Note 43 — INTRODUCTION

In traveling among the Montagnais of the Province of Quebec I have encountered some of the dispersed Wawenock families and descendants from whom the following information was secured.

In about 1870 Charles Neptune and his sister of Becancour, in company with some Abenaki from St. Francis (Aimable Gille, Obomsawin family), and relatives, came to Lake St. John by way of Chicoutimi. They migrated to Metabetchouan by canoe from Chicoutimi, and settled near the Hudson Bay Co.’s post, long since abandoned. Here they appropriated hunting territories with the permission of the Montagnais. Charles Neptune died in 1907. He spoke the Wawenock language. Six sons and three daughters survived him, his wife having been a Canadian. Their descendants are now living among the Montagnais at Lake St. John, under the family names of Neptune, du Chêne, and Phillippe. Another Wawenock from Becancour, Louis Philip, lives at Lake St. John. His father came from Lake Megantic on the border between Maine and the Province of Quebec. He was probably the last Wawenock to have been born in Maine. Philip has descendants at Lake St. John. He knows a few words and expressions which indicate the dialect of his father to have been really Wawenock. Of the 23 Wawenock descendants at Lake St. John, as enumerated by Noah Neptune in 1915, none know anything distinctive of their ancestral language or customs.

Again on the lower St. Lawrence there are Wawenock descendants. At Tadousac and Chicoutimi, the Nicola families have become admitted to land rights with the Montagnais of these places. At Escoumains is another named Jacques. Four children of old Joseph Nicola who migrated many years ago from Trois Rivières, and settled also at Chicoutimi, also have numerous offspring by either Montagnais or Canadian wives. Possibly these emigrants came to the Saguenay with the ancestors of the Gille, Neptune, and Phillippe families at Lake St. John. At Tadousac, Joseph Nicolar remembered the text of a Wawenock song which his father used to sing. This is given with the other texts in this paper (see p. 197).

I should add, that with few exceptions among the older people, these Wawenock descendants have become so merged either with the Canadian or the Montagnais that they know almost nothing of their own people. In the family names, however, we can see the survival of influences which began in Maine when the ancestors of the Wawenock were close to the Penobscot with whom they have some family names in common.