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<\/a>I’ve always been partial to Podunk. I’m sure my opinion had a geographic and cultural component. I’d likely favor some other term if I grew-up elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Podunk were a Native American people of Algonquian origin that inhabited an area<\/a> that later became the modern towns of East Hartford, East Windsor, South Windsor, Manchester and smaller parts of other towns in Connecticut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Podunk or Pautunke, means ‘where you sink in mire’, a boggy place, in the Nipmuc dialect… The Podunk tribe consisted of three bands: the Namferoke (Podunk, ‘fishing place’), who lived near the village of Warehouse Point; the Hockanum (Podunk, ‘a hook’, or ‘hook shaped’), led by Tantonimo, who lived near the village still known as Hockanum; and the Scanticook (Nipmuc, ‘at the river fork’), who lived on the north bank of the Scantic River near the section called Weymouth.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There were various locales and features officially called Podunk, primarily in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. The photograph of Aiken and Podunk came from Trumansburg, New York, in the Finger Lakes Region (map<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was gratified to see that fellow geo-oddity aficionado Steve who writes Connecticut Museum Quest mentioned Podunk<\/a> in several articles. Clearly, he was no stranger to Podunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n