Nun-Da-Ga-O ???????

[yvon]

Last Saturday, Annie and I did Nun-Da-Ga-O Ridge. And I was wondering what that mean the name Nun-Da-Ga-O? Is there someone who knows. I try to find it, but without success.

This is Nun-Da-Ga-O Ridge Trail Loop:
https://picasaweb.google.com/yvondaigle/NunDaGaORidgeADK9Juillet2011#slideshow/5627687722274680226

 

[Neil]

Last Saturday, Annie and I did Nun-Da-Ga-O Ridge. And I was wondering what that mean the name Nun-Da-Ga-O? Is there someone who knows. I try to find it, but without success.

This is Nun-Da-Ga-O Ridge Trail Loop:
https://picasaweb.google.com/yvondaigle/NunDaGaORidgeADK9Juillet2011#slideshow/5627687722274680226

Missed you by one day. (we did the Crows)

Joe Cedar knows.

I used to think it was a bastardisation of, "None do go". Well, not really but why not.

 

[yvon]

Missed you by one day. (we did the Crows)

Joe Cedar knows.

I used to think it was a bastardisation of, "None do go". Well, not really but why not.

We met Tom aka Randomscooter

 

[tgoodwin]

I should probably let Nundagao himself reply to this post, but I am quite sure that it was Walter Biesemeyer (as in the lean-to at Lost Pond) who with his wife owned and operated the Mountain House made up this name and managed to make it stick in the ADK guides. The USGS still calls this the Soda Range.

 

[tgoodwin]

I should probably let Nundagao himself reply to this post, but I am quite sure that it was Walter Biesemeyer (as in the lean-to at Lost Pond) who with his wife owned and operated the Mountain House made up this name and managed to make it stick in the ADK guides. The USGS still calls this the Soda Range. Walter claimed that the translation was "hill of the peaceful spirit", but as i siad I believe it was pure invention.

 

[nundagao]

whence "nundagao"

A disclaimer: this is dredged up from the memory of young child many decades hence, but here goes...in the late 40s/early 50s my dad, Walter Biesemeyer, proprietor of the Mountain House, together with Burns Weston, both charter members of the Hurricane Mountain chapter of the ADK, had cleared an abandoned trail to Lost Pond and laid the route of today's herd path over the so-called Soda Range and its then-unnamed highest point. Walter and Borden Mills, former president of the ADK and frequent guest at the Mtn Hse, thought the range deserved a better name. Borden claimed to have found in some archive that Hurricane Mountain was the white man's mistranslation of its aboriginal name, "nun-da-ga-o", meaning hill of the wind spirits (for the cool evening breezes from the mountain into the valley of Keene). Walter liked the sound of that. Changing the name of Hurricane Mountain was out of the question, but few people knew about the soda range. Walter, Borden, and Burns were prime movers in lobbying to apply the name Nundagao to it, and Weston Peak to its highest point. So far as I know, no one has ever been able to authenticate the name. It does not appear in William Beauchamp's "Aboriginal Place Names of New York State". Long ago I read an historian's observation that we owe the name Nundagao to a Swiss architect and an Albany lawyer, "two most dubious cartographers". Thus is history invented!

 

[Neil]

So interesting! Thanks for that!

While we are in the area, which abounds in so many delightful peaks, what are the origins of the names of Yard Hill and Chase Mountain?

 

[yvon]

Thank you everybody.
Like Neil said, it is very interesting.

 

[nundagao]

nundagao postscript

After my last post I did some digging and found in Beauchamp (NYS Museum Bulletin 108; Archeology 12) that No-de-ne-o, meaning hill of the wind, was a name given to Hurricane Peak by Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Rogh-qua-non-da-go, child of the mountain, was a name he formed and applied to Schroon Lake. Lewis Morgan is also cited therein for the name Nun-da-o, meaning hilly, as in O-non-da-o, place where many hills come together, from which we derive Onondaga. It seems likely that Nun-da-ga-o was based on one or more of those earlier place names which, while not establishing a truly aboriginal provenance, nevertheless gives it at least a patina of authenticity.

 

[buckyball1]

hi Peter--miss hiking with you

jim

 

[SpencerVT]

Nice view from Chase Mountain (near Nun Da Ga O) last Saturday. My wife and I bushwhacked up there from Hurricane. I'd have to say Chase has one of the nicest views from atop a bushwhack peak that I have seen.

 

[Sherby]

View attachment 5348

I'd have to say Chase has one of the nicest views from atop a bushwhack peak that I have seen.

You missed a nicer one on the other side of the road

 

[SpencerVT]

Which one?