Note 118 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850. (continued 2)

One of the meanings assigned to Unadilla by local tradition is “Pleasant Valley.” It has also been said to stand for some kind of a river. The meaning given by Morgan, our best authority, is “Place of Meeting”, which refers to the junction of the two streams. The word has been spelled in many ways. As in the Fort Stanwix deed we find Tianaderha, so Gideon Hawley in 1753 wrote Teyonadelhough. Richard Smith cites the form Tunaderrah. Other forms are Cheonadilha and Deunadilla, while Unendilla and Unideally are common. Joseph Brant in a letter to Persefer Carr wrote Tunadilla.

“All these forms resulted from the white man’s efforts to put into writing the word as he heard it pronounced by various Indian tribes. The form Unadilla comes nearest to the Oneida dialect, which has the charm of greater softness than the others. Stone is at a loss to understand why the pioneers were not content to accept as final the spelling adopted by an educated Indian like Brant. The present spelling was adopted however when the town was formed. In the Poor Master’s book of 1793 the word is written as we write it now.

“How long the name had been in use before Hawley used it, is of course, matter of conjecture, but it was the name of a place before it ever was applied to a stream. In 1683 the Indians called the river ‘The Kill which falls into the Susquehanna.’ The stream had obviously at that time received no name. Originally the name was applied not only as now to the Unadilla side of the two rivers, but to lands across them included in the towns of Sidney and Bainbridge. It was a term for all the territory adjacent to the confluence and now intersected by the boundaries of three counties.

“The Unadilla river and part of the present town of Unadilla with perhaps all of it, were Oneida territory. Further east were Mohawk lands The Oneidas are know to have sold lands as far east as Herkimer and Delhi. Evidence, however, which Morgan regards as safe, begins the line of division at a point five miles east of Utica and extends it directly south to Pennsylvania making Unadilla border lands between the two nations. Lands in several parts of Otsego country were sold by the Mohawks but none lay as far west as Unadilla.”—From “The Old New York Frontier”; pages 26 and 27.