442 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



that the name Acadie originated from the termination of Passama- 

 quoddy, through Quodiah, Quadiac, and Cadie, that this word (Juod- 

 iah, and therefore Cadie, means the fish called Pollock, and that a 

 tribe of Indians has the same name. I can find no antecedents for 

 this explanation, and there seems every probability that it was original 

 with Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, worked out on the basis of infor- 

 mation given by the Indian guides with whom they travelled extensively 

 in Maine and New Brunswick. The astonishing error, by which they 

 transferred the meaning of the first part of Passamaquoddy, — the 

 word Peskatum, really meaning Pollock, as shown earlier on (page 411), 

 — to the latter part -quoddy, which really is a form of -acadie (page 

 377 earlier), is most readily explained by the supposition advanced 

 by Dawson, in his well-grounded criticism of the Commissioners' 

 conclusions, viz., that they took quoddy to mean pollock "very 

 likely because its sound resembled that of cod, or because some 

 Maliceet Indian had rendered the name into his imperfect English 

 by the word 'Pollock fish here' " {Acadian Geology, second edition, 

 3). However it arose their derivation of Acadie from Quoddy, and 

 their error that Quoddy or Quodiah meant Pollock, exhibited a 

 surprising vitality, for it appears frequently in historical writings, 

 the Quodiah often spelled Aquoddie or Aquoddiauki &c. Thus it is 

 repeated in the Historical Magazine, I, 1857, 84, by Parkman in Pioneers 

 of France in the New World, and by Shea in his great translation of 

 Father Charlevoix's Histoire, (I, 254n), and others. Obviously it 

 formed also the basis upon which Judge Potter constructed his fanci- 

 ful derivation of Passamaquoddy from pos, meaning great, asquam 

 meaning water, and aquoddie meaning pollock {Collections of the 

 Maine Historical Society, IV, 1856, 191; History of Manchester New 

 Hampshire, 1856; Historical Magazine, I, 1857, 84); and this explan- 

 ation, wholly erroneous as shown on an earlier page (417), has appeared 

 in numerous works, including Hind's Report on the Geology of New 

 Brunswick, 1865, 260, A. Leith Adams' Field and Forest Rambles, 34, 

 and others. Sometimes, moreover, by a freak of memory, the Indian 

 tribe and not the place has been made the origin of the name {Collections 

 of the Maine Historical Society, I, 1865, 27). In later times, however, 

 the Mudge-Featherstonhaugh view ceased to find acceptance, and 

 went down to defeat, it is obvious, before the simpler, more reason- 

 able, more attractive, and better advocated theory so forcefully 

 developed by Gesner, Rand and Dawson. 



Another explanation, coming from a source apparently authori- 

 tative, though actually, as I have earlier shown (page 418), unworthy 

 of confidence, is that (or rather those, for there are two) given by 



