There’s a Titicus River in Ridgefield and a Titicus Reservoir in North Salem. What’s a “titicus”?
Titicus, an abbreviated form of an ancient Indian word, has been in use for a river, a road, a hill, and a neighborhood since the town’s founding.
The word has appeared in early records in many forms, including Mutighticus, Mughtiticoos, Mutighticoos, Mutighticoss, Matiticus, Metiticus, Tyticus, and Titichus. It was in use in New York colony before Ridgefield was established, so its origin is probably in Westchester County, into which our river flows.
Explaining the name, historian George L. Rockwell cited tradition, saying the “Mutighticoos River was at one time called Buffalo Creek. Van der Donck, a historian of Yonkers, writing in 1656, says: ‘Buffalos are also tolerably plenty.’” From this, Rockwell suggests that Mutighticoos meant buffalo.
However, in his Indian Place Names of New England, John C. Huden translates both Mutighticoss and Titicus as Mahican or Algonquian for “place without trees.” George R. Stewart’s classic, American Place Names, offers a similar translation: “without-trees-at.” This is probably the meaning, not buffalo.
Needless to say, Mutighticoss in its sundry forms is a mouthful; thus it’s no surprise that the English settlers, unaccustomed to the native tongue, tended to shorten the word, with the end result Titicus. (An exception has been Mamanasco, a word that to this day can twist tongues.)
An 1896 cancelation from the Titicus post office, which was located in the Titicus Store.
Titicus was first associated by the settlers with the river and then with the territory around it — Titicus Swamp, Titicus Hill, Titicus Mountain, Titicus Plain, Titicus Road, etc. Eventually, the area around the intersection of North Salem, Saw Mill Hill, and Mapleshade roads became known as “Titicus” or sometimes as “Titicus Crossroads.” This area was once a small village, with a store, post office (having its own cancellation), schoolhouse (now the American Legion Post), and several mills and small factories.
No discussion of Titicus would be complete without the story of Duncan Smith’s challenge. One day in the 1940s, a group of Ridgefield Press staffers was talking about words that had no rhymes — like orange. Someone mentioned Titicus, and Mr. Smith, a retired columnist with The Chicago Daily News who lived in Ridgefield, took up the challenge. He offered the following in his Press column called “A Birdseye View”:
I live upon the Titicus,
a river rough and raging,
where fishes to a city cuss,
will come for a simple paging.
I used to read Leviticus,
or some such ancient volume,
before I saw the Titicus
or started on this column.
And now, my dears, you might agree
it really takes a witty cuss,
a crossword puzzler (that’s me)
to rhyme with Titicus.
(It really should have said ‘that’s I’
to show for words I have nice sense,
but for such slips, I alibi
with my poetic license.)