Concept

Passamaquoddy

Summary
The Passamaquoddy (Maliseet-Passamaquoddy: Peskotomuhkati) are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America. Their traditional homeland, Peskotomuhkatik, straddles the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine in a region called Dawnland. They are one of the constituent nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Passamaquoddy Tribe in Maine is a federally-recognized tribe. The Passamaquoddy people in Canada have an organized government, but do not have official First Nations status. 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), their endonym, or the name that they use for themselves. Peskotomuhkat literally means "pollock-spearer" or "those of the place where pollock are plentiful", reflecting the importance of this fish in their culture. Their method of fishing was spear-fishing, rather than angling or using nets. Passamaquoddy Bay is shared by both New Brunswick and Maine; its name was derived by the English settlers from the Passamaquoddy people. The Passamaquoddy had an oral history supported with visual imagery, such as birchbark etching and petrographs prior to European contact. Among the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the loose Wabanaki Confederacy, they occupied coastal regions along the Bay of Fundy, Passamaquoddy Bay, and Gulf of Maine, and along the St. Croix River and its tributaries. They had seasonal patterns of settlement. In the winter, they dispersed and hunted inland. In the summer, they gathered more closely together on the coast and islands, and primarily harvested seafood, including marine mammals, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish. Settlers of European descent repeatedly forced the Passamaquoddy off their original lands from the 1800s. After the United States achieved independence from Great Britain, the tribe was eventually officially limited to the current Indian Township Reservation, at , in eastern Washington County, Maine.
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