A bend in the Willimantic

Meanders on the Willimantic River, at or near Ow-wae-nung-gan-nunck, a place where the people went to fish for salmon.

According to John Chandler it was located about a half mile below Hartford Road circa 1705. The then Hartford Road bridle path ran parallel to the river, roughly a hundred to fourteen hundred feet from the river until the path's branch at or near Ebenezer Nye's Tolland farm located on the old bridle path. The left hand branch continued to run parallel close to the river along what is present day South River Road. This area is approximately a half mile south of the right hand branch of the old Hartford Road bridle path.


Willimantic is probably an English phonetic spelling of something like willi-man-tuck or waeenu-man-tuc, where the willi is a phonetic spelling of a regional variation of waeenu or waeru (note: wayeoag-ish, wohway; waeenu - round about; woweaushin, a winding about cf. Natic Dictionary), this given Roger Williams example of regional differences that might be found with the pronunciation of the Narragansett word for dog: anum, pronounced variously elsewhere as ayim, arum and alum. This might make Willimantic, Waeenu-, a winding; man- (manunne), slow, soft, gentle and -tuc, river, a compound word perhaps for the meanders of the Natchaug River where it joins the Willimantic river in Windham. John Chandler spells it We-am-man-tuck on his 1705 map of the Mohegan Sachems Hereditary Country, perhaps relegating the "willi" to something simply poorly heard and transcribed.