196 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
conjunction with the description makes it plain that this word is an abbreviated 
form of OO-NE-GAN-ISIS, that is OO-NE-GAN with the diminutive suffix SIS, 
making the word mean LITTLE PORTAGE, and almost equivalent to Anagance 
discussed above. 
OONIGUNSUK, the Micmac name for Clyde River, Nova Scotia, given by Rand 
as OONIGUNSUK, meaning A PORTAGE (Reader, 86), presumably in description 
of some important portage towards Pubnico or Tusket waters, and OONIGUN, the 
name of Portage, Prince Edward Island, meaning THE CARRYING PLACE (Rand, 
Micmac-English Dictionary, 187) are obviously the same word, which no doubt was 
also used for innumerable other portage places in the provinces. 
OONIGUNS, given as OONIGUN S, meaning A PORTAGE, the aboriginal 
name of Jardine’s Bank according to Rand, (Reader, 90) and OONIGUN EENUCH, 
meaning A PORTAGE, the aboriginal name of Dunk’s Cove (op. cit. 87). The former 
place I have been wholly unable to identify, but the latter is the old form of Duncan 
Cove, near Halifax, though perhaps meant for Dunk River, Prince Edward Island. 
MED-AU-AN-EEG-AN-UK, meaning CARRYING PLACE has been given me 
by a Micmac chief at Mission Point, Quebec, as the aboriginal name for Stillwater 
Brook, a branch of the Restigouche. It involves the root OONEGAN, very obviously, 
and the portage probably led into a branch of the Upsalquitch. 
It is of interest to note that the word OONEGUN was known, and in precisely 
the Indian sense, by Nicolas Denys. In his well-known book of 1672, in describing 
the portages between the waters of the Saint John River and the neighboring 
waters, he says, “It is these which the Indians call Louniguins,” the L in his word 
forming evidently the French article (Description geographique, I, 45; Champlain 
Society’s edition, 119). Furthermore the fine great Franquelin-de Meulles map of 
1686 marks the word ONIGUEN exactly in the place of the portage between the 
Little Tobique and the Nepisiguit Rivers, where lay one of the most important of all 
the ancient portages of New Brunswick (these Transactions, III, 1897, ii, 364). 
Still further, in the Genuine Letters and Memoirs relating to Cape Breton, by Pichon, 
of 1760, the word occurs as AUNIGUEN (26, 29, 34), though wrongly defined by 
the editor on page 26. 
Finally it is possible that the root OONEGAN occurs in the termination of the 
name AK-E-AK-WAPSK-OONEGAN, the aboriginal form of Wapskehegan (on the 
Tobique), said by some Indians to belong to Red Rapids; but the origin of this name 
is probably very different, as I shall show in the next number of this series. 
Wagan. 
LOCATION AND APPLICATION.—The name of a small stream in northern New 
Brunswick entering the Restigouche River from the south at the southerly bend 
which the river makes near its source. On some maps it is spelled WAAGAN, 
which rather better expresses the local pronounciation, viz., like WOG’-ON, or WAH’- 
GUN. Also, on recent maps the name WAGANSIS (pronounced locally with accent 
on the last syllable) is applied to a tiny stream heading near the latter and flowing 
south into Grand River. 
History or THE Worp.—It makes a first appearance in the form AVAGANEITZ 
in 1786, on a map of the Restigouche made from survey by Von Velden, of which 
map a copy is preserved in the Crown Land Office at Fredericton. This map became 
the original for all others of this region for a long time thereafter, and is followed 
by Bonnor’s large map of the Province, of 1820, and others later. Meantime, how- 
