230
Western Wabanaki Studies: Some Comments
Alvin H. Morrison SUNY, Fredonia
The Problems The basic problems discussed herein are: that the seven teenth and eighteenth-century Europeans left very few useful accounts of the Western Wabanaki peoples; that even fewer meaningful ethnohistorical studies of these historically important Native Americans have been attempted thus far; that some such studies have been ignored; and that there is much more research to do than can be done by the few researchers currently engaged in Western Wabanaki studies. The purpose of this paper is fivefold: first, to call attention to these problems; second, to comment on some con tributions that have been made already; third, to present my own tentative conclusions on some matters; fourth, to state some things that I feel should be investiqated; and fifth, to suggest one possible new research approach. In no way do I pretend to present here a thorough critique of Western Wabanaki studies; this paper is intended to be no more than a personal-perspective commentary, at best a goad for others to use as they will. It was exactly a decade ago that I bought my first books (out-of-print, of course) on the Wabanaki, or Dawnlanders, and started to become aware that these peoples, so very impor tant in the history of New England and New France, have been relatively unstudied, yet are a potential delight for modern anthropologists. In my first decade of studying the Dawnlanders, I have become acutely aware that much less is known about the semi-sedentary Western Wabanaki than about the more-nomadic Eastern Wabanaki peoples. This is so largely because of the differential contact stimuli from English and French intruders, respectively, and the reasons may be generalized ecologically as follows. Most of the ever-increasing horde of English settlers were more concerned with expatriating or exterminating the western Dawnlanders in New England (to procure ever-more farmlands) than they were with taking notes on the "heathen ways" of these "inferior" natives. The French, however, wrote accounts about aspects of their contacts with first the eastern and later the western-refugee Dawnlanders in New France while they settled among the natives in small numbers and peacefully exploited them, first as procurers in the fur trade and later as military , buffers and raiders against New England--and all the while attempted to missionize them. To be sure, there were some contradictions: a few Englishmen did write about the Wabanaki because they respected them enough to learn interesting things from and about them, and some French missionaries and govern ment officials actively disrupted the Dawnlanders' traditional residences for strategic reasons. But the major difference still stands out--namely, that the English wanted the Wabanaki off the land, while the French wanted them on it. These basically negative-English and positive-French attitudes toward the Dawnlanders vividly colored the history of intercultural
Published inPapers : of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977) 231
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Published in : Papers of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977) 232
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TRIBAL DISTRIBUTION CA.1725 ^B59fei Published in : Papers of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977) THE WABANAKI OF THE NORTH-ATLANTIC SLOPE CULTURE AREA (HUNTING-FISHING-GATHERING ~; MAIZE HORTICULTURE SUBSIDIARY WHERE PRESENT) <17) CA) (L) <20) 17TH -' CENTURY EXTRAORDINARY ' LANGOAGES ' 20T~ - ' CENIURY PEOPLES ALLIANCES &DIALECTS 'TRIBES' I.LJ CD MI CMAC I ~ --;;; ~ CD mCMAC CD MI CMAC CA CoNFEDERATION) :3 z ~ ci ...... !::! 0: zo: 0 ~ ~ ::1: ~ 1-W ~ u <> >- w - a::- u 0:: ~ Wl- ~ U.... O< C::: ~ w >- · EASTERN _) ® z>-8 ~ 0~ 0::~ @ MALI SEET- ffi MALI SEET ETCHEmN a:: 1- z o z 2 WESTERN 8 0 f2'B\ PASSAMAQUODDY PASSAMAQUODDY 0 >- ::::K..>~ ~ <~ I \;:!::) l U V) I -.Q:::J: (EACH PART A SEPARATE ~ ::t: ~ ~ Cor~FEDERATION) w ~ ~~ EJ ~.-i o:::l z IL. u.... <~L- ~00 z Q. 0 ~ '-"'-' 0 u.r--- ~a:: Q PLUS N => \2!Y AB NAKI- r.:::::~ :w OTHER '? ~ PENOBSCOT- !:\ 0) ho\ z z0 PEO'i51T ~ 0) \.V PENOBSCOT \31. PEUNA COOK " ~ ~ 3 ABNAKI- 5 tn 5 ABENAKI .;~: :·r: T·i ~. CF PE rj i ~ACOOK Published ·in·l ·JT: "'>:r:r·: c: s THEPapers of the 8th AlgonquianCONFEDERACY Conference ARE MEANT TO BE IN CLUDED IN EITHER (1977) -- ·-. . ~~.~ ;',! i ~ES. ® & 0 OR IN LANGUAGE 0 w"' w 234 relations, and largely explain the relative kinds and amounts of ethnohistorical documentation available to modern scholars on the Western and Eastern Wabanaki peoples (see Morrison 1974). The Land and the Peoples First, what was the geographical extent of Wabanakia, or the Dawnland? Second, who were and are the Wabanaki Algonquians? Third, where did, and do, the Eastern Wabanaki peoples end and the Western Wabanaki peoples begin? The maps and the chart accompanying this paper can help answer these questions, if interpreted correctly. An explanation follows. Aboriginally, ca. 1600, Wabanakia (the Dawnland) stretched from the Gaspe Peninsula on the north to Cape Ann (Gloucester, Massachusetts) on the south, and from Cape Breton Island on the east to Lake Champlain on the west. This area today con sists of three and a fraction Canadian provinces and three and a fraction American states. Micmac is the collective name that I use for both the past (CHART: 17.1) and present (CHART: 20.1) largest and eastern most Wabanaki people, still situated on the southern Gaspe coast, east-coast New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and all of Nova Scotia including Cape Breton Island. (The ancient Micmac had replaced the Kwedech, or St. Lawrence Iroquoians, on the Gaspe Peninsula by 1600.) The Micmac language (CHART: L.l) is distinct from other Wabanaki peoples' languages. All of western New Brunswick and eastern and central Maine (westward to the Kennebec River) once housed the seventeenth- century Etchemin (CHART: 17.2), known today by their modern descendants the Maliseet (CHART: 20.2) of the St. John River valley and the Passamaquoddy (CHART: 20.3) of the St. Croix River-'Quoddy Bay area. In the early decades of the 1600s, the Etchemin were divided east and west into opposing military alliances (CHART: A.IB and A.1A, respectively). Today, the Maliseet speak one dialect (CHART: L.2A) of the language (CHART: L.2) they share with the Passamaquoddy, who speak the other dialect (CHART: L.2B). Collectively, then, my terms "ancient Micmac" and "Etchemin" denote the Eastern Wabanaki peoples earliest-known to us, while the current tribal names "Micmac," "Maliseet," and "Passamaquoddy" designate what I call the modern Eastern Wabanaki peoples. In the present paper, they are not our concern, except as necessary background and context, as will be seen. The territory of the seventeenth-century Western Wabanaki peoples must be described in three "layers" to make sense. On the Atlantic coast, it stretched from the joint mouth of the Kennebec and Androscoggin Rivers (best called the Sagadahoc Estuary) in southwestern Maine, to Cape Ann in northeastern Massachusetts. (That it extended no further eastward than the greater Sagadahoc area in the 1600s is attested to by a number of contemporary French writers1—a fact which has been ignored by some modern scholars for reasons unclear to me.) Inland, Western Wabanaki territory ranged between Moosehead lake in west-central Maine and Lake Champlain's natural boundary between Vermont and New York. Along the southern St. Lawrence shore (after thePublished departur in : ePapers of th of ethe Kwedec 8th Algonquianh Iroquoian Conferences by 1600(1977)) , it extended between the Chaudiere and Richelieu Rivers. Abnaki-Pennacook (CHART: 17.3) is the collective term—and synonym--that I use for the seventeenth-century Western Wabanaki 235 In Western Wabanaki ethnohistorical studies, my pioneer heroine is Fannie Hardy Eckstorm5 (e.g., 1939, 1945), whose approach is so very different from that of field-ethnologist Frank G. Speck (e.g., 1940) that sometimes it seems hard to believe that they both really were studying the same Indians at first hand. Eckstorm (1945: 73-83) was not afraid to stamp where others have perennially tiptoed, and in so doing she has dared to give us the sole tentative outline that I know of the complicated ethnohistory of Western Wabanaki regroupings under the ever- increasing stresses of European contacts. It has some errors in it, undoubtedly, but it should not be ignored, as it so obviously has been. And, if scholars of the 1970s wish to discard Eckstorm's outline totally, let them first make a better one! Until such time, I (for one) will gladly entertain Eckstorm's outline, at least as a working hypothesis. Eckstorm's homework and mine seem to agree that Penobscot Bay and River were basically Etchemin territory throughout the seventeenth century--with temporary Micmac intrusions: first to kill western Etchemin paramount-sagamore Bashaba ca. 1615; and then to reside there for a while, after the depopulating Indian "Plague" of ca. 1616-18 (which occupation led the English who found the Micmac there then still to call much-later occupants "Tarrantines") . This would mean that the great sagamore Madockawando (whose daughter married Baron de Castin, and who died ca. 1698) should be considered western Etchemin, too. Also, and perhaps most important, this would mean that the tribal designation "Penobscot," implying as it clearly does an "Eastern Abenaki" people and language, should not be used until after the ca. 1725 formation of this refugee-Abnaki heterotribe, inside recently-evacuated Etchemin territory. I sincerely invite an itemized refutation of these statements of mine (based not only upon Eckstorm's outline, but also upon my own interpretation of ethnohistorical documents) if they offend anyone in command of other data. The Penobscot past is no mere Ivory Tower concern anymore, now that the pending Indian land claims cases are affecting the necessary financing of government and real estate transactions in the state of Maine, hopefully much more scholarly talent soon will be concentrated on this matter. Southwestern Maine The vast drainage basin of the Kennebec and Androscoggin Rivers offers an immense challenge to ethnohistorical analysis. Certain sections of it were homes and/or highways for some divisions of both the Abnaki and the Pennacook confederations and (occasionally) for portions of other peoples too. Neigh bors in the basin sometimes were mutual enemies, either through intratribal feuds or because of intertribal wars. Just a few of the very many questions in need of clearer answers are these (and only from the seventeenth-century at that): What was the tribe-band-village affiliation...... of the Indians who still grew maize far up the Kennebec (?) River, as well as the affiliation of the natives nearer the coast who had given up maize-growing because enemies repeatedly destroyed their crops, according to what Champlain was told in June 1605? ...of sagamorPublishede inAneda : Papers, ofwho the m8th Champlai Algonquian nConference heard of in(1977) July 1605? (He apparently lived in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, 236 peoples, because it hyphenates both of the separate but closely related confederations whose member-divisions appear to have overlapped, over time. Currently, scholars seem to be unable to delineate the Abnaki (CHART: 17.3A) from the Pennacook (CHART: 17.3B) for anything more than a few brief intervals during the seventeenth century. In the late 1670s, Pennacook sagamore Wonalancet led the expatriated majority of his con federation out of their ancestral homeland in the Merrimac River valley, toward Canada and their oblivion as both a separate people and a language dialect (CHART: L.3C). That was a result of King Philip's War—War #1 of eight conflicts over the period 1675-1815, during which at least some Dawn landers were at least potential foes of New Englanders. The French always welcomed whatever Indian refugees decided to flee English-controlled territory, and by 1700 the exodus to Canadian mission-stations was a continuous trend. By ca. 1725, as a result of the Abenaki War (War #4 of the eight) and earlier conflicts, various Abnaki divisions had evacuated much land in northern New England and had regrouped drastically into two major foci. Abandoned western Etchemin territory on the Penobscot River in Maine "became the home of the still-very-extant Abnaki refugee heterotribe3 called Penobscot (CHART: 20.4), which is the focus of Dean R. Snow's article on the "Eastern Abenaki" in the Smithsonian's forth coming Handbook of North American Indians. Linguistically, Penobscot is an eastern dialect (CHART: L.3A) of a larger language (CHART: L.3)—still shared with the St. Francis Abenaki, and three centuries ago shared with the Pennacook— called Penobscot-Abnaki-Pennacook. The French mission-station at Odanak, on the St. Francis River in sub-St. Lawrence Quebec, together with that at nearby Becancour, became centers of other still-extant, largely-Abnaki, refugee heterotribes, both called Abenaki (CHART: 20.5). The St. Francis Abenaki are the focus of Gordon M. Day's article on the "Western Abenaki" in the Smithsonian Handbook, and their dialect (CHART: L.3B) is the sole surviving tongue in that same category. Thus, then, my term "Abnaki-Pennacook" collectively denotes the Western Wabanaki peoples earliest known to us, while the current tribal names "Penobscot" and "Abenaki" designate what I call the modern Western Wabanaki peoples. In the parlance of the new Smithsonian Handbook, the Penobscot become the "Eastern Abenaki" and the St. Francis Abenaki the "Western Abenaki." Aside from a consideration of the origins of the Penobscot refugee heterotribe, the major concern of this paper is with the more westerly Western Wabanaki peoples, who are much less studied. Penobscot Origins A eugenic interdisciplinary union, combining the best traits of cultural anthropology and history, began in North American scholarship in the 1930s, as a much-needed corrective to atemporal social anthropology and static field-ethnography on the one hand, and to essentially-racist White-Man's history on the other. The name eventually given to the robust offspring of this happy marriage is ethnohistory. My pioneer hero in the ethnohistorical study of the northeast-in-general is Alfred GoldsworthPublishedy Baile in :y Papers(e.g. of, the 1969) 8th Algonquian, whose Conference work is appropriatel(1977) y highly praised by Bruce G. Trigger (1975) in a recent review. 237 yet occasionally travelled the Androscoggin River and camped on the coast near the Sagadahoc Estuary.) ...of sagamore Sasinou, who has a tributary of the Sagadahoc Estuary still named after him, but after whom Capt. John Smith named a mountain (now Mt. Agamenticus in York, Maine) sixty-odd miles to the southwest? Did he lead a third faction in the inter-tribal war of 1607, and if so why? ...of sagamore Meteourmite, and how did it differ from that of other, different, Indians encountered by Father Biard in the Sagadahoc Estuary in November 1611? (Biard 1612). ...of the enemies of "his" Indians further down the Kennebec, mentioned by Father Druillettes in 1652? What was the exact band and village affiliation of "his" natives, too? ...of the "Amalingans," who came to settle "a day's journey" from Father Rale's mission at Norridgewock on the Kennebec, and whom he visited and converted, ca. 1698? They apparently travelled to the seacoast, too. If they were Mahicans, were they the first or the last of their kind to live in this area? No one has yet attempted a comprehensive ethnohistorical study of the whole Kennebec-Androscoggin Basin. The only pub lications to date have been of the "local Indians" type, written either by hobbyists or by town historians. Professional team work by an archeologist, an ethnohistorian, and a colonial historian would seem to be the most straightforward means of researching this complex matter, but, given the infrequency of such joint endeavors in Wabanaki studies thus far, its likelihood seems low. Exactly the same needs and problems prevail regarding the beautiful Sebago Lake drainage basin, which ends in Portland Harbor. The fascinating but unclear Indian lore of the Sebago area was the stimulus which sent me back to graduate school, but (thus far) distance has prevented my researching it in detail. I have found that Indian village sites are not well identified in the early documents, and that town histories and folklore contradict each other in various details about the area's Native Americans. A good starting place for Sebagoland research, which would permit eventual "upstreaming" into the earlier past, would be to try to answer a few leading questions about "Chief Polin," who was killed by marksman Stephen Manchester in 1756 (during War #6), at Windham, Maine. What was Polin's precise band affiliation, and where were his seasonal villages? Was he a shaman as well as, or instead of, being a "chief"? In his ancestry, were there sagamores and/or shamans? Did he have acromegaly (as folklore about his "huge jaw" might imply), which could have been revered as a sign of his having super natural power? Was the large-sized jaw unique to him, or family traits? Certainly some of these questions should be answerable if properly researched.6 For the Saco River valley, a relatively recent linguistic- ethnohistorical accomplishment can be reported. Gordon M. Day (1965), in an enlightening article, documents how generations of scholars have been misled by an early-nineteenth-century wrong guess that diffused as a correct fact. Day clearly shows that the Saco River Indians were not the Sokoki who later comprised aPublishedn importan in : Paperst par of thet o8thf AlgonquianOdanak, Conferencethe French mission-villag(1977) e on the St. Francis River. Day offers no synonym for "Saco River Indians," but demonstrates that the English first new the Sokoki 238 as the Squakheag of the middle Connecticut River valley, from their chief village at Northfield (Massachusetts) northward quite a distance. Unfortunately, the "Glossary of Indian Tribal Names" in Volume One of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography ignores Day's important correction of distorted history, and continues wrongly to put the Sokoki on the Saco River. Day himself saves Volume Two of the DCB from furthering the error, happily. The name of its Indians certainly is not the only ethno historical problem for the Saco River valley. Apparently the Saco, like the Androscoggin, flowed through the lands of divisions of both the Abnaki and the Pennacook confederations. Perhaps the Saco was more or less of a crude divider; certainly to the north and east of this river there seem to have been more Abnaki divisions, and to the south and west of it more Pennacook divisions. The river-mouth region possibly changed land-uses (and peoples?) fast--e.g., in 1603, in 1605, and in 1607, as I (Morrison 1975) have discussed elsewhere. Indeed, Day's (1965: 240) translation of the name as "dead tree river" may even imply how the maize-growing palisaded village which Champlain visited in 1605 could rise so soon after Martin Pring's 1603 visit to an apparent wilderness area; and the Micmac raid of 1607 undoubtedly reverted gardens and village to wilderness once more. The troublesome "Countrey of Mawooshen" (Purchas 1623) description states nothing about habitations on the "River Shawakotoc" until its source far inland. New Hampshire, Vermont, & Southern Quebec If where the Pennacook Confederacy's territory "starts" is an ever-dynamic puzzle, a still greater one is to decide where, to the south and west, it "stops." The first English colonial settlements were in areas of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies which had been most depopulated by the Indian "Plague" of ca. 1616-18. But the surviving natives, too, were simul taneously regrouping to take advantage of vacated lands. It was not very many years before the Merrimac River valley was a scene of conflicting interests, and the Pennacook, first under sagamore Passaconaway, then under his son Wonalancet, kept peace with the English invaders only by giving up ever-more land, and crowding in with other remnant heterotribes from southern New England moving ever-further inland. The middle inland "layer" of Western Wabanakia, however, between Moosehead Lake and Lake Champlain, was Abnaki territory, but was intruded upon in the west by Mahican migrations from the Hudson River valley. Since all of these threads combine at their eventual destination at Odanak, in the largely-Abnaki refugee heterotribe called the "St. Francis Abenaki," and since Gordon M. Day is the living authority on Odanak, ethnohistorical clarification of this complex matter must await the eventual publication of Day's magnum opus. In the interim, what other publications are available on the Native Americans of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Quebec's southern townships? Solon B. Colby's (1975) book entitled Colby's Indian history: antiquities of the New Hampshire Indians and their neighbors is a 300-page string of pearls, some of much greater value than others, but the whole is well worth having, despite the disjointePublishedd styl in e: Papers of presentatio of the 8th Algonquiann an Conferenced occasional (1977)inaccuracies. John C. Huden's (1971) compilation of other persons' articles is 239 titled Archaeology in Vermont: some reviews supplemented by materials from New England and New York, and is a good 120-page supplement to my file of his own useful articles on the historic period which have appeared in Vermont History. Thomas M. Charland's (1964) Les Abenakis d'Odanak is a 365-page French- language history book of the years 1675-1937, which (to quote Gordon M. Day's succinct opinion of it, expressed in a letter to me) "is accurate and written from original documents and sheds a lot of light on the subject." My files contain several articles and pamphlets on this region, too. Besides the John C. Huden articles just mentioned, three other noteworthy authors of very relevant articles are Stephen Laurent (son of a St. Francis chief), Peter A. Thomas (a student of the Squakheag or Sokoki), and Gordon M. Day. Day's (1972) "Oral Tradition as Complement" is a methodological gem, and should be required reading for historians; it considers the St. Francis folk history about Rogers' Rangers' Raid of 4 October 1759--a far cry from Major Rogers' self-serving official report, which has stood as "fact" far too long. The forthcoming Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians, as stated earlier in this paper, will contain the most comprehensive article on this area to date: Day's, on the "Western Abenaki" (as well as Dean R. Snow's article on the "Eastern Abenaki").1* Recent developments in prehistoric archeology will have pro found effects on ethnohistorical interpretations of aboriginal sociopoliticoreligious institutions. Our old idea that north eastern Native American political confederations were the native response to the stimulus of European fur-trade contacts (both direct and indirect) can no longer stand alone; it now must sit upon a base of 2000 years of precontact native experience with trade-network alliances. The Boucher site on the Mississquoi River in northwestern Vermont (Basa 1976) and the Augustine Mound site on the Miramichi River in northeastern New Brunswick (Turnbull 1976) prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that even the middle "layer" of Wabanakia had far-flung trade-alliance connections in the mid-first millenium B.C.7 If this was the case in the Early Woodland/Burial Mound I period, the influences of the Late Woodland/Temple Mound period just prior to European contact must have been far greater still, in structuring inter- group relationships. The time has come to start thinking about devising more sophisticated economic models--not unlike the approach of Marshall Sahlins (1972) in Stone age economics—to better consider the domino effects of these trade contacts upon Wabanaki society and culture. Likewise, the recent ever-increasing uproar in the popular press about the various "Megalithic sites" in the northeastern states, especially New Hampshire and Vermont, must be taken into account less passively. Prehistoric archaeologists are going to have to do more than just continue to state, ex cathedra, that northeastern Indians did not build structures out of boulders; if only for public relations purposes archeologists should try to be a bit more investigative. The overly-zealous Megalithic partisans currently are claiming that traveling representatives of the same European peoples who built Stonehenge, etc., built these New World sites, too, and were succeeded in using themPublished by Celto-Iberian in : Papers of thes 8thwh Algonquiano left manConferencey inscription(1977)s on stones to prove it. In response to that partisan theory, all I am asking is that archeologists show an interest in trying to 240 determine some facts—any facts—about at least some of these strange sites. An unbiased archeologist should be willing to double-check the old opinion that Indians did not make these stone structures. Hopefully he or she would not stop before analyzing similar structures known to have been made by Indians elsewhere—e.g., the "Earth Navel" horticultural shrines of the Tewa Pueblo people, which social anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz assures me are similar in layout to a "Megalithic site" in central Vermont which he has seen. After I visited that site and neighboring ones recently, my own inclination is to strongly recommend intensive historical-archeology studies of the design and con struction of colonial farmers' winter storage facilities for vegetables and livestock, especially since at least one of the Megalithic partisans is out to prove unrelatedness. The sooner that any potential connection of Native Americans with these strange stone structures is (re-) clarified, the better. Increasing the Research Team Thus far I have described much that needs doing in Western Wabanaki studies, but have not yet suggested how to get more work started. The number of active Wabanakiists is small indeed, and with all the research to be done there is obviously room for more researchers. I predict no lack of thesis, dissertation, and post-doctoral research topics in Western Wabanaki ethno- history for the foreseeable future. But M.A.s and Ph.D.s, new or old, most assuredly are not the only source of contributions to knowledge. Both graduate courses and upper-level under graduate courses in Wabanaki ethnohistory could provide a constant source of research talent, if well organized and directed, and with adequate library holdings available. Understandably, neither I nor S.U.N.Y. College at Fredonia can do this from our location in western New York state, even though I would like very much to do it. Only universities and large colleges situated directly in Western Wabanakia could carry out such work easily (e.g., University of Maine at Portland-Gorham and University of New Hampshire for Abnaki-Pennacook border area studies), but to my knowledge none are now doing it. What I am specifically suggesting is that advanced students with anthropology and history prerequisites be regularly offered an academic course which would both give them a meaningful learn ing experience and provide a continuous supply of temporary workers for an ongoing Western Wabanaki research project. First the students would be oriented to general theories and techniques of ethnohistory and given a specific survey of the Wabanaki. Next they would be directed toward local data sources (divided terri torially among them), such as local history books, town records, old and new maps, relevant novels and poems, folklore, and inter views of senior citizens, in order to obtain every scrap of information possible about the Western Wabanaki of a particular region—e.g., a different river basin each term. Then the material collected would be analyzed for validity and consistency with other information, internal and external to a specific territory. Obviously some students would be luckier than others in finding "new" information, but the correction of old mis information is as necessary a long-run contribution as new discoveriesPublished, and coursin : Paperse grade of the 8ths shoulAlgonquiand no Conferencet be based o(1977)n the flam boyance of mere luck. Over time a considerable data bank would 241 be developed, and the work of the students would become increas ingly sophisticated in the redoing of any region done before. Where feasible, site visits in conjunction with archeological orientation would be especially appropriate adjuncts to the course, and possibly lead to team-teaching and interspecialty courses. The entire proposition is open-ended indeed. Conclusion As long as such a negatively inverse proportion of work to workers exists in Western Wabanaki studies, there is little hope of increasing our ethnohistorical knowledge of these historically important peoples unless all potential research resources are tapped. My proposal to utilize student power, far from being too profound, apparently is too simple an idea to have been used before. Possibly it has been used before, but unsuccessfully due to leadership problems. Personally, I can think of no more stimulating form of classroom interaction than sharing in a joint research project with my older students, and would welcome the leadership challenge of making the venture an ongoing success. I deeply regret that I cannot lead such a Wabanaki research project from Fredonia, and most sincerely hope that someone else better situated to do so soon will start. NOTES 1 As both Frank G. Speck (1940: 7-9) and Dean R. Snow (1973) have pointed out, rivers usually were the backbone centers of tribal territories, not boundaries between tribes. Occasionally, however, there were exceptions under certain conditions, especially with long and/or complex river systems shared by two or more tribes. The overall Kennebec-Androscoggin-Sagadahoc system was not controlled by any one people, although one section of it would be. The upper Kennebec River seems unquestionably to have been Abnaki territory for most of the seventeenth century, while the Androscoggin (flowing southwest into New Hampshire before returning to Maine) was yet another story, and all this in no way negates other statements about who was in the Sagadahoc Estuary area—which varied seasonally. Explorer Champlain (1613: 297), referring to his own visit of 1604 (and he returned at other times, too), wrote: "The tribe of Indians at Kennebec [Sagadahoc Estuary] is called Etechemins Lsic], like those of Norumbega [Penobscot River, more than fifty miles east]. " Lawyer Lescarbot (1609, vol. 2: 277) wrote what he heard in 1606-07 at Port Royal (Nova Scotia) from those who had visited the area: "The nations between the river St. John and Kinibeki [Sagadahoc Estuary], a district comprising the rivers St. Croix and Norombega [Penobscot River], are called Etechemins; from Kinibeki to Malebarre [Cape Cod], and beyond, they are called Armouchiquois [an imprecise blanket term (not unlike "Latin Americans" today) that went out of use soon after Lescarbot wrote]." Father Biard (1612: 69), who visited the area personally in 1611, wrote: "To the West and north [of Port Royal], from the river of St. John to the river Potugoet [Penobscot River], and even to the river Rimbegui [Sagadahoc Estuary], live the Etheminqui [sic].... From the Rimbegui river to the fortieth parallel the whole country is in the possession of the tribe called the Armouchiquois." Published in : Papers of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977) 242 It is quite conceivable that the Western Etchemin gradually withdrew eastward toward "their" Penobscot River as the seven teenth century wore on, because later accounts do not actually refer to Etchemin near the Sagadahoc Estuary—only as far west as Penobscot Bay. Fahter Lalemant (1660: 67), in the Relation of 1659-60, refers to "...the Abnaquiois Mission. This, beginning at the river Kenebki [Kennebec River], includes on its right [east] the Etechemins of Pentagwet [Penobscot River], together with those of the river St. John; and on its left [west] all those great Nations of New England that speak Abnaquiois...." Father Morain (1677: 263-265) wrote in 1677: "The Etechemins are a tribe of about 4 or 500 souls, as far as I can judge, whose country consists of 3 rivers...--namely pemptegwet [Penobscot River], pessemouquote [Passamaquoddy = St. Croix], and the River st. John.... Although they have but one language, it nevertheless has Some variation in proportion as they live Farther away from Here [RiviSre-du-Loup (Quebec) ]; and, as those of pemptegwet are nearer the Abnakis, their language also resembles that of the latter more closely.... Those of Pemptegwet are allied in war with the Abankis against the English [King Philip's War Northern Front — see Morrison (1976b) ]." By ca. 172 5, the Western Etchemin had withdrawn much further still, and had abandoned Penobscot River and Bay because of long-term English settlement and military pressures. They regrouped far to the eastward as the Etchemin refugee heterotribe still called "Passamaquoddy," and still centered on 'Quoddy Bay and St. Croix River'. With the abandonment of the Penobscot drainage by the Western Etchemin, regrouping Abnaki simultaneously (ca. 1725) moved eastward to establish there the Abnaki refugee heterotribe still called "Penobscot." Thus the modern tribal names Passamaquoddy and Penobscot start to become meaningful designations of peoples (in addition to being much older desig nations of places) only ca. 1725. (In the interest of further clarification, I wholeheartedly welcome scholarly debate on these matters.) 2 The eight wars which either pitted or had a potential for pitting Wabanaki peoples against English-speaking peoples were as follows: 1) King Philip's War 1675-1678 Northern Front (no European counterpart) 2) King William's War 1688-1699 (1st French and Indian War) (St. Castin's War) (War of the League of Augsburg) (War of the Grand Alliance) 3) Queen Anne's War 1702-1714 (2nd French and Indian War) (War of the Spanish Succession) 4) Abenaki War 1721-1726 (Gov. Dummer's War) (Lovewell's War) (no European counterpart) 5) King George's War 1744-1748 Published in : Papers of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977) (3rd French and Indian War) (Gov. Shirley's War) (War of the Austrian Succession) 243 6) The French and Indian War 1754-1763 (4th French and Indian War) (Seven Year's War) 7) War for American Independence 1775-1783 (American Revolution) (French fought British, too) 8) War of 1812 1812-1815 (2nd War for American Independence) (French not involved) 3 If one were to believe Morton H. Fried (1975) totally, my term "heterotribe" would be redundant. All I am trying to call attention to, in using this term, is the non-homogeneity of the component parts in a refugee regrouping under outside stress, structured more by chance than by choice. ' I would like to express my sincere thanks to Drs. Snow and Day for their generosity in giving me photocopies of their forth coming articles in the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians. 5 A fine tribute-bibliography of Ms. Eckstorm's many works has recently appeared as Northeast Folklore, Volume 16, 1975; it was prepared by Jeanne Patten Whitten (1975). D Chief Polin (unnamed, however) has been both immortalized and mistreated by John Greenleaf Whittier (1899: 14-15) in his poem "The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis." Whether it was poetic license or poor geographical research I do not know, but Whittier incorrectly states that the Saco River, instead of the Presumpscot River, is the outlet of Sebago Lake. This then sets in motion that mistaken belief that Saco = Sokoki, which was a common erroi prior to Gordon M. Day's (1965) correction. The Saco River Indians were not the Sakoki (= Squakheag). The Sokoki (= Squakheag) lived on the middle Connecticut River, in north-central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and Vermont, not on the Saco River of southwestern Maine and east-central New Hampshire. Remnants of both the Sokoki and Saco River peoples eventually joined the largely-Abnaki refugee heterotribe of St. Francis (Odanak), however. Polin was in no likelihood a Sokoki, and quite possibly not even a Saco River Indian either. 7 My sincere thanks go to Drs. Basa and Turnbull for generously giving me photocopies of their forthcoming articles in Archaeology of Eastern North America, Volume 4, Number 1, 1976. The use of theoretical models in Wabanaki ethnohistory is not yet common, by any means, and I know of none that are very sophisticated. For example, in my own work, my dissertation (Morrison 1974) utilized a very simple differential contact stimuli contrast model, while my analysis of the statuses and roles of Wabanaki sagamores (Morrison 1976a) used a somewhat more complex eclectic model. Nonetheless, they were steps toward applying theoretical socio-cultural anthropology to ethnohistorical research in order to obtain more meaningful results. The study of trade-network alliances will require much more sophisticated theoretical conceptualizing, undoubtedly. Economic anthropology and Oceanian ethnography may provide the best ideas for such a model. Published in : Papers of the 8th Algonquian Conference (1977)