[ganong] INDIAN PIJ^CE-NOMENCLATURE 441 



The great merits of Dawson's Acadian Geology gave its statements 

 a prominence and authority which, in conjunction with the apparent 

 reasonableness and marked attractiveness of his theory of the origin 

 Acadie, led to the wide acceptance thereof. Some further impetus, 

 moreover, was given it by Bourinot, who, considering there could be 

 no doubt as to its correctness, supported it in a prominent paper on 

 Canadian place-names (in the Canadian Monthly, VII, 1875, 291, 

 292). Again, he gave it further emphasis in his well-known work on 

 Cape Breton, in which, after saying that it seems well established, he 

 cited a list of seventeen Micmac place-names, taken from Rand's 

 Dictionary, in illustration {these Transactions, IX, 1891, ii, 327); and 

 he repeated it in a later work, though this time with far less confidence 

 {these Transactions, V, 1899, ii, 4). Then, either from Dawson 

 direct, or from Bourinot, or from one another, various later writers 

 have adopted the explanation, usually without the cautious "pro- 

 bable" of Dawson, until now it is widely current in historical works 

 as well as popular literature. 



Meantime, however, a partially similar but partially distinct 

 explanation had arisen quite independently and obtained a consider- 

 able currency. It appeared first in 1840 in an official Report made 

 to the British Government and published in a Blue-hook of that year 

 by Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, two commissioners sent 

 out to examine the territory in Maine and New Brunswick at that time 

 in dispute between the United States and Great Britain. This part 

 of their report reads thus (page 12) : — 



Even before the appointment of De la Roche in 1598, as Lieutenant-General 

 of the country [Acadie], including those parts adjacent to the Bay of Fundy, the Bay 

 into which the St. Croix empties itself, was known by the Indians of the Morriseet 

 tribe, which still inhabits New Brunswick, by the name of Peskadumquodiah, from 

 Peskadum, Fish, and Quodiah, the name of a fish resembling the cod.* 



*The provincial name of this fish is Pollock, and it still continues to frequent 

 that bay. (Footnote in original.) 



The French, according to their usual custom, abbreviated the Indian name, 

 which we sometimes, in the old records, read Quadiac and "Cadie," and at length we 

 find it taking the general designation of "Acadie." 



The English race, have turned the original Indian name, into Passamaquoddy, 

 and the Indians of the district have long been by them familiarly called Quoddy 

 Indians, as, by the French, they have been called Les Acadiens. To this day, the 

 Morriseet Indians call the Bay by its original Indian name of Peskadumquodiah. 



But De Monts, finding the position he had selected to winter in bleak and 

 inconvenient, and very inferior to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal), abandoned 

 the St. Croix, and made a permanent settlement at Port Royal. The Peninsula, 

 south-east of the Bay of Fundy, where the Port is, began thenceforward to be called 

 "Acadie." 



The passages here cited abound in historical errors and pure 

 inventions, but the only statements that concern us now are these, — 



