Oswegatchie in Iroquois

according to no source I can pinpoint means:

—at the very outlet

—black water

—and, according to a post from "croghanman" below [we always stop in Croghan for ice cream on our way to the lake],"land of the dark waters"


The Oswegatchie is a 241 km (150-mile) river that runs from Cranberry Lake mostly through St. Lawrence County, west of the Adirondacks, past Gouverneur and Edwards, and empties into the St. Lawrence River at Ogdensberg. The area is the ancestral land of my maternal grandmother, and much of the family is buried in the cemetery in Hermon, New York. I will have a headstone there, with my husband. When Grandma married my grandfather, they settled in Syracuse, to the northwest of which runs the Oswego River, which means "the outpouring."

Now I live near the Esopus Creek and the great estuary, the Hudson, but the Oswegatchie will always be my main tributary.

More on stewardship of New York lands and waters:

http://www.protectadks.org/

http://www.riverkeeper.org/