SOME WABANAKI SONGS. 3 



It is from these same authorities that I have been able to obtaiu the two interesting 

 productions which I have the honour to lay before our Section of the Royal Society. 



In the letter accompanying the manuscripts, Mrs. Brown wrote to me as follows : — 

 " I have been able to collect several songs, but only two could be properly called love- 

 songs, and all but one have stories attached to them. The task of writing, or trying to 

 express with English letters, the peculiar intonation of the Indian language is no trifling 

 affair. It may print all right, but Chee-00-nà-gamess himself, ' could not read it. 



"The two songs that I send are from Sapial Selmo, the wampum reader of the 

 "Wabanakis. He is the grandson of the last great chief of the tribe, and is captain at the 

 council, not only of the "Wabanaki, but of the Mohawks also. He still holds the wampum 

 and keeps all the old traditions. I am always obliged to use great finesse and more 

 presents to get anything from his family than from all the rest. But it is worth most . . 

 You would certainly have enjoyed the songs, coiUd you have peeped into the dirty camps 

 and seen the expressive faces in sympathy with the subject. People who do not under- 

 stand the Indians, can never imagine what wonderfully susceptible natures they have." 



"While agreeing with Mr. Leland, as to the clear indications of Norse influence in 

 many of the Wabanaki legends, Mrs. Brown maintains that these Indians have quite a 

 number of beautiful myths entirely their own. She looks forward with eagerness to the 

 publication, by Mr. Leland, of a second volume wholly devoted to those purely native 

 productions of the Wabanaki imagination. She takes the utmost interest in all that 

 concerns the Passamaquoddy tribes, over whom she exercises exceptional influence — the 

 fruit of insight and sympathy. Champlain, who is followed by Bancroft and others, 

 designated the Passamaquoddies as the " Etchemins." Mrs. Brown gives the preference to 

 the name which she has assigned them for the reason that their totem is a rude picture of 

 two Indians pursuing pollock (in which those waters once abounded) in a canoe. Quoddy 

 is the native word for that species of fish, and some ascribe the same origin to Acadia — a 

 name which was early applied to the whole region. The Passamaquoddies are partitioned 

 into three reservations — one at Pleasant Point, on Passamaquoddy Bay ; one at Calais, and 

 the third at Peter Dana's Point, Princeton. They are as nomadic as Arabs, and are not 

 found for longer than a month at a time at any of the reservations. They almost all 

 understand English, and a few of them speak it. Their own tongue differs from the 

 Micmac, but resembles the Malicete and Penobscot. All these groiips have the same 

 legends, and honour the same mythical personages, Glooscap, Mikwum-wess, etc., though 

 under different names. At the time of de Monts' visit, the Passamaquoddy Indians 

 numbered about twelve hundred men. Now they are reduced to less than five hundred, 

 including women and children. This reduction may, in part, be attributed to intermar- 

 riage with the lowest of the whites, each succeeding generation of mixed blood becoming 

 less and less able to endure the hardships of the primitive life of the Indians. Formerly 

 they are said to have attained a great age, but centenarians have been exceptional in 

 recent times. Nevertheless, four sisters died, not very long ago, whose combined ages 

 were said to be four hundred and thirty-five years. They attributed their longevity to 

 the use of an herb, the secret of which had been imparted to their grandmother by a 

 wild (that is, western) Indian for the price of a bride's dowry, with which to purchase a 



' Legendary petroglyphic artist. 



