in 1670, as the
name of the people inhabiting the i noun tains to the southwest of the Virginia settle-
ments. On his map he puts them in the mountains on the southern head streams
of Roanoke river, in western North Carolina. He states that, according to his Indian
informants, the Rickahockan lived beyond the mountains in a land of great waves,
which he interpreted to mean the sea shore i ! I, but it is more likely that the Indians
were trying to convey, by means of the sign language, the idea of a succession of
mountain ridges. The name was probably of Powhatan origin, and is evidently
identical with Rechahecrian of the Virginia chronicles of about the same period, the
/• in the latter form being perhaps a misprint. It may he connected with Righka-
hauk,On Oolden's map in his "History of the Five
Nations," 1727, we find the "Alleghens" indicated upon Allegheny river. Heckewel-
der, who recorded the Delaware tradition in 1819, says: "Those people, as I was told,
calledthemselvesTalligeu or Talligewi. Colonel John Gibson, however, agentleman
who has a thorough knowledge of the Indians, and speaks several of their languages,
is of the opinion that they were not called Talligewi, but Alligevvi; and it would
seem that he is right from the traces of their name which still remain in the country,
the Allegheny river and mountains having indubitably been named after them. The
Delawares still call the former Alligewi Sipu (the river of the Alligewi)" — Indian
Nations, p. 48, ed. 1876. Loskiel, writing on the authority of Zeisberger, says that
the Delawares knew the whole country drained by the