Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Nowedonah (Lake Nowedonah / Mill Pond)

Nowedonah is the name of a Shinnecock sachem and was later given to Mill Pond at Water Mill. The placename preserves a connection between the Water Mill pond and Shinnecock leadership remembered in seventeenth-century records. The placename brings together the Water Mill pond, the Shinnecock sachem name, and related forms such as Nowedindah and Wittaneymen. Dated source details appear in the historic moments below, where each event can carry its own reference. Recorded forms include Nowedonah and Nowedindah. Tooker also connects the person with the earlier name Wittaneymen. The name is interpreted as the seeker or I seek him. Why Place Names Matter “What we hope to do with Indigenous place names is move beyond the fixed borders and definitions of colonial mapping systems. Instead, we aim to support the visibility of Indigenous relationships to land and water, connections that are...