The Passamaquoddy Indians of Maine, together with the Maliseets
(Milicetes) or St. John's River Indians of New Brunswick, form a single
linguistic group of the eastern Algonquin family known as _Wabanaki_
"people of the dawn-land" or "East." The other most important members of
this group of tribes are the Delawares, or Lenape, who still use the
term _Wapanachki_ of themselves, and, in the eastern States and Canada,
the Penobscot, Abenaki and Micmac.[1] The Penobscot and Abenaki form a
linguistic group similar to that of the Passamaquoddy and Maliseet,
while the Micmac idiom stands more remote, although closely allied. It
has been estimated that there are still about seven hundred, people who
use the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet speech.
Footnote 1:
For the eastern Wabanaki group, cf. my articles: "Notes on the
Language of the Eastern Algonquin Tribes," Amer. Jour. Phil. IX, pp.
310-316; "Forgotten Indian Place-names in the Adirondacks," Jour.
Amer. Folk-lore, 1900, pp. 123-128; "The Modem Dialect of the Canadian
Abenaki." _Miscellanea Linguistica in Onore di Graziodio Ascoli_,
1901, pp. 343-362; Leland and Prince, "Kuloskap the Master," Funk and
Wagnalls, New York, 1902; "The Penobscot and Canadian Abenaki
Dialects," Amer. Anthrop. 1902, N. S. 4, pp. 17-32; "The Penobscot
Language of Maine," Amer. Anthrop., 1910, N. S. 12, pp. 183-208; "A
Micmac Manuscript," Proceedings of the Congress of Americanists,
Quebec, 1908. Cf. also the articles quoted below in the present
Preface. General articles: "The Algonquin Noun," Proceedings of the
Congress of Orientalists, Rome, 1904; "Algonquin Religion," Hastings,
Dictionary of Religions, s. v. "God."
The name "Passamaquoddy" is a corruption of _pestumo‛kat_ 'one who
catches pollock-fish' (_Gadus Pollachius_) = _peska‛tum_. This term has
been applied to the tribe only in comparatively recent times.
The Passamaquoddy of Maine now live at Sipayik or Pleasant Point, near
Eastport, Me., and near Princeton, Me., while the Maliseet have their
chief settlement near Fredericton, N. B. At Pleasant Point, which is the
modern headquarters, dwelt Sopiel Selmo, the keeper of the Wampum
Records, a mnemonic system of wampum shells arranged on strings in such
a manner, that certain combinations suggested certain sentences or
certain ideas to the narrator, who, of course, knew his record by heart
and was merely aided by the association of the shell combinations in his
mind with incidents of the tale or record which he was rendering. With
Selmo, however, died the secret of this curious system, but some of the
wampum strings are still to be seen at Pleasant Point and there are a
few in the possession of Mr. Wallace Brown at Calais, Me. The laws and
customs thereby recorded are published in the first Series of the
following texts in a more exact form than that given in my former
publication of this record in "Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society," 1897, pp. 479-495.
There is also a large amount of oral literature handed down by these
Indians, a quantity of which existed in the manuscripts of the late Hon.
Lewis Mitchell, former Indian member of the Maine Legislature. These
documents, together with Mitchell's version of the Wampum Records, came
into my possession some years ago, but were all destroyed by fire in
1911, since which time Mr. Mitchell industriously reproduced them at my
request from memory. They are herein presented to Americanists for the
first time in the original in Series 2, 3 and 4 of the following texts.
Other matter of this character has already appeared in the Philosophical
Society's Proceedings, XXXVIII, pp. 181-189: "Some Passamaquoddy
Witchcraft Tales;" American Anthropologist (N. S.), XI, No. 4, pp.
628-650: "A Passamaquoddy Aviator."
Of the texts in the present work only the Wampum Records (former
publication cited above) and part of Series 4, "Songs" (N. Y. Academy of
Sciences, XI, No. 15, pp. 369-377 and XIII, No. 4, pp. 381-386) have
been published before in an imperfect form. Poetical and inexact English
renderings of some of the Kuloskap material (Series 2 below) have
appeared in Leland and Prince "Kuloskap the Master," New York, 1902, a
popular exposition of eastern Algonquin folk-lore.
The phonetics of the Passamaquoddy dialect are comparatively simple. In
the Mitchell manuscripts, the scribe followed a spelling influenced
variously by both English and French, frequently using _b_, _d_, _g_,
for _p_, _t_, _k_; _j_ for _tc_, and a purely arbitrary system of
vocalization employing _a_, _u_, _e_ for the indeterminate vowel _u_ or
_'_, often omitting entirely the rough breathing _‛_, or representing it
by _h_. It was, therefore, clearly impossible to reproduce Mitchell's
texts literally, so I have followed, as far as was feasible, the system
used in my "Morphology of the Passamaquoddy Language of Maine,"
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, LIII, pp. 92-117, the
principles of which follow herewith:
_a_ = short _o_ in 'bother'.
_ā_ = _a_ in 'father'.
_â_ = _aw_ in 'awful'.
_'_ = the indeterminate vowel (Schwund).
_u_ = _oo_ in 'foot'.
There are no nasal vowels, as in Penobscot and Abenaki.
_h_ is the simple breathing, but the inverted comma _‛_ is a glottal
catch like a very soft Arabic _ḥ_.
_l_ often carries its own inherent vowel similar to the heavy Russian
_l_. This sound is represented in the following material by an elevated
_e_, before the _l_ (_εl_).
_n_ before consonants carries its own inherent vowel, as _nki_, pron.
_ŭnkî_.
_p_, _t_, _k_, are voiceless surds, pronounced almost like _b_, _d_, _g_
between vowels and never like English, _p(h)_, _t(h)_, _k(h)_.
_tc_, _dc_ represent almost the same sound, between a palatalized
English _ch_ and a palatalized English _j_, similar to Polish _ć_ and
_ź_.
_s_ between vowels is frequently pronounced _z_ and written thus.
_w_ after _k_ (= _kw_) represents the final Algonquin "whistle," as
_ke‛kw_ = _keḥkwu_; _w_ in general is a weak consonant; sometimes
initial _w_ almost = _u_, as w_'liko_ = _uliko_.
The intonation of Passamaquoddy is highly tonic, showing a voice-raise
which often varies, apparently arbitrarily, with various speakers. Thus,
such a word as _lakutwâk'n_ has the voice-lift on the first syllable, a
drop on the second, lift on the third, and drop on the fourth. As I have
noticed so many stress-variations often of the same vocable by different
Passamaquoddy speakers, the accent has been rarely indicated in the
following texts. The peculiarity of the voice-lift seems to be
distinctively Passamaquoddy, as the kindred Maliseets usually speak
monotonously, with no especially noticeable voice-lift. The Abenakis
also have frequently a monotonous tone, amounting practically to a
drawl. All these idioms of the Wabanaki are spoken in a low pitch and
almost never with the strong emphasis and often loud voice of western
Indian languages such as the Dakota.