Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Areshunk

Areshunk is a Center Moriches placename for a neck of land and landing near the foot of Union Avenue. The name appears to preserve a corrupted form of Warishone, the name of an Unkechaug man associated with the neck. Areshunk preserves a Center Moriches neck-and-landing name that records suggest may be connected to Warishone or Worishun, a Native personal or local name in the written record. That possibility matters because place names can preserve not only landforms, but also remembered people, families, and community presence. Even imperfect colonial records can point back to Native lives and relationships with specific shorelines. Areshunk is identified as a neck of land at Centre Moriches in Brookhaven town. The same source notes that the landing at the foot of Union Avenue was sometimes called by this name, and later Unkechaug history connects the name with Worison or Warishone....