Essays Henry David Thoreau (little bear else holmelund minarik .txt) 📖

take to be the cougar, and not the Gulo luscus), as the only animal in Maine which man need fear; it would follow a man, and did not mind a fire. He also said that beavers were getting to be pretty numerous again, where we went, but their skins brought so little now that it was not profitable to hunt them.

I had put the ears of our moose, which were ten inches long, to dry along with the moose meat over the fire, wishing to preserve them; but Sabattis told me that I must skin and cure them, else the hair would all come off. He observed that they made tobacco pouches of the skins of their ears, putting the two together inside to inside. I asked him how he got fire; and he produced a little cylindrical box of friction matches. He also had flints and steel, and some punk, which was not dry; I think it was from the yellow birch. “But suppose you upset, and all these and your powder get wet.” “Then,” said he, “we wait till we get to where there is some fire.” I produced from my pocket a little vial, containing matches, stoppled watertight, and told him, that, though we were upset, we should still have some dry matches; at which he stared without saying a word.

We lay awake thus a long while talking, and they gave us the meaning of many Indian names of lakes and streams in the vicinity⁠—especially Tahmunt. I asked the Indian name of Moosehead Lake. Joe answered Sebamook; Tahmunt pronounced it Sebemook. When I asked what it meant, they answered, Moosehead Lake. At length, getting my meaning, they alternately repeated the word over to themselves, as a philologist might⁠—Sebamook⁠—Sebamook⁠—now and then comparing notes in Indian; for there was a slight difference in their dialects; and finally Tahmunt said, “Ugh! I know,”⁠—and he rose up partly on the moose-hide⁠—“like as here is a place, and there is a place,” pointing to different parts of the hide, “and you take water from there and fill this, and it stays here; that is Sebamook.” I understood him to mean that it was a reservoir of water which did not run away, the river coming in on one side and passing out again near the same place, leaving a permanent bay. Another Indian said, that it meant Large Bay Lake, and that Sebago and Sebec, the names of other lakes, were kindred words, meaning large open water. Joe said that Seboois meant Little River. I observed their inability, often described, to convey an abstract idea. Having got the idea, though indistinctly, they groped about in vain for words with which to express it. Tahmunt thought that the whites called it Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo, which commands it, is shaped like a moose’s head, and that Moose River was so called “because the mountain points right across the lake to its mouth.” John Josselyn, writing about 1673, says, “Twelve miles from Casco Bay, and passable for men and horses, is a lake, called by the Indians Sebug. On the brink thereof, at one end, is the famous rock, shaped like a moose deer or helk, diaphanous, and called the Moose Rock.” He appears to have confounded Sebamook with Sebago, which is nearer, but has no “diaphanous” rock on its shore.

I give more of their definitions, for what they are worth⁠—partly because they differ sometimes from the commonly received ones. They never analyzed these words before. After long deliberation and repeating of the word⁠—for it gave much trouble⁠—Tahmunt said that Chesuncook meant a place where many streams emptied in (?), and he enumerated them⁠—Penobscot, Umbazookskus, Cusabesex, Red Brook, etc. “Caucomgomoc⁠—what does that mean?” “What are those large white birds?” he asked. “Gulls,” said I. “Ugh! Gull Lake.” Pammadumcook, Joe thought, meant the Lake with Gravelly Bottom or Bed. Kenduskeag, Tahmunt concluded at last, after asking if birches went up it⁠—for he said that he was not much acquainted with it⁠—meant something like this: “You go up Penobscot till you come to Kenduskeag, and you go by, you don’t turn up there. That is Kenduskeag.” (?) Another Indian, however, who knew the river better, told us afterward that it meant Little Eel River. Mattawamkeag was a place where two rivers meet. (?) Penobscot was Rocky River. One writer says that this was “originally the name of only a section of the main channel, from the head of the tidewater to a short distance above Oldtown.”

A very intelligent Indian, whom we afterward met, son-in-law of Neptune, gave us also these other definitions: Umbazookskus, Meadow Stream; Millinoket, Place of Islands; Aboljacarmegus, Smooth-Ledge Falls (and Deadwater); Aboljacarmeguscook, the stream emptying in (the last was the word he gave when I asked about Aboljacknagesic, which he did not recognize); Mattahumkeag, Sand-Creek Pond; Piscataquis, Branch of a River.

I asked our hosts what Musketaquid, the Indian name of Concord, Massachusetts, meant; but they changed it to Musketicook, and repeated that, and Tahmunt said that it meant Dead Stream, which is probably true. “Cook” appears to mean stream, and perhaps “quid” signifies the place or ground. When I asked the meaning of the names of two of our hills, they answered that they were another language. As Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the meaning of the word “Quebec,” about which there has been so much question. He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked what those great ships were called that carried soldiers. “Men-of-war,” we answered. “Well,” he said, “when the English ships came up the river, they could not go any farther, it was so narrow there; they must go back⁠—go-back⁠—that’s Que-bec.” I mention this to show the value of his authority in the other cases.

Late