 "Cat" could mean Bobcat or Mountain Lion, while "kill" means stream in Dutch, the main language of the first European colonists of the 17th century.Early American naturalist John Bartram and his son William visited the falls on his famous 1753 expedition to the area.He wrote about it in "A Journey to Ye Cat Skill Mountains with Billy," one of the earliest Catskill travelogues, which became widely read not only in the colonies but back in Britain as well.