"I'm glad to hear that you liked my little article": Letters Exchanged Between Frank T. Siebert and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, 1938-1945

PAULEENA MACDOUGALL University of

Writing from his home at 127 Merbrook Lane, Merion Station, Pennsylvania, on 9 January 1938, Dr. Frank T. Siebert, Jr., penned the following: Dear Mrs. Eckstorm: Many thanks for your very nice letter. I am glad to hear that you liked my little article. I have several others, longer and of broader scope, in preparation, but they probably will not appear for some time to come. One of these is a volume of linguistic texts, of which Dr. Speck and I are joint authors. The letter quoted above and others to follow offer a glimpse into the thoughts of two very different people who shared an interest in the Penobscot Indians: one, a woman of 73 years who had already published seven books and numerous articles at the time the two began correspond­ ing, the other a 26-year-old medical doctor. Siebert studied at Episcopal Academy, Haverford College, and received his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he made the acquaintance of anthropologist Frank Speck. The young doctor attended summer institutes in linguistics where he encountered Algonquianists such as Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir and Mary Haas. His ability in the field of linguistics did not go unnoticed at the University of Pennsylvania, because Speck asked him to lecture in his anthropology class. Siebert visited the Penobscot Indian Reservation in 1932 for the first time and collected vocabulary and stories from Penobscot speakers thereafter on his summer vacations. The letter quoted above reflects his avid interest in Penobscot language, an interest he would pursue until his death in 1998. In 1937 he published his first article, "Mammoth or 'stiff-legged bear'", the "little paper" referred to in the letter. Apparently Eckstorm had read the paper and wrote favorably about it to Siebert, and he responded, thus beginning the correspondence that is the focus of this paper. The authority on Maine Indian language, customs and tribal relation­ ships, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1865-1946) corresponded with many 166 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL historians, anthropologists, natural historians and folklorists. In addition to 17 letters from Siebert, she also received 19 letters from Frank Gould- smith Speck (1881-1950) between 1935 and 1941. She was the woman everyone pointed to when questions about Maine's Native Americans arose. Born Fannie Pearson Hardy, she attended Smith College, from which she graduated in 1888, and then returned home to Brewer, Maine. She later married Jacob Eckstorm, a minister from Chicago who died six years into their marriage leaving her with two children. Her father, Manly Hardy, conducted a lively business from trading furs and selling moccasins to lumber interests. He had a Penobscot woman as a nurse when he was a child and befriended several hunters in the Penobscot tribe, and spoke Penobscot fluently. He frequently welcomed Penobscot people into his home, so it was natural that his daughter would become interested in collecting language and cultural materials. She also avidly collected folk­ songs and published several articles and two books on the topic. Her writings on the Indians of Maine began in 1919 when she wrote a chapter on the subject for Louis Hatch's Maine: a history. She continued publish­ ing, with numerous articles appearing in such periodicals as Appalachia, Quarterly, Historia, Atlantic Monthly, Sprague 's Journal of Maine History, and local publications and newspapers.1 Frank T. Siebert, Jr., continued a medical career, while at the same time pursuing his interests in Algonquian linguistics, ethnology, material culture, and collecting early Americana. He conducted fieldwork with the Penobscot and other Indian tribes, concurrently collecting an extensive library of rare titles in American history and Algonquian linguistics, and items of material culture. Much of his correspondence with Eckstorm concerns their mutual interests. I will discuss them in the following order: Penobscot texts and points of grammar, place names, material culture, and rare books.

PENOBSCOT TEXTS AND POINTS OF GRAMMAR Siebert's mention of co-publishing Penobscot texts with Speck is intriguing. Since the letter postdates the publication of Speck's Penobscot texts in 1915, 1918, 1926 and 1935, and no other texts were published by Speck from the , I contacted the librarian of the American Philosophical Society Library where Speck's papers are housed and asked

For a detailed bibliography of Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, see Whitten 1976. "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 167 if any Siebert-Speck correspondence existed. I was surprised to find there was none. However, in a letter to Edward Sapir that predates the letter to Eckstorm by a year (25 May 1937), Siebert wrote: At present I have the following: 1) 17 Penobscot texts of my own, not ready for publication, 2) About 10 Penobscot texts of Prof. F. G. Speck (yet unpublished), which I am revising, and intend to edit with an added stem index. We hope this will be ready for publication by next winter. Siebert's use of the phrase "yet unpublished" suggests that ten unpublished Penobscot texts collected by Frank Speck are part of Siebert's collection, and have not yet been seen by the public.2 Siebert and Speck's plans to co-edit a body of texts left a scanty paper trail. Siebert had about 25 Penobscot texts that I and his other assistants typed and prepared for publication in the early 1980s. We hoped Siebert's texts would be published before his death, but I don't recall that he ever mentioned to me that any of them were collected by Speck — I was under the impression that they were all collected by Siebert. Siebert apparently spent much time on the project in those early years, because he mentioned the Penobscot texts again in his next letter to Eckstorm, dated 27 November 1939: If you don't mind, I am going to ask you a little favor. At present I am trying to prepare some Penobscot texts for publication, and I have run across some little dialectic variation that I would like to get an idea on as to its geographical distribution. I wish you would briefly send me the data you may have on the following from your Rasles, Nudenans, and what you have of Aubery. Rasles, Nudenans, and Aubery, are of course, references to manuscript dictionaries from Jesuit missions. Sebastian Rasles was a Jesuit priest who collected material on the ; the manuscript is dated about 1723. Jean Baptiste Nudenans was an man who lived at the mission at Pierreville, , and was educated by the Jesuits. He composed a dictionary in Abenaki and Latin dated 1760. Joseph Aubery was a Jesuit missionary at St. Francis who left a manuscript dictionary dated approximately 1709. Siebert eventually acquired copies of these dictionaries and used them extensively throughout his career to compare and elicit lexical items for his dictionary and in his studies of the Abenaki

21 learned from Connor Quinn at the 30th Algonquian Conference that Speck's texts were subsumed into Siebert's collection and will be published under Siebert s authorship (with considerable assistance from Richard Garrett and Martha Young - see Garrett 1998) by the American Philosophical Society. 168 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL dialects. He also used them to train his assistants during the Penobscot dictionary project.

THE GENESIS OF SIEBERT'S PENOBSCOT DICTIONARY The Penobscot dictionary project grew out of the Maine Indian Land Claims suit settled in 1980. In the late 1970s, the tribe, together with their allies the , sought federal recognition. To receive such recognition, the tribe needed to prove that they were a distinct cultural entity. Upon the advice of their attorneys the tribe hired Siebert and established a humanities department. Siebert conducted historical research on treaties negotiated with the states of Massachusetts and Maine. Siebert's interest and knowledge of the Penobscot language prompted the tribal administration to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a dictionary of the Penobscot language from Siebert's field notes, with Siebert as principle investigator. The Endow­ ment awarded the grant, and the tribe hired several research assistants to help with the painstaking work of organizing Siebert's fieldwork notes into a lexical form. Two Penobscot assistants were hired, Mary Lolar Rhein and Paul Francis, Jr.; I was the third assistant. During the three-year grant period, Rhein and Francis pored through Siebert's fieldwork notebooks, converting verbs to the independent indicative and copying words onto index cards, filing them by root. Dependent nouns (all nouns requiring a pronominal prefix) were entered in firstperso n singular, with gender recorded as animate or inanimate; non-dependent nouns were entered in the singular and plural; intransitive verbs were entered in the third person singular (since it does not require a pronominal prefix and thus begins with the root); and transitive verbs were listed under the root in alphabetical order. Homophonic roots created problems, but these were dealt with as individual cases. Each entry included examples of usage. Little refinement of the final draft has taken place since 1988; however, even with just three assistants an enormous amount of work did get done. In addition to filling out index cards with vocabulary from Siebert's field notes, Francis did considerable place-name research, compiling lists of place names from maps and other sources for the dictionary. In addition, every morning for several months Siebert lectured his assistants on the history of linguistic science, Eastern Abenaki dialectology and points of grammar, and recited long lists of vocabulary, particularly names of plants. At the end of the three-year grant period, a substantial card fileha d been "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 169 compiled. Siebert obtained a second grant, this time from the National Science Foundation, for the next phase of the project, which included extracting vocabulary from typed texts, typing a rough draft of the dictionary, and continued abstraction of vocabulary from numerous sources. It became clear to me at an early stage of my involvement in the work that a computer was a necessity, and so the next grant cycle included money to purchase hardware and software to organize the language material into a dictionary. At the end of the eight-year period, 25 texts in Penobscot with English translations had been entered into the computer together with a dictionary consisting of 495 pages of entries. More words were continuously added from miscellaneous notes and notebooks. One of my tasks included incorporating vocabulary from the 25 texts into the dictionary; vocabulary from some as yet untranscribed texts was not included, because Siebert had not yet finishedtranslatin g them. During this eight-year period of work, other Penobscot people played important roles as well; they included Carol Dana, Pauline Benally Mitchell and most importantly Madeline Tomer Shay, Penobscot speaker and primary informant. Without their assistance, Siebert would never have completed the work, and their contribution is here acknowledged. Aubery's French-Abenaki dictionary was my firstintroductio n to the Abenaki language. I translated the French entries into English over the course of a year's work with Siebert in 1979-80. In the course of these translations we had many discussions about dialects. Siebert hypothesized an inland and a coastal dialect of Penobscot, with more interaction between the coastal Penobscot and Passamaquoddy- speakers. But when he wrote to Eckstorm, he was just beginning to uncover the evidence for his hypothesis, and needed her help in the process. The dialect variation Siebert queried Eckstorm about concerned first the terms for 'animal' which occur in Penobscot both as awa-ss and awayoss. He cited this word as the one exception to the Penobscot rule of no vowel clusters, as well as evidence for his hypothesis of inland and coastal subdialects in Eastern Abenaki. The word he later recorded as waas could be found in the coastal dialect and Caniba (Kennebec River dialect), while the second form was used by inland speakers. Most of Siebert's questions to Eckstorm concerned lexical items. His second inquiry in the letter cited above concerned three other words. He asked her for the Penobscot words for 'laugh' [atemo], 'because' [wssdmccskwe], and 'with 170 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL all his might, to the utmost'; he had elicited both wsihkac and msihkccc from Penobscot informants for the latter phrase.3 At that time Siebert was working without a copy of Rasles' dictionary (1833); therefore, a number of his inquiries to Eckstorm were requests for her to look up words in her copy. In a letter that was not dated, but appeared between letters dated 14 April 1940 and 7 December 1940, he again mentioned his work on the Penobscot texts. He requested that Eckstorm send him her copy of Dickson's translation of Rasles' dictionary since she had two copies and because he was "still working on preparing my revision of Speck's Penobscot texts for publication." He expanded on this statement: "It is quite a task, accurate translation into English being frequently very difficult." She apparently turned him down, because on 7 December 1940, he wrote: I'm sorry you won't lend me the Rasles' Dictionary. I've only the need to use it in checking translations of Penobscot texts. I hope to have the remainder of Speck's Penobscot texts revised and in reliable phonemic transcription and translation, ready for publication soon. It will be a land­ mark in Algonquian linguistics. Finally, she succumbed to his persistent requests by lending him a carbon copy of Dickson's translation of Rasles in 1941. He again referred to his work with Speck's Penobscot texts in that same letter: "Newell Lyon was no real Penobscot speaker. In correcting Speck's texts for publication, I find so many errors that show a basic ignorance of the language." Then, once again, on 26 December 1943 he wrote, "It seems quite possible that the Penobscot texts that I revised for Professor Speck may be published within the coming year..." However, the texts were not published. On 16 December 1939, continuing his transcription and translating work, Siebert wrote asking Eckstorm to confirm the word sati 'conifer or evergreen'. He knew that Rasles had given sedi 'sapin', and wondered if she knew the word. He also asked her if she knew a word in Penobscot for 'spleen' or 'milt'. In another letter he complained that Dickson's translation was "none too good": "For instance Dickson translated 8emigh- igan as 'his stomach'. In Penobscot the term is womikikan 'his chest, breast'. Actually, French estomac means 'his stomach, chest, or breast'." In addition to being impatient with Dickson, Siebert clearly was frustrated

He must have settled upon msihkac, as that is the form that he provided for the dictionary. "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 171 with the availability of lexical materials in Penobscot as he wrote on 18 January 1941, "The peculiar thing in this language business is that none of the missionaries on the Penobscot River left any linguistic records apparently (except Vetromile's worthless Penobscot dictionary in the Bureau of American Ethnology and the few note fragments of O'Brien — all of late date)." Other letters reveal that Siebert asked Eckstorm for information about the Penobscot word for black or purple wampum — he was suspicious of the word that Newell Lyon had given Speck in his texts. She wrote back that Rasles had written s6kopi which Siebert consequently translated as "urine string", a term he felt was derogatory and would not be used for such a valued object as wampum.4 He later elicited a word for black or purple wampum from an informant, mkdhkapess (inanimate), meaning 'little black string'. All of the letters reveal that Siebert was actively working on the translation and transcription of the texts that Speck had given him; interestingly enough, it would be 30 years before he would pick them up once again and begin to put them in publishable form. When I began working with Siebert in 1979, one of the tasks we undertook was to type his Penobscot texts in Penobscot with accompanying English translations. He did not wish to use the interlinear model proposed by some of his colleagues, because he translated whole sentences and phrases into English, rather than translating each word. These texts were typed twice: the firsttim e we used a typewriter. After the purchase of the computer, the texts were typed a second time. Each time Siebert went over them carefully, checking for errors. However, it took him a very long time to do the task, and he became bored with it, often setting texts aside for months. As a result, some mistakes were not corrected until Garrett and Young later reviewed the materials with Siebert. Siebert believed that translating the Penobscot texts phrase by phrase, rather than word by word, provided a result that was closer to the true meaning of the Penobscot. I recall him struggling, sometimes for days, with particular brief passages before settling upon an English phrase that he felt came closest to the Penobscot. If his scholarship is of high quality it is because of his perfectionism. Unfortunately, perfectionism and an over-blown fear of making an error, or that someone else might use his

4 [Rasles (1833:510) actually gave the term as segaribi -ak; the literal translation is 'black string' (cf. nesseghek 'noir', Rasles 1833:492), but the root nssk- 'black apparently does not occur in Penobscot. DHP] 172 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL material, interfered with his ability to publish much of his work. He was still in the process of editing the texts he began working on in 1937 some 60 years later. Eckstorm's approach to publishing was somewhat different. While she was very careful and consulted numerous scholars as she worked, she was not afraid to send papers and books to the publisher. She left a legacy of nine books including The handicrafts of the modern Indians of Maine (1932), Indian place names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine coast (1941), Old John Neptune and other Indian shamans (1945) and several others. Eckstorm had a long-standing friendship with Mary Cabot Wheelwright (best known for her interest in Navaho culture), who often funded her fieldwork trips and for whom Eckstorm purchased items of material culture. However, she did not publish her texts either: she told Siebert she had about 25 (actually she had one or two more than that, and some of her texts were in several versions). In his 15 April 1944 letter Siebert urged Eckstorm to concentrate her efforts on her collection of Penobscot tales because he believed that "there are plenty of published Passamaquoddy and Ojibway tales, and both languages & mythology are living in these two tribes, while Penobscot is nearly dead in all respects." He wrote that he would like to see her publish all of her Penobscot tales, and offered to help her in any way that he could. Her texts are transcribed mostly in English, with scattered Penobscot words throughout. Her use of English is somewhat problematical. Siebert told me he thought her work "of very little use, if any". Some of the stories Eckstorm collected are written both in English and Penobscot. We have recently retyped all of her Penobscot texts and are currently editing them at the Maine Folklife Center for a future publication. Siebert's texts are mostly recorded in Penobscot but not tape-recorded, although he did record some texts on wax cylinders. He often talked about having the information on the cylinders transferred to tape, but was mistrustful of having anyone else hear them before he could get them transcribed. He tape-recorded some conversation with some of his informants, and at least one tale, "the White Deer" told by Susie Dana. Penobscot speaker Madeline Shay helped him translate the tale. During the period from about 1982 to 1988 he often used Madeline Shay as his primary informant to assist him in translating. She did not always know the "old Indian" (as she called the inland dialect), but was of considerable help on the project. However, Siebert still had some recorded material that "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 173 he had not transcribed and translated when I left to take a position at the University of Maine in 1989. From Siebert's letters it is clear that he was able to provide some help to Eckstorm as well. She had apparently queried him about the origin of the Penobscot word for bear, dwehsohs. He replied on 9 January 1938: -skw- 'bear' is the stem in the following Penobscot words: skweskw 'female bear', ndpeskw 'male bear', wapskw 'white bear'. The dwehsohs 'bear' is a generic term in Penobscot but does not belong to archaic Algonkian terminology but is secondary and probably arises from a taboo against speaking the name of the game animal. 'Little what you may call him' from dwen 'someone' with diminutive final -ohs. The -skw- stem also occurs in other , as in Cree maskwa 'bear'.

PLACE-NAMES Siebert encouraged Eckstorm to publish her Penobscot myths and offered to help her with her place-name research. She declined his help, probably because she was carrying on a long-standing and lengthy correspondence and collaboration with William F. Ganong of , whom she knew from his teaching at Smith College. However, some of the letters written by Siebert to Eckstorm dealt with both the linguistic and historical evidence that she would use to provide meanings for the place names in the Penobscot region She published her place name book in November 1941. Of Siebert's assistance she wrote, "Dr. Frank T. Siebert, a rising scholar of Abnaki..., has been personally helpful" (Eckstorm 1941:254). Siebert wrote a review of that book. In his review (Siebert 1943) he described the book as "the first careful work that has been done upon Maine place-names and... very commendable". He found fault with her analysis oiNorumbega and Penta- goet, but agreed with her analysis of most other place names. In his review he supported her discussion of Penobscot Bay place names as being derived from Passamaquoddy words, but he later changed his mind about this. Some of the discussion in the letters concerns place-name research and is of great interest, particularly regarding the controversy over whether terms in the Penobscot Bay area can be attributed to Penobscot speakers or to "Etchemin" (Passamaquoddy) speakers. Some of the argument put forward by Eckstorm is based upon the vocabulary recorded by Rosier in 1605 from residents of the Penobscot Bay region (Burrage 1906). Siebert wrote, "rogsoo 'bear' is Penobscot dlakso 'wolverine\pocamka 'polecat' 174 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL ispdkamke ', etc. I notice only one word that is probably Passama­ quoddy and that is shamogoon 'water'." Based upon the vocabulary and the evidence of early explorers, Siebert proposed that most of the peoples of Penobscot Bay and the lower coast were Penobscot or closely related Eastern Abenaki speakers. The Passamaquoddy may have been merely visitors, intermarried, etc. "Nevertheless," he wrote, I agree with you on the place-name evidence, and believe you are right in saying the "Etchemin" held most of the Maine coast, Penobscot Bay and Bangor region at one time. However, I believe this Passamaquoddy occupation belongs to a still earlier period, and one which probably will prove impossible to date. He also expressed a limited interest in place names and was pessimistic regarding the possibility of solving many of the names "no matter how great one's knowledge of Algonquian", due to the poor recording of the names. About a year later he wrote: I've recently discovered some grammatical traits or forms used by some Penobscots, but not all, that point to dialect mixture with Passamaquoddy among the Wawenock & Penobscot of the Bay region. This is aside from place-names and vocabulary. The grammatical traits he refers to concern the syncope that occurs in the speech of coastal residents (cf. Siebert 1980:124-5). His discovery of these coastal dialect variants led him to change his view about the origins of Penobscot Bay place names. Dialect variation, rather than population movement, accounted for the lexical overlap between coastal Eastern Abenaki and Passamaquoddy (or Etchemin, as it was called by Champlain and Lescarbot). Siebert suggested that Eckstorm check deeds of Penobscot land sales that might include personal names. He noted that de la Chasse listed 388 Indians at Pentagouet and wondered if they were all Penobscots. He recognized about half as Penobscot names: "mescouaromnit in cabin two moskwdlomit 'The Hollerer', mesquesit cabin six is meskwesit, 'He That Makes Much Noise', and netaminet, cabin twenty-three was nehtdminet, 'He who ever thinks of killing game'." Siebert also cautioned Eckstorm that many of the settlers at Old Town were originally from western Maine, and other villages, and had hunting territories in the Moosehead region. He cited two examples of personal names of that region, the wild cat gens peneas and kdpasse 'sturgeon', the name reflected in the place-name Carrabasset River, above Norridgewock. "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 175

Siebert's comments to Eckstorm about his review of her place-name book appear in a letter dated 3 October 1943: In my review of your book, I didn't try to be either kind or unkind, just impartial or fair. I don't believe that friendship should have anything at all to do with writing a critical review. Serious errors, if they can really be proved to be errors, should be brought to light no matter what the price... With regard to your book, I could have pointed out many more errors than I did, but I tried to give a fair sampling of both errors and good points, confining myself in all cases (except Norumbega) to points concerning which I was fairly sure of my conclusion and correctness... It takes a rather thorough knowledge of the language to do place-name work, and I could know the language a great deal better myself despite all my study upon it...

MATERIAL CULTURE AND RARE BOOKS A third topic covered in the letters is of no little interest. Siebert and Eckstorm both collected items of material culture. Siebert boasted (26 December 1943) that he had "the largest Penobscot collection in private hands", and was trying to build it up into a very fine collection, as he put it, "of museum proportions". He firstmention s the hood or cap of Molly Molasses in the letter dated 16 December 1939. Eckstorm apparently had challenged him on the authenticity of the cap because he wrote in reply that Newell Gabriel, born in 1861, remembered the cap as belonging to Molly. He also collected material from other reservations he visited. From Oklahoma he wrote, "I bought a fine pair of very lovely Delaware moccasins the other week-end." But his favorite collections came from his language informants in Lincoln, Maine. On 20 July 1941 he wrote from Cincinnati, "I secured the Stanislaus' birch bark box, but had to pay quite a price for it." The following month (27 August 1941) he added: I think you are right about the birch bark box of Francis' which I now have being made by Sylvia's mother in 1857. Francis told me it was made by his mother's mother before Sylvia was married but did not know the exact date, but the facts all agree since Sylvia was married in 1859. According to Eckstorm (Eckstorm papers, box 612, f. 88) Sylvia's mother was a Solomon from the Norridgewock village. Three years later (15 April 1944) Siebert refuted her doubts by explaining: I've traced the Molly Molasses cap I now have, which I bought from an antique dealer in Philadelphia in 1939. It came from the Indian collection of the estate of a man who was federal government Indian agent tor Grover Cleveland during his firstadministratio n (1880-84). The cap was 176 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL

purchased by him at Old Town when on a visit, 1880-82. The rest of his collection contained Ojibway and wonderful Plains Indian's pieces, several of which I also obtained. The decoration agrees exactly with that in the Molly Molasses picture & you agreed to this yourself... On 3 October 1943, he wrote sadly, All the Maine Indians of Lincoln are now dead. Joe Swasson having died last February. I got most of the Stanislaus and Swasson stuff that was of any value, including the long-hidden wampum belt. The canoe and eel- pout were too big to send by mail and so these were put in the Lincoln museum. If you hear of any Penobscot stuff for sale or disposal please let me know. In another letter that same year (26 December 1943) he asked, "Would you want to sell me your Penobscot silver brooches, powder horn, or any other of the Indian things you have?" Eckstorm declined to sell them; eventu­ ally her family donated the material to the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. Siebert also reveals his passion for collecting rare books in his letters to Eckstorm. In an undated letter (circa 1940) he wrote: About three or four weeks ago, while mmmaging in a Philadelphia book shop, I bought a copy of Nicolar's "Red Man," priced at 40 cents. What luck!! That is the first copy I have seen for sale in any book store or any book catalogue since I began collecting Eastern Indian Americana in 1929. On 15 April 1944 he wrote, some time ago I got a copy of John Eliot's Indian Bible. But never a Rasles. — Recently I obtained a poor copy of P.P. Wzokhilain's 'Wabanaki Kimzowi Awighigan'. My copy bears the signature of Frederic Kidder on the title page, and the date 1852. This is probably very rare. In spite of his glee in finding these items, the scarcity of the Rasles dictionary continued to plague him. In the midst of coaxing Eckstorm to send him her copy of Rasles' dictionary, on 22 October 1945 Siebert expressed his frustration at not being able to locate a copy of the book for himself: It just doesn't appear for sale. I've got many rarer items such as an Eliot Bible, the first edition of Roger William's "Key", London, 1643, the 1676 Hubbard, the first King Phillip's War folio (London, 1675), and at present I'm dickering for a Penhallow (, 1723), — but nary a Rasles. I did also get the Le Clercq Relation de la Gaspesie, Paris, 1691. It was not until many years later that Siebert was able to purchase a copy of Rasles, one already marked and worn from many years of use. "I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT YOU LIKED MY LITTLE ARTICLE" 177

CONCLUSION The letters from Frank Siebert to Fannie Eckstorm would be better understood if we had her replies. Some "reading between the lines" is required. One afternoon, a couple of years before he became seriously ill, Siebert told me that he had a parcel of letters that Eckstorm had written to him, and that he had been meaning to give them to the Fogler Library which holds her papers. I don't know if he made any arrangements for those letters before he died, but I suppose eventually they will surface and provide the other side of the story. Even without her correspondence, the letters reveal the interests that concerned both Siebert and Eckstorm. They shared an attraction to Penobscot language and culture, early American history, and the experience of working outside of the academy. In many ways their lives represent more of a 19th-century scholarly experience, for anthropology, folklore and modern linguistics were professionalized just prior to the time when they were corresponding. Both scholars left a legacy of published and unpublished work. Eckstorm's material fills eleven archival boxes at the Fogler Library at the University of Maine; much of this material deals with Penobscot language, history and culture. Siebert's papers are more problematical. He willed them to the American Philosoph­ ical Society and they are hopeful of soon obtaining them. The disposition of Siebert's papers, library and items of material culture is of no little significance, especially since the great body of his work is not published.

REFERENCES Aubery, Joseph. 1709. Dictionnaire abnaquis-francois. MS in the Musee Abenaki, Societe historique d', Quebec. Burrage, Henry Sweetser, ed. 1906. Early English and French voyages, chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534-1608. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, n.d. Abnaki-Latin dictionary from J. B. Nudenans, 1760. Type­ written MS (original and carbon copy) in the Eckstorm Collection, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Orono (original in the Ganong papers). . 1919. The Indians of Maine. Maine: a history, ed. by Louis C. Hatch (New York: American Historical Society), 1:43-64. . 1932. The handicrafts of the modern Indians of Maine: illustrating the Mary Cabot Wheelwright collection and other gifts to the Abbe Museum, Lafayette Park. Bangor, Maine: Jordan-Frost Printing Co. . 1934. Dickson's Rasle's Indian-Abnaki dictionary. Typewritten MS in the Eckstorm Collection, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Orono. . 1941. Indian place-names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine coast. Orono: University of Maine Press. . . 1945. Old John Neptune and other Maine Indian shamans. Portland, Maine. Southworth-Anthoensen Press. 178 PAULEENA MACDOUGALL

Eliot, John. 1663. The Holy Bible. Cambridge, Mass.: Samuel Green & Marmaduke John­ son. Ganong, William Francis. 1896. A monograph of the place-nomenclature of the province of New Brunswick. Transactions of the Royal Society of , ser. 2,2.II: 175-289. Garrett, Richard. 1998. My relationship with Frank Siebert. Maine History 37:102—103. Hubbard, William. 1775. A narrative of the Indian wars in New-England, from the first planting thereof in the year 1607, to the year 1677. Boston: John Boyle. Le Clercq, Chrestien. 1910 [1695]. New relation ofGaspesia, ed. by William F. Ganong. Toronto: Champlain Society. Nicolar, Joseph. 1893. The life and traditions of the Red Man. Bangor, Maine: C.H. Glass &Co. Nudenans, Jean Baptiste. 1760. Radicum Uabanakaearum Sylva. MS in the Musee Abenaki, Societe historique d'Odanak, Quebec (copy in the Michael C. O'Brien papers, Maine Historical Society, Portland). Penhallow, Samuel. 1859 [1726]. The history of the wars ofNew-England with the eastern Indians. Cincinnati: J. Harpel. Rasles, Sebastien. 1833. A dictionary of the Abnaki language in North America, ed. by John Pickering. Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, n.s., 1: 375-565. Siebert, Frank T., Jr. 1937. Mammoth or "stiff-legged bear". American Anthropologist 39:721-725. . 1938-45. Letters to Fannie Hardy Eckstorm. MSS (17 letters) in the Eckstorm Collection, box 620, f. 58, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Orono. . 1943. Review of Indian place-names oj the Penobscot Valley and the Maine coast, by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1941). New England Quarterly 16:503-507. . 1980. The Penobscot Dictionary Project: preferences and problems of format, presentation, and entry. Papers of the 11th Algonquian Conference, ed. by William Cowan (Ottawa: Carleton University), 113-127. Speck, Frank Gouldsmith. 1915. Penobscot tales. Journal of American Folklore 28:52-58. . 1918. Penobscot transformer tales. International Journal ofAmerican Linguistics 1:187-244. . 1928. Wawenock myth texts from Maine. 43rd Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1925-1926 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution), 165-197. . 1935. Penobscot tales and religious beliefs. Journal of American Folklore 48: 1-107. Whitten, Jeanne Patten. 1976. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm: a descriptive bibliography. Orono, Maine: Northeast Folklore Society. Williams, Roger. 1643. A key into the language of America. London: Gregory Dexter. Wzokhilain, Peter Paul. 1830. Wabanaki kimzowi awighigan. Boston: Crocker & Brewster.