The Passamaquoddy, People of the Dawn

[Rev. Allen M. Drago ~ Traveler]

The Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati or Pestomuhkati in the Passamaquoddy language) are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America, primarily in Maine and New Brunswick. The Passamaquoddy lacked a written history before the arrival of Europeans, occupied coastal regions along the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine and along the St. Croix River and its tributaries. They dispersed and hunted inland in the winter; in the summer, they gathered more closely together on the coast and
islands, and primarily harvested seafood, including porpoise.^[1] The name "Passamaquoddy" is an Anglicization of the Passamaquoddy word peskotomuhkati, the prenoun form (prenouns being a linguistic feature of Algonquian languages) of Peskotomuhkat (pestəmohkat),
the name they applied to themselves. Peskotomuhkat literally means
"pollock-spearer" or "those of the place where pollock are plentiful",^[2] reflecting the importance of this fish. ^[3] Their method of fishing was spear-fishing rather than angling.

The Passamaquoddy were moved off their original lands repeatedly by European settlers since the 16th century and were eventually limited in the United States to the current Indian Township Reservation, at 45°15′57″N 67°36′43″W / 45.26583°N 67.61194°W / 45.26583; -67.61194, in eastern Washington County, Maine. It has a land area of 96.994 km² (37.450 sq mi) and a 2000 census
resident population of 676 persons. There are also Passamaquoddy
off-reservation trust lands in five Maine counties; these lands total
almost four times the size of the reservation proper. They are located
in northern and western Somerset County, northern Franklin County, northeastern Hancock County, western Washington County, and several locations in eastern and western Penobscot County.
Their total land area is 373.888 km² (144.359 sq mi). There was no
resident population on these trust lands as of the 2000 census. The
Passamaquoddy also live in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, and maintain active land claims but have no legal status in Canada as a First Nation. Some Passamaquoddy continue to seek the return of territory now comprised in St. Andrews, New Brunswick which they claim as Qonasqamkuk, a Passamaquoddy ancestral capital and burial ground.

The Passamaquoddy population in Maine is about 2,500 people, with more than half of adults still speaking the Malecite-Passamaquoddy language, shared (other than minor differences in dialect) with the neighboring and related Maliseet people, and which belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algic language family. The University of Maine published a comprehensive Passamaquoddy Dictionary in 2008.

Passamaquoddy Bay, which straddles the United States-Canada border between New Brunswick and Maine, derives its name from the Passamaquoddy people.

The St. Croix River (previously known as the Passamaquoddy River) serves as the USA/Canada International boundary.  The boundary cuts through the middle of the Passamaquoddy Tribes homeland.  The Passamaquoddy
have occupied this watershed region for at least the past 600+
generations (12,000+ years).  This new USA-Canada boundary line was
created about 200 years ago and was imposed on the Passamaquoddy by
the Jay Treaty 0f 1794.(Aboriginal
Rights for the good stuff)...Interestingly,  in 1974, the Jay Treaty
was revisited when a group of eight Wabanaki (including Mi'kmaq,
Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes people) challenged US
immigration officials and committed an "illegal" border crossing. The
officials claimed that Indians born in Canada required visas and needed
to register when they entered the US. The protesters argued they only
had to demonstrate Indian status. They argued a case which became known
as Akins vs. Saxbe that the 1794 Jay Treaty and the 1928 immigration
law were guarantees "to preserve the aboriginal right of American
Indians to move freely through the territories originally occupied by
them on either side of the American-Canadian border." Maine federal
judge Gignoux, who presided over this case, ruled that he agreed with
the plaintiffs, noting that "the Micmac, Maliseet, Penobscot, and
Passamaquoddy Tribes constituted the Wabanaki Confederacy" and that the
international boundary created in 1783 "ran through the middle of their
territory," concluding that he had "no dispute" with this aboriginal
rights claim." To this day, there are many Passamaquoddy Tribal members
still living, in the Country of Canada, separated only by the St. Croix
river.  These Passamaquoddy also possess a Tribal Chief and Council
known as the "St. Croix/Schoodic Band of Passamaquoddies".  

The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians are the descendants of Native American peoples who inhabited Maine and western New Brunswick since well before recorded history.
Traditionally they lived most of the year in family band camps that
relocated on a seasonal basis, relying upon hunting, fishing, and
gathering for their subsistence needs. They maintained a very fluid
social organization based on patrilineal kinship that allowed multiple
marriage and residence options, frequent migration, and easy division
or merging of social groups. Both groups speak closely related
Algonquian languages, although anthropologists generally group the
Passamaquoddies linguistically with the Maliseets and the Penobscots
with the Abenakis. These kinship groups were never organized as tribes
during the colonial period, but English officials perceived them as
such and identified them by their geographical locations. The
"Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes" have therefore continued as
entities as jurisdiction over them has passed from Massachusetts to
Maine to the federal government. Currently, most Penobscots reside on
Indian Island in the Penobscot River, while the Passamaquoddies are
divided between two principal locations: Pleasant Point on Passamaquoddy
Bay, and Indian Township near the St. Croix River.

The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians were among the first Native Americans to have contact with Europeans. The wide bays along the Maine coast attracted the attention of fishermen and
explorers searching for a sea route through the continent as early as
the sixteenth century. Some of these first encounters were friendly,
such as Samuel de Champlain's exploration and settlement of the area
in 1604, while others, such as Henry Hudson's bombardment and looting
of a village on the Penobscot River in 1609, were not. Instead of
finding the mythical city of Norumbega, reputed to be rich in gold,
silver, and pearls, these Europeans encountered an Indian confederacy
consisting of twenty-two villages throughout western and central Maine
controlled by Bessabez (Bashaba) from his village on the Penobscot
River. A series of attacks by Micmacs in 1615 resulted in the death of
Bessabez and the collapse of his confederacy, but even greater
devastation stemmed from a terrible pandemic in 1617 that wiped out
over 75 percent of the inhabitants along the New England coast. The
surviving Passamaquoddies and Penobscots traded furs with competing
English and French traders until the French established dominance in
the area in the 1630s. The growing dependence of these Indians on
trade goods resulted in their involvement in the so-called Beaver Wars
with the Iroquois in the 1640s, 1650s, and 1660s, but peaceful
relations were maintained with the English until 1677, when a series
of atrocities were committed against the Penobscots.

The Penobscots' and Passamaquoddies' conversion to Catholicism by French missionaries fostered friendly relations with French officials during the colonial period, and these
ties were strengthened by intermarriages, the most famous being that
between Baron St.-Castin and Pidiwamiska, a daughter of the Penobscot
chief Madockawando, but the degree of French control has been
exaggerated. Each of the five wars that occurred on the Maine frontier
between 1689 and 1760 resulted from a combination of English
insistence on sovereignty over the Indians, disputes concerning
subsistence or land, and indiscriminate mutual retaliation. Most of the
frontier incidents that led to the first three wars occurred to the
west of the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies, but these Indians were
included in blanket declarations of war against all "Eastern Indians."
The third conflict, Dummer's War (1722-27), resulted in a significant
merging of Abenaki refugees into the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy
villages and the subsequent extension of English settlements into the
Penobscot area. Although plagued by factionalism, these Indians
attempted to remain neutral in the last two wars, but mutual distrust,
disputes over treaty commitments, and attacks by English scalp hunters
in 1745 and 1755 ultimately dragged them into the conflicts.

The strategic location of the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies during the colonial wars and their remoteness from English settlement expansion enabled these Indians to maintain their
autonomy and almost all of their land until 1760. In the aftermath of
the Seven Years' War, the English claimed all the tribes' lands "by
right of conquest" because of their alliance with the defeated French,
and English settlement quickly spread along the Maine coast. During
the Revolutionary War, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies helped the
Americans defend their eastern frontier, but the Indians' loss of land
continued, with large cessions by the Passamaquoddies in 1794 and by
the Penobscots in 1796, 1818, and 1833. First Massachusetts, and then
Maine after 1820, acquired this land and administered the affairs of
these Indians by right of colonial precedent, ignoring federal law and
the initial protests of federal leaders. During the 1820s, 1830s, and
1840s, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies divided along kinship lines,
producing two political groups: the Old Party and the New Party.
Emotional disputes over education and traditional lifetime chiefs
resulted in the collapse of tribal government, the imposition of state
compromises, and a dramatic increase in state control over the
Indians, which was not relinquished when tribal factionalism waned
after 1860.

For the next century, a state agent handled Indian affairs in accordance with the Indian laws in the state legal code, and state policy was predicated on the assumption that the tribes
would gradually disintegrate as individuals left the reservations.
Tribal councils were not recognized, tribal governors were rarely
consulted, and tribal decisions were thwarted. Additional land was
lost as the state legislature reinterpreted treaties or granted
long-term leases to non-Indians. Maine was the last state to grant
reservation Indians the right to vote (1954), yet, since 1823 and
1842, respectively, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies have each had a
nonvoting representative in the state legislature to articulate their
concerns. These individuals, along with tribal activists, ultimately
reversed state policy by thwarting termination of the tribes in 1957,
gradually increasing tribal authority in the 1960s, and prompting the
creation of the first state Department of Indian Affairs in 1965. In
the late 1960s, the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots initiated the Maine
Indian Land Claims suit, claiming that the land cessions to
Massachusetts and Maine had violated the Indian Nonintercourse Act of
1790. Several favorable court rulings prompted an $81.5-million
settlement in 1980, which has enabled the tribes to buy land, develop
tribal businesses, employ tribe members, and foster both goodwill and
profits by providing investment capital to non-Indians. This legal
precedent has provided the foundation for land claims by a number of
other eastern tribes. <Verbatim>

Paul Brodeur, Restitution: The Land Claims of the Mashpee, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians of New England (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985); David Ghere, "Abenaki
Factionalism, Emigration and Social Continuity in Northern New England,
1725-1765" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maine, 1988); Kenneth M.
Morrison, The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of Alliance in
Abenaki-Euramerican Relations (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984).
David L. Ghere
University of Minnesota

*** You've Gotten this Far...here's Some Humor ***

The Treaty of 1794 between the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conveyed the Passamaquoddy Indian Reservations in Washington County to the Passamaquoddy Tribe.
This Treaty ratified by Massachusetts in 1795 and recorded in the Land
Records of Washington County, conveyed lands in what is now Washington
County. They are Indian Township, Pleasant Point, Pine Island, Nemcass
Point, Lire’s Island and fifteen islands in the Schoodic (St. Croix)
River.

   Land has always been the Native people’s most valuable possession. It has provided the base for his existence, his religion and his society. Today with what little land the Native
people own continues to serve at least as a Tribal center to which
individuals can relate and thus maintain a sense of identity in an
alien world which all too often has tried to take from Native people
everything they possess including their identity.

   The Passamaquoddy Tribe as well as other Native Tribes in the United States and Canada has had continuous land problems ever since the Europeans decided that by discovery they had a
right to claim title.

   Today the Passamaquoddy Tribe owns more than 200,000 acres of land in the State of Maine, in which they monitor and maintain.

Passamaquoddy of Indian Township live on the largest Indian reservation in the State, located on the west branch of the St. Croix River our ties to the Earth are interwoven with our
culture. The population in our community now is at the 800 level..
Over 60 % of our population is under the age of 21. Our Grammar school
has an attendance of 141 students. We have two community areas on our
reservation, the Strip area, located along Route 1 and the Peter
Dana’s Point located along the shore of Big Lake.  Taken from May 2002 Newsletter.