Passamaquoddy

An ALGONQUiAN-speaking people, the Passamaquoddy Indians lived in modern-day Maine and New Brunswick.

The Passamaquoddy Indians shared close contact and many cultural similarities with their neighbors, especially the Abenaki and the Maliseet peoples. The early history of these “Dawnland Peoples” who lived along the eastern coast of North America is often obscure, for early European accounts are sparse and contradictory, and many Passamaquoddy sites have been lost to rising sea levels. Later tribal divisions are not always appropriate for the early years of contact, and the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy, if not the same peoples, were very closely related.

It is possible that the Passamaquoddy first met Europeans in the early 16th century, when European fishermen sought to trade metal goods for furs. In 1603 Samuel de Champlain met Passamaquoddy warriors at Tadoussac, an important trading site. The question of early contact between Europeans and the Passamaquoddy remains complicated because early French writers often referred to a group of people called the Etchemins, who have been variously identified as the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and eastern Abenaki peoples.

The Passamaquoddy lived along the coast of current-day Maine and New Brunswick, where they relied on fishing and hunting. Like other Indian peoples of the region, they moved seasonally, living in hunting camps during the winter and larger communities in the summer. In the 17th century they used both conical wigwams and larger rectangular lodges, each of which might house several families.

Further reading: Colin G. Calloway, Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 1991); Vincent O. Erickson, “Maliseet-Passamaquoddy,” in Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 123-136; Dean R. Snow, “Late Prehistory of the East Coast,” in Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 58-69.

—Martha K. Robinson