Section II, 188*7. [ 1 ] Teans. Roy. Soc. Canada. 



I. — Some Wabanaki Songs. 

 By John Reade. 



(Presented May 25, 1887.) 



Of the great families or groups of Cauadian aborigines — the Hyberborean, the 

 Athabascan, the Columbian, the Dacotan, the Huron-Iroquois, and the Algonquin — the 

 last named has the vastest range, and, in one respect at least, the greatest historical 

 importance. Extending from Labrador to South Carolina, from Newfoundland to the 

 Rocky Mouutaius, and comprising some forty dialects or varieties of allied speech, it 

 presented to the first comers along the whole Atlantic coast those earliest specimens of the 

 red man which have become typical in modern history and romance. To the Algonquin 

 stock belonged, with one remarkable exception, all the Indians of Acadia, of Canada, of 

 New England, of Pennsylvania, of Virginia, of the Carolines, with which the Europeans 

 who touched the shores of North America came in contact. It included tribes as far 

 apart as the Bethucks and the Blackfeet, the Crées and the Micmacs, the Mississaugas 

 and the Delawares. The term Algonquin, as the name of a language which, in spite of 

 manifold variations of form, was intelligible over so great an area, was at first applied to 

 the dialect of the Indians of Lake Nipissing, who have long vanished, by gradual absorp- 

 tion or decay, as a separate tribe. The name survives, however, and the language is still 

 spoken from the shores of the Atlantic far into tlie heart of the continent. A word which, 

 in some shape, is common to all the dialects of that language is wab, signifying " white " 

 or " bright." In Ojibway, waban is " the twilight of the morning," and by a natural 

 extension of meaning, " the east." From it the eastern Algonquins assumed the name of 

 Wabanaki, which, in its modiiied form, Abenaki, some of them still bear. 



" I call the tribe of which the Passamaquoddies are a division Wabanaki," writes Mrs. 

 "W. Wallace Brown, " though the name is not accepted by all ethnologists, most of them 

 preferring the term Abenaki. My reasons for my choice are (1) that the Passamaquoddies 

 thus distinctly pronounce their tribal name ( Wabanaki) ; (2) that etymology confirms the 

 meaning which they assign to it — the word ' waba^ signifj'ing ' light,' and the words 

 'ivabaso' (white), ' ivabaock' (white cloth), 'ivaba-ban' (the ruler of the northern lights), and 

 ' loaba-eh ' (a mythical white bird, to which is ascribed the origin of ' loabap ' or white 

 wampum) being all derived from it." On the same question, Mr. Leland says : " Among 

 the six chief divisions of the red Indians of North America, the most widely extended is the 

 Algonquin . . Belonging to this division are the Micmacs of Nova Scotia, and the 



Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes of Maine, who, with the St. Francis Indians of 

 Canada and some smaller clans, call themselves the Wabanaki, a word derived from a root 

 signifying white or light, intimating that they live nearest to the rising sun or the east. 

 In fact, the French-speaking St. Francis family, who are known par eminence as ' the 



Sec. i, 1887. 1. 



