A History of Cossayuna

By: Islay V. H. Gill

Cossayuna is the name of a beautiful lake located in the towns of Argyle and Greenwich in southern Washington county near the eastern border of the state of New York. Cossayuna, in this history, is a community or neighborhood which includes not only the lake and the village of its south end but also the highland back of the west shore known as Dutchtown and the highland back of the east shore known as Bunker Hill. Also included are the road to South Argyle as far as the South Church, south on Sand street to the Robertson farm, and the high long hill rising abruptly from the south end of the lake. This hill was called Stewart hill in the early days, named for the ancestor of the merchant family of that name, and now known, on its north side as Ramsey hill, on it south side as Riddell hill and its west end as Rock hill.

The name Cossayuna is a corruption of Quabbauna, the Indian name of the lake. Tradition says that this name means The Lake of the Three Pines, for three enormous pines which grew on the Oaks point. Indian tradition also says that the region was the home of the Horicon tribe of Indians. The Horicon’s were kinsmen of the Mohicans and the Hoosacs, but had completely disappeared before white men came to America.

Tradition, handed down from the time the St. Ange Frenchmen visited the Hoosick valley before 1600, tells of a much need fishing and hunting trail which led from the Tiashoke corn and pumpkin field of the Indians, where Grandma Moses now lives, near Eagle Bridge, up the Owl Kill through the present village of Cambridge to Jackson ponds and thence over the hill and up the Cossayuna creek to the lake. The hills were covered with a dense primeval forest in which great pines predominated. The same beautiful lake was there surrounded by the same hills. The only inhabitants were bears, wolves, panthers and other forest denizens.