THE NISHISACKAWICK CREEK enters the Delaware River at Frenchtown. There are two Nishisackawicks. The Big comes in from the northeast, and the Little comes in south of it. But when people say “the creek” or “the crick” they are referring to the big one – the one for which Creek Road was named, the one that fed the mill race that powered the sawmill and the grist mill. Following that custom, I always specify when I mean the Little Nishisackawick.
The creek is sometimes called Nishisackaway and the spelling is all over the place. According to “Hunterdon Place Names” (1959), there is a reference to it as Reshasackaway in a 1711 document, and as Neshachackaway in 1777. The Sanborn maps of 1885 and '91 spelled it Missistasackaway, but by '97 had calmed down to Nishisakawick.
Noted Hunterdon historian Marfy Goodspeed passed along this explanation written in 1628 by Jonas Michaelius: “These people have difficult aspirates and many guttural letters, which are formed more in the throat than by the mouth, teeth and lips, to which our people not being accustomed, make a bold stroke at the thing and imagine that they have accomplished something wonderful...”
Before they were crowded out by white settlers in the early 1700s, a band of Lenapes might well have made both of the Nishisackawicks their headquarters.
An archaeological dig done in advance of building the new sewer plant near the mouth of the creek turned up some pottery shards and charred bone, suggesting a camp site rather than a village site.
Nishisackawick might mean: two outlets of a stream near a house. Certainly the creeks, coming from different directions, enter the river within about 150 feet of each other. What house? How near? Don't worry about it.
Goodspeed wrote, “I would not give any credence to anyone’s claim for a meaning of a creek’s name. The Europeans could not agree on spelling because the Lenape words had such unfamiliar sounds.” Consequently “the word they translate is probably not the original word, and later definitions are doubtful” because translations were sought many years later from Lenapes in Oklahoma, and “the Lenape language probably evolved just as English has.”
Goodspeed knows her stuff, so I'd just like to cite the source of my definition and leave it at that: “The Origin of New Jersey Place Names,” published in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers Project. Their Lenape-to-English dictionary says “Nisha” (two), “sacunk” (outlet of a stream), “wik” (house).
There are many Hunterdon creeks that still go by their mysterious Indian names – the Hakihokake, Capoolong, Wickecheoke, Lockatong, Alexauken, and my favorite, Milford's Quequacomissicong. I like to imagine that one day long ago the Lenapes had a creek-naming contest, and the guy who named Milford's creek won a pony. But that creek namer may have overreached. Lots of people these days just call it Q Creek.
Note: The county's 2001 Official Street Atlas has the Quequacomissicong blending into a lesser creek (the one that goes by Jimmy's) and becoming Milford Creek. But I don't buy it.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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