[GANONG] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 183 
It remains now to inquire in how far this meaning is appropriate to the place, 
and the reason for its application. This will be immediately evident to everyone 
who knows the river. From about three miles above its mouth, to the Great Falls, 
twenty-two miles up, this river is one of the roughest and most difficult for canoe 
navigation in all of New Brunswick, being broken almost constantly by bad rapids 
interspersed with small falls. This I know well, for I have brought my own canoe 
the entire length of the river, including this part, to the no small admiration of the 
river experts. So rough is this part that for many a year the Indians and guides 
have avoided it by portaging all the distance along the wood road to the Falls; but 
in early days this was impossible, and the Indians had to face the severe labor 
imposed by the falls and rapids. It was in description of this part of the river, 
there can be no question, the name was given. And it is a coincidence of some 
interest that one of the roughest of the places is now called The Rough Waters. 
OTHER EXPLANATIONS OF THE NAME.—The earliest explanation of the name 
that I have been able to find occurs in a prospectus designed to promote the settle- 
ment at the mouth of the river, issued by an early grantee, Arthur Goold, in 1784. 
It reads, NEPISSEQUIT, SIGNIFYING, IN THE INDIAN DIALECT, HAPPY 
RETREAT (Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society, 11, 1899, 128). 
For such a meaning, however, I cannot find the slightest justification in any Micmac 
roots bearing any resemblance to those involved in the word in question. Moreover, 
it is precisely this same meaning HAPPY RETREAT which Cooney, in his well 
known History of Northern New Brunswick and Gaspé (101), gave for the word 
Miramichi, thus originating an explanation for the latter word which has been 
widely adopted by later writers, and has become firmly fixed in local belief, though 
it is wholly without reputable foundation. The explanation is obviously conven- 
tional, and therefore as applicable to one place as another, for it owes its popularity 
not to historical but psychological causes. Some trace of Goold’s idea seems to 
survive locally, however, for I have been told by residents of Shippegan that 
Nepisiguit means SAFE, alluding to the shelter it offered the Indians running in 
their canoes from a storm. 
A second explanation is Cooney’s own (op. cit. 190), viz., TROUBLED AND 
FOAMING WATERS, which is measurably correct; and this meaning was adopted 
by Gesner and other later writers with various slight modifications, and has become 
the usual local explanation in the form FOAMING WATERS, TROUBLED 
WATERS, or ROUGH WATERS. A very different explanation was given by Sir 
R. Bonnycastle in his book, The Canadas in 1841, viz., THE LANDING PLACE 
OF THE GREEN TREES, while somewhat similar is Father Vetromile’s later 
explanation TREES GOOD FOR CANOES (The Abenakis and their History, 59). 
But for neither of these can I find the slightest authority or evidence in Micmac 
roots, and they represent apparently mere guesses, if not, indeed, freaks of memory. 
The name Nepisiguit, as applied to the Brook above Grand Falls, is a white 
man’s, doubtless a lumberman’s, usage, for the Micmacs give that brook a very 
different designation (these Transactions, IJ, 1896, ii 256). The names PISIGUIT 
(a branch of Tabusintac River, New Brunswick), PISQUID (branch of Hillsborough 
River, Prince Edward Island), and PIZIGUID, the aboriginal name of the Avon 
River, Nova Scotia, are not at all abbreviations of Nepisiguit, as might be supposed, 
but different words, though involving the same root BEGIT, as I shall show later 
in this series. 
SUMMARY.—The name Nepisiguit is a corruption, through the French, of the 
Miemac WIN-PEG-IJ/-OO-IK, which means ROUGHLY-FLOWS-DASHING, or 
