Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Poxabog / Poxabogue Pond

Poxabogue preserves an Indigenous pond name in Sagaponack, connecting changing water levels with the language recorded in Southampton’s colonial land surveys. A pond’s changing shoreline can help us understand why a place name mattered. Poxabogue links an Indigenous name preserved in land records with a wetland landscape people can still learn from today. Poxabog names both a pond and a surrounding farming district in William Wallace Tooker’s 1911 account. He traces forms of the name to Southampton’s 1712 South Division survey, where the pond helped orient surveyors along the East Hampton path. The record shows an Indigenous name continuing to organize the landscape as colonial authorities divided land. 1 The survey spellings include Paugasaboug and Paugaseboug. Tooker also records Pogaseboge in 1724, Pougosoboug in 1726, and Poxabogue in 1763. These are written variants preserved by...