[GANONG] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 189 
History or THE Worp.—It appears for the first time, so far as known, upon 
a detailed map of the Restigouche River made in 1786 by W. Von Velden, a surveyor 
from Quebec, with the spelling UPSATQUITCH, (MS. in the Crown Land Office at 
Fredericton). I cannot find it again until 1814, when it occurs upon the fine pub- 
lished map of Eastern Canada, entitled Cabotia, by Purdy, in the form UPSAL- 
QUITCH, with the first T of Von Velden’s form replaced by L, but otherwise the 
same. It next appears upon Bonnor’s large map of New Brunswick, of 1820, aS 
UPSALQUITCH, evidently copied from Purdy. Upon a MS. plan of 1831 in the 
Crown Land Office, apparently the earliest of the New Brunswick plans to show 
the name, I find ABSETQUATCH, but the published maps followed Bonner, and 
thereafter one another, in using UPSALQUITCH. This latter spelling, accordingly, 
has come down to our day as the standard map form, which of course has determined 
the literary and other polite usage. 
ANALYSIS OF THE Worp.—The Mimac Indians now living at Restigouche, and 
in various parts of New Brunswick, all use the name and recognize it as Indian. 
Joe Martin, the very well informed Chief at Mission Point, pronounced it for me as 
AB-SET-QUETCHK’ (I quote my notes), and I have obtained it from other Indians 
in similar form. The great Micmac scholar, Rand, gives it as APSETKWECHK 
(First Reading Book in the Micmac Language, 102). The late Edward Jack gave it 
to me as UP-SET-QUITCH-QUE, “the que pronounced as in French,” and Mr. 
Michael Flinne, late teacher of the Micmac school at Eeelground, near Newcastle, 
obtained it for me as AP-SET-KWETCHK. The close agreement of these forms, 
obtained authoritatively from independent sources, and their correspondence with 
the forms of Van Velden and of the plan of 1831, makes it certain that we possess 
the aboriginal form of the name, which can best be written AP-SET-KWECHK’. 
As to its meaning, substantially all good opinion agrees. Joe Martin, above- 
mentioned, told me the name signifies SMALLER RIVER, which is substantially 
the same as the LESSER RIVER given by Cooney as long ago as 1832, (History of 
Northern New Brunswick and Gaspé, 223); while the same explanation is given as an 
alternative by Herdman in his work earlier mentioned. Rand gives A SMALL 
RIVER (Op. cit., 102); Edward Jack gave me LITTLE BRANCH. This general 
meaning, moreover, is confirmed from other sources also. 
The aboriginal form in conjunction with the meaning leave no question as to 
the roots of the word. The root APSAK, which occurs as APSAT in some com- 
binations, means SMALL (Rand, Micmac-English Dictionary, 25); while the root 
of QUETCH is obviously the word KWEK (or QUEC or GWEK) meaning A MINOR 
RIVER, or, as we say in English, STREAM (the termination for a larger river being 
TOOK or TAGOOK). This termination KWEK or GWEK is common in Micmac 
place-names especially in its full form of BOO-GWEK as will later appear. (Compare 
KOUCHIBOUGUAC in the next paper of this series). With the root KWEK is 
combined the suffix TCH or CH, which is always the diminutive, signifying LITTLE, 
and here obviously used to give consistency to the idea of smallness: the final K is, 
of course, simply the common locative suffix signifying that the word refers to a place. 
We obtain somewhat the same locative effect in English by prefixing “The” to a 
place-name, as when we say “The Saint John,” instead of “Saint John River.’ 
The full form of the word would then be APSET-KWEK-TCH-K meaning literally 
SMALL-STREAM-PLACE. The Upsalquitch, however, is by no means a small 
stream, absolutely, though it is small in relation to another, of which it is a great 
branch and with which it therefore comes into comparison, viz., the Restigouche, 
The word SMALL therefore here involves the idea, I believe, of comparison with the 
greater stream, and therefore is more exactly rendered by SMALLER (or LESSER), 
