A Name

In his book, The Great Divide, Peter Watson speculates about the first forays humans made into what became known as the New World.  These forebears of North American native peoples found there way into our continent as the Laurentide ice sheet neared its end about 11,000 years ago.  The birth of the Ottauquechee in something like its current form dates from the retreat of the ice that covered Vermont.  As I understand the geology, it was a rebirth, in fact, of an earlier incarnation of a river which flowed 130,000 years ago, before the last Ice Age, and probably long before that as well. 

That old river had disappeared for thousands of years under a mile or so of ice.  It seems fair to give our Ottauquechee a new birth date, roughly coinciding with the arrival of people on the scene. 

Watson reviews the findings of linguists, archeologists and anthropologists to paint a picture of these first peoples.  After reading his survey, I see in my mind's eye a group of women, men and children facing walls of ice and roaring streams. 

The name for the Ottauquechee, derives, I understand, from a New England aboriginal language, but which one is not clear. It means "swift mountain stream,"  or something close to that.

Those long ago wanderers among the ice and flood plains may have seen our river flow again for the first time, and maybe even gave the name we call it now its beginning.