[19] is the inanimate form of the adjectival, meaning 'best,' 'most
beautiful.' In his Vocabulary, Zeisberger gave this synthesis, with
slight change of orthography, as "_Wulach'neue_" [or
_[oo]lakhanne[oo]_, as Eliot would have written it,] with the free
translation, "_a fine River_, without Falls." The name was indeed more
likely to belong to rivers 'without falls' or other obstruction to the
passage of canoes, but its literal meaning is, as its composition
shows, "best rapid-stream," or "finest rapid-stream;" "La Belle
Riviere" of the French, and the _Oue-yo'_ or _O hee' yo Gae-hun'-dae_,
"good river" or "the beautiful river," of the Senecas.[20] For this
translation of the name we have very respectable authority,--that of
Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian of Pennsylvania, who lived
seventeen years with the Muhhekan Indians and was twice married among
them, and whose knowledge of the Indian languages enabled him to
render important services to the colony, as a negotiator with the
Delawares and Shawanese of the Ohio, in the French war. In his
"Journal from Philadelphia to the Ohio" in 1758,[21] after mention of
the 'Alleghenny' river, he says: "The _Ohio_, as it is called by the
Sennecas. _Alleghenny_ is the name of the same river in the Delaware
language. _Both words signify the fine_ or _fair river_." La Metairie,
the notary of La Salle's expedition, "calls the Ohio, the
_Olighinsipou_, or _Aleghin_; evidently an Algonkin name,"--as Dr.
Shea remarks.[22] Heckewelder says that the Delawares "still call the
Allegany (Ohio) river, _Alligewi Sipu_,"--"the river of the
_Alligewi_" as he chooses to translate it. In one form, we have
_wulik-hannesipu_, 'best rapid-stream long-river;' in the other,
_wulike-sipu_, 'best long-river.' Heckewelder's derivation of the
name, on the authority of a Delaware legend, from the mythic
'Alligewi' or 'Talligewi,'--"a race of Ind