[GANONG] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 187 
As to its meaning, the Indians agree. Thus Newell Paul told me that it means 
BIG EEL RIVER, and added that the Indians “used to catch the biggest eels ever 
caught, in that river and lake.” Edward Jack gives RIVER OF BIG EELS (Op. 
cit., 205); Gatschet (Op cit., 24) gives RIVER OF MANY EELS, though in a later 
letter to me he stated that it should be RIVER OF BIG EELS, and the same explana- 
tion has been given me by Mrs Wallace Brown of Calais, Me., who knows the Passama- 
quoddies well. In view of the facts the roots of the word become perfectly clear. 
The syllable MAG is a prefix meaning BIG, not, however, in Maliseet and Passama- 
quoddy, but in Miemac (Rand, English-Micmac Dictionary, 36, where several 
examples of its use are given). It is found in a good many place-names as will 
appear later in this series. The second syllable, A or E, is simply separative between 
the preceding and following roots, as Rand’s examples illustrate. The next root is 
GAT or GAD, or KAT or KAD (the letters g and k, also d and t being almost indis- 
tinguishable in Indian), which is the Micmac word for EEL, though the Passama- 
quoddy word is also similar. The next root is the dissylable A-WEE, which is the 
Micmac possessive, meaning ITS, the W being sounded, as is commonly the case, more 
or less like V. The final syllable, omitted, it will be noticed, from most of the earlier 
known uses of the name, is K, which is a locative termination, signifying place, pos- 
sibly standing here for a reduction from TOOK, meaning river. Thus the full form 
of the word would be MAG-E-GAD-A-WEE-K, meaning exactly BIG-EEL-HIS- 
PLACE, or, as we would say, BIG EEL PLACE. There is, I believe, not the least 
doubt as to the correctness of this meaning. 
It will be noticed that the spelling GUA of the third syllable of our standard 
form does not correctly represent the Indian root, nor is it found in any of the 
recorded forms excepting only those given by Sproule, with whom it originated evi- 
dently in some error, doubtless a clerical substitution of GUA for GAU, which latter 
does fairly represent the sound. Its use by Edward Jack, above noted, is no excep- 
tion, since he was obviously influenced by its modern spelling. 
It may seem at first sight an objection to this interpretation that the place 1s 
in Passamaquoddy and not Micmac territory. But, as I show elsewhere (in Oro- 
mocto following) and shall prove later in detail, many, if not most, of the place- 
names along the Fundy coast far into Maine are of Micmac, not Passamaquoddy or 
Penobscot origin. 
This interpretation moreover, receives interesting confirmation from another 
and appropriate source, for Rand gives as the Micmac name of Liscomb Harbor, 
Nova Scotia, MEGADAWIK, obviously the same word as MAGAGUADAVIC with 
the separative, or second, syllable omitted, and assigns to it the meaning WHERE 
THE BIG EELS ARE TAKEN (First Reading Book in the Micmac Language, 
91). In his Micmac-English Dictionary, 182, Rand gives two other place-names 
into which the root GAT or KAD, EEL enters, and Gatschet (Op. cit. 21) gives 
another on Grand Manan. 
The question now arises as to the appropriateness of this name to the locality. 
My own knowledge of this point being inadequate, I applied to two persons who 
know the river particularly well. Mr. James Vroom of St. Stephen, N.B., writes me 
that eels are very abundant and very large all along the main river [Magaguadavic] 
for two miles above the fall [at St. George]; that the river, through this distance, 
isa deadwater such as eels particularly like, and that a place where they are especi- 
ally abundant is the Eel Pond, so called, just where the branch (or Canal) to Lake 
Utopia leaves the main river. Captain Charles Johnson of St. George confirms this 
information and extends it, saying that eels are abundant everywhere in the river 
and lakes, and that they occur plentifully also in the salt water basin below the 
