tion was
sometimes _topographical_; sometimes _historical_, preserving the
memory of a battle, a feast, the dwelling-place of a great sachem, or
the like; sometimes it indicated one of the _natural products_ of the
place, or the _animals_ which resorted to it; occasionally, its
_position_ or _direction_ from a place previously known, or from the
territory of the nation by which the name was given,--as for example,
'the land on the other side of the river,' 'behind the mountain,' 'the
east land,' 'the half-way place,' &c. The same name might be, in fact
it very often was, given to more places than one; but these must not
be so near together that mistakes or doubts could be occasioned by the
repetition. With this precaution, there was no reason why there might
not be as many 'Great Rivers,' 'Bends,' 'Forks,' and 'Water-fall
places' as there are Washingtons, Franklins, Unions, and Fairplays in
the list of American post-offices.

With few exceptions, the structure of these names is simple. Nearly
all may be referred to one of three classes:

I. Those formed by the union of two elements, which we will call
_adjectival_ and _substantival_;[3] with or without a locative suffix
or post-position meaning 'at,' 'in,' 'by,' 'near,' &c.

[Footnote 3: These terms, though not strictly appropriate to Indian
synthesis, are sufficiently explicit for the purposes of this paper.
They are borrowed from the author of "Words and Places" (the Rev.
Isaac Taylor), who has employed them (2d ed., p. 460) as equivalents
of Foerstemann's "Bestimmungswort" and "Grundwort," (_Die deutschen
Ortsnamen._ Nordhausen, 1863, pp. 26-107, 109-174). In Indian names,
the "Bestimmungswort" sometimes corresponds to the English
adjective--sometimes to a noun substantive--but is more generally an
_adverb_.]

II. Those which have a single element, the _substantival_ or
'ground-word,' with its locative suffix.

III. Those formed from verbs, as participials or verbal nouns,
denoting a _place where_ the action of the verb is performed. To this
class belong, for example, such names as _Mushauwomuk_ (Boston),
'where there is going-by-boat,' _i.e._, a ferry, or canoe-crossing.
Most of these names, however, may be shown by rigid analysis to belong
to one of the two preceding classes, which comprise at least
nine-tenths of all Algonkin local names which have been preserved.

The examples I shall give of these three classes, will be taken from
Algonkin languages; chi