[ganong] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 95 



Analysis of the word Pentagoet. — I have not myself obtained this name 

 from the modern Indians, but fortunately it seems preserved, as taken directly 

 from the Penobscot Indians, in two authoritative works. In Springer's Forest 

 Life and Forest Trees . . . of Maine and New Brunswick (New York, 1856), a book 

 which, despite some errors, contains a great deal of accurate fact obtained directly 

 from original sources, and which, in its derivation of other Indian names is one of 

 the most accurate works known to me, we read in connection with the Penobscot, — 

 "From the head of the tide-water, at the City of Bangor, to the mouth of the river, 

 a distance of about thirty miles, it was known to the Indians by the name of BAAM- 

 TU-GUAI-TOOK, which means broad river, sheet of water, or, more literally, all 

 waters united" (page 186). This name is given by Springer wholly without any 

 reference to, or apparent knowledge of, the ancient Pentagoet. Further, this general 

 form is fully confirmed, independently, by another good authority, namely, Moses 

 Greenleaf, the Maine geographer, who, in his list of Maine place-names of 1823, 

 gives as one name for the Penobscot River, PEM-TA-QUA-IUK-TOOK, and identi- 

 fies it with the ancient "Pemtageovet," which he thinks an erroneous form of the 

 same word {Moses Greenleaf, Maine's First Mapmaker, 121). Again, Father Vetro- 

 mile, in his book The Abnakis and their History, 49, makes this statement, "PEN- 

 TAGWET, or BOAMTUQUET means BROAD-WATER, and it expresses a locality 

 after the narrows of Bucksport up towards Bangor," and in another place he gives 

 the name as BOAMTUQUAITOOK {op. cit., 48). As Father Vetromile was a 

 missionary to the Penobscot Indians and must have known these localities well, 

 his testimony on this point is important, even though in all matters that lay beyond 

 his own immediate observation his book is quite untrustworthy. Thus, Springer's 

 and Vetromile's forms, by statement, and Greenleaf's by implication, applied to 

 the lower tidal part of the river, precisely as did those of the early French. Comparing, 

 now, these three forms with those of the early French records above cited, it is 

 evident that all are in essential agreement, excepting that Springer's and Greenleaf's 

 forms, with one of Vetromile's, have an additional OOK, or TOOK. Accordingly 

 we can deduce with reasonable certainty the aboriginal form of the word. The first 

 syllable, as shown by the forms PEIM, BAAM, BOAM, could not have had the 

 èimple sound of PAM or BAM, but must have had a long, or partly double sound, 

 which, following a hint later to be noted, we can perhaps best express by the spelling 

 PEHEM; then followed syllables like TE-GOO, and then a final AT or AK, the 

 former representing the form in which the French always caught the peculiar TK 

 sound expressive of the Indian locative, which the English usually caught as K; 

 and finally to these the modern Indians add the OOK or TOOK. Thus the aboriginal 

 form of the word would have been very close to PEHEM-TE-GOO-AT, accented 

 probably on the last syllable. 



Turning to the roots of this word, the latter part is at once obvious. The root 

 TE-GOO-A is plainly identical with the TEG8É (or, in our spelHng, TEGOOÂ) 

 of the closely-allied Abnaki, as given by Father Rasles, in his authoritative Abnaki 

 Dictionary (page 523) in the sense of FLOW in a good many compounds meaning 

 "river." When to this root we add the final locative K, or T, making the word apply 

 to a place, we have TE-GOO-ÀT or TE-GOOA-K identical with the early French 

 termination, and meaning literally FLOWING-PLACE, in description of a large 

 river. This root survives abundantly in this sense in the form TIGOOK, often 

 contracted to TOOK, in Maine and New Brunswick place-names, for example, 

 Chiputneticook, Woolastook (aboriginal name for the Saint John) ; other instances 

 are given by Hubbard in his Woods and Lakes of Maine, and yet others will appear 

 later in this series. To this root TE-GOO-ÂT, the Indian informants of Springer 



