1899.J PRINCE — PASSAMAQUOUDY WITCHCRAFT TALES. 181 



SOME PASSAMAQUODDY WITCHCRAFT TALES. 



BY J. DYNELEY PRINCE, PH.D. 



{Read November //, iSpp.) 



The following six tales of witchcraft were related to me during 

 the summer of 1899 at Bar Harbour, Me., by Mr. Newell S. Fran- 

 cis, of the Passamaquoddy' tribe, now resident with his people, num- 

 bering some 500 to 600 souls in all, on their reservation at Pleasant 

 Point, Me. (Pass. Sibayik). The chief interest of these stories lies 

 in the facts, first, that they are the utterances of a comparatively 

 intelligent Indian who firmly believes in the genuineness of the 

 phenomena which he describes, and, secondly, that they were 

 recorded by means of a phonograph, into which Mr. Francis spoke 

 with great distinctness, thus enabling me to reproduce them with 

 much greater phonetic exactness than if he had written them in the 

 very imperfect system at present followed by the few Indians of 

 this tribe who can write their language. 



Any missionary to the Passamaquoddies, or to their kindred, 

 the New Brunswick Maliseets, the Penobscots of Oldtown, Me., or 

 the Micmacs and Abenakis of Quebec, will admit that belief in the 

 ancient Shamanistic sorcery among these Indians has by no means 

 died out. Among the Passamaquoddies and Maliseets' particu- 

 larly there is still a perfect mine of material relating to the wizards 

 and their power over other men and over the curious beings with 

 which the Indians have peopled the mysterious forests of their 

 country. It is to be regretted that more interest is not taken in 

 this highly curious people, who in the course of fifty years are 

 almost bound to disappear, but whose old men and women are 

 still able to impart much that is very valuable both to the philolo- 

 gist and to the student of native American beliefs.' 



' The word Passamaquoddy is a corruption of the Indian PTstumivokadyik, the 

 plural of the participial formation Pestumivokad " he who catches the pollock-fish " 

 from Peskutum-wok "pollock-fish," -f -ad, participial ending. Cf. Ponnamwok-ad 

 " he who catches frosl-fish." 



'The Maliseets, sometimes called St. John Indians, live in New Brunswick, on the 

 river St. John. They are identical with the Maine Passamaquoddies in race and 

 language. They are called in the native idiom : Wuldstuk-wiyik " Indians of the 

 river St. John {iVu/dsm)." 



'See Prince, Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc, xxxvi, pp. 479-495 ; Annals N.Y. Acad. 

 Sci., xi, pp. 369-377. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXVIII. 160. M. PRINTED FEB. 7, 1900. 



