154 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
came the Penobscots in the valley of that river. The name Etchemins 
was applied by Champlain to the Maliseets, but was extended by others 
to include the Penobscots. The traditions of those Indians, and such 
other evidence as we possess, agree that each tribe was considered to 
possess as hunting-grounds all the rivers on which they lived, even to 
the headwaters,!' and hence the boundaries between the tribes were 
formed by watersheds, as is brought out by the accompanying map. 
Watersheds do not extend to the sea, and hence other bounds were 
needed there. These seem to have been prominent features in the gen- 
eral lines continuing the watersheds; thus the prominent Martins Head 
on the Bay of Fundy formed the boundary between Micmacs and Mali- 
seets, and Point Lepreau probably separated the St. John River and 
Passamaquoddy Indians.? The Indians therefore were the only people 
which have ever occupied New Brunswick who used exclusively the 
natural boundaries. Nor did the later comers pay any attention what- 
ever to these Indian boundaries; the fact that many of our county 
lines follow the same watersheds is ef course a mere coincidence with 
no causal relationship whatever to their use by the Indians. In this 
disregard of the Indians, however, there is nothing peculiar, for the 
Indian tribes of the Province have scarcely at all influenced its history. 
They gave us many of our place names, and a very few other words, 
but aside from these our history would not have been appreciably dif- 
ferent had they never existed in the province. 
This period, therefore, left to its successors no inheritance, so far 
as boundaries are concerned. 

? Thus stated in Levinge, “ Echoes from the Backwoods,” 1846, I., 99, 100. 
This was probably not true of the whole length of the St. John, which extends 
so far into Maine, but I have no information upon this point. 
We may here note in passing the origin of the word Etchemin used for 
the Maliseets by Champlain. It is, I believe, a form of the word o-ski-tchin 
(Chamberlain, Maliseet Vocabulary), applied by the Maliseets to themselves, 
and constantly used by them in combinations, as, ski-tchin-ee-men-eek, Indian 
Island. 
* But among the Boundary MS. (later to be described) occurs a deposition 
made in 1797 by Francis Joseph, an Indian, in which he says:—‘“ that the 
Scoodiac River from its mouth to different carrying places into Machias 
River, Penobscot River, and St. John’s River, belongs exclusively to the 
Passamaquoddy Tribe, and that the Magaguadavic is all one common, and 
that Indians of different Tribes have a right to hunt there when they.please.”’ 
As to the Micmac-Maliseet boundary on the Bay of Fundy, I have been 
told by an aged Micmac chief that it was at Martins Head, but there is some 
evidence to show that the Micmacs at one time occupied Quaco, and even 
the mouth of the St. John. 
* On our inheritances from the Indians, (and from other periods of our 
history,) see Canadian History Readings, I., 171. 
