94 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



PANOAPSGETJG, whicli in our mode of writing would be PANAWOPSKETCHK. 

 This word evidently bears a very close relationship to PANAWC )PSKEK, the original 

 of Penobscot, considered below; and presumably is substantially identical with it. 

 I have not been able to identify the word on the ground, however, though I hope 

 later to do so. An obliging correspondent, Mr. M. Sutherland, the Postmaster at 

 Red Bank, has interviewed the Indians of that vicinity for me, and he finds they 

 have a different name for Indian Point, where they no longer live. Accordingly 

 there seems to be some mistake in the location of the word in Father Pacifique's 

 list, though I have no question that it will be found to apply appropriately to some 

 place on the Northwest Miramichi. 



Pentayoet — Penobscot. 



Location and Application. The early French (now extinct) and English 

 names, respectively, for the principal river of Maine, which drains the central part 

 of the State southward, and of the Bay at its mouth. Their early history is closely 

 interlocked with that of Acadia. 



History of the word Pentagoet. — This name appears for the first time, so 

 far as I can find, in Champlain's narrative of his expedition to the Penobscot in the 

 autumn of 1604, in the form PEIMTEGOÛET (Voyages, Laverdière's edition, 179), 

 while PEMETEGOIT and PEMETEGOET are the forms adopted in his edition of 

 1632, (op. cit. 725, 773, 782), and PEMETEGOIT on his maps of 1613 and 1632, 

 while a map of 1610, based on Champlain, adopts PEMETOGAT (Map in Brown's 

 Genesis of the United States, I, 456). Champlain's contemporary Lescarbot adopts 

 PEMPTEGOET in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France {Champlain Society's Edition, 

 II, 273, 322). Father Biard, however, who, like Champlain, had visited the place, 

 has PENTEGOËT {Thwaites' Jesuit Relations, II, 47), thus introducing the sound 

 of N instead of M, and this, obviously under the influence of the easier pronunciation 

 of PENT than PEMT, soon became the prevailing form, the latest use of the M I 

 have found occurring in Father Le Jeune's Relation of 1635 as PEMPTEGOtJS 

 (Relations, cited, VIII, 13). In all of these early records, as witnessed well by the 

 maps, and especially by Father Biard's statement that the Chiboctous (the Castine 

 River) emptied into it (op. cit. II, 49) the name is applied to the lower part of the 

 river only, the tidal part below the present Bangor, while the upper part was called 

 Norumbega, a word whose history will later be traced in this series. The word 

 occurs frequently in later records of the French period, in the forms PENTAGWET, 

 PENTAGOEÛT, PENTAGOUIT, but mostly PENTAGOUET, and gradually became 

 extended from the lower part to include the entire river. The word was pronounced, 

 I take it, with the accent on the last syllable. It was given much prominence in 

 the French period through the maintenance there (àt the present Castine) of a strong 

 fort, which witnessed many vicissitudes; but wth the abandonment of the fort 

 and river by the French about 1670 the name gradually ceased to have practical 

 importance, and soon became verbally extinct, though of course it lingered long 

 upon the maps as an alternative to Penobscot, which obtained a complete ascend- 

 ancy with the occupation of the river by the English. An interesting aberrent form 

 is the POUNTEGOUYAT, apparently used by the Dutch in connection with their 

 expedition to the river (Wheeler, History of Castine, 1875, 14). For historical 

 purposes the word is now generally spelled PENTAGOET, which may be regarded 

 as the standard form since its adoption by Wheeler, in his monograph on the I'\)rt 

 (Collections of the Maine Historical Society, second series IV, 1893, 113, 123), and by 

 Mr. C. W. Noyes, in his remarkably complete Plans ami Restoration of the Fort 

 published in 1907. 



