BPECKl INTRODUCTION 177 



been a practicable occupation for several generations. Neither 

 dances nor ceremonies have been performed within the memory of 

 the old people, so we only have the names of several dances which 

 are remembered through tradition. The term alnak' hadi'n denotes 

 the common dance (Penobscot alnaba'gan) performed as a part of the 

 marriage ceremony which, like that of the Penobscot, is proposed by 

 means of wampum. Several strings of wampum, which were given 

 to the parents of his grandmother by her husband when he proposed 

 marriage, were fortunately obtained from Frangois Neptune. Naw- 

 adowe'', "song and dance" (Penobscot, Nawa'dawe), was a war dance 

 in which the men carried tomahawks, and skogogwaga'n, "snake 

 dance," was similar to the Penobscot ma'tagi'posi", "moving in a 

 serpentine manner." 



In the field of folk lore, medicinal lore and shamanism much still 

 remains to be done with the informant. The culture hero and 

 transformer Gluskabe', "the Deceiver," is the same as that of the 

 Penobscot, and shares generally the same characteristics. A com- 

 parative study of the transformer (Gluskap) cycle in Wabanaki 

 mythology is being prepared by the writer, so it does not seem 

 essential to refer just now to cognate elements m the mythology of the 

 other tribes of the group. 



Within the last generation the Wawenock dialect has gone com- 

 pletely out of use. Most of the survivors are half-breeds and speak 

 French. The only person I found who knows the dialect is Frangois 

 Neptune, supposedly a full blood, in his sLxties (1914), the oldest 

 man at Beeancour, whose acquaintance I had the good fortune to 

 make in 1914 during a trip of reconnaissance among the Abenaki in 

 company with Mr. Henry Masta of this tribe." Neptune's interest 

 in his dialect, which he knew to be on the verge of extinction, made 

 work with him quite easy, although the state of his health prevented 

 our doing more at the time. The following few myths in text will, 

 I think, enable us to form some idea of its intermediate position 

 between Penobscot and St. Francis Abenaki when more of the texts 

 already collected in both of these dialects are published.** It seems 

 hardly necessary to remark that, in the scanty material on this region 

 so far available in print, there exists absolutely nothing in the Wawe- 

 nock dialect. 



** It might be added that Mr. Masta has given considerable time to the study of his people, and he is 

 quite satisfied as to the identity of the Abenaki of Beeancour with the Wawenoclv of early Maine history. 



" Comparative linguistic and mythological material in Penobscot, which the Wawenocli most closely 

 resembles may be found in the writer's "Penobscot Transformer Texts," International Journal of Ameri- 

 can Linguistics, vol. I, no. 3, 1918, while Doctor Michelson has given the position of Penobscot among the 

 eastern Algonkian dialects in his Preliminary Report on the Linguistic Classification of -\lgonquian 

 Tribes, Twenty-eighth Ann. Rep. Bur. .\mer. Ethn., 1913, pp. 2S0-288. 



