Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore — A Closer Reading

A Phonograph in the Field

Fewkes describes his fieldwork among the Passamaquoddies as an experiment in using the phonograph to record oral literature. He contrasts Indian memory—citing the Zuñi Kāklan ritual, which takes hours to recite—with the difficulty of phonetic transcription. He acknowledges that "conventional signs and additional letters" are imperfect and that the phonograph can "permanently perpetuate" languages of "races which are fast becoming extinct." His account credits Mrs. W. Wallace Brown of Calais, Maine, for her influence with the tribe. The excerpts show that he collected stories on cylinders, sometimes using multiple cylinders for a single tale. This section establishes the collector's perspective and the technological context of the recordings.

The Weird Child and the Conjurer

One tale recounts a child born after its mother eats an herb, who kills and eats the tongues of other children. Despite being cut up and burned, the child returns each morning, until it declares it will stop killing. It then removes its bones, becomes blind and immobile, and transforms into a great medicine man. The Indians build him a wigwam and visit him for medicine, turning him over to find herbs beneath him. A young man seeking a love potion receives an herb that attracts all women, causing him to return it. Another man asks to live as long as the world stands; the conjurer turns him into a cedar tree. Fewkes notes parallels to the Moses story and suggests the parthenogenetic birth may reflect European contact. He identifies the conjurer as Glooscap, citing Leland.

Glooscap's Miracles and Eschatology

Fewkes connects the conjurer to Glooscap, a figure who performs miracles like turning a man into a cedar. He mentions another story where Glooscap's father lives under a waterfall, has a half-red face and a single eye. In a separate account, Glooscap is said to be sharpening his arrows in a distant place and will return to make war on all, killing everyone: "there will be no more world; world all gone." The informant adds uncertainty about the timing: "Dunno how quick,—mebbe long time: all..." This apocalyptic vision contrasts with the earlier tales of healing and love potions, suggesting a range of narrative functions within Passamaquoddy tradition.

Methodological Reflections

Fewkes's editorial notes interweave with the tales, revealing his scholarly concerns. He comments on the difficulty of recording inflections and gutturals, and the likelihood that different listeners would spell words differently. He advocates for the phonograph as a solution, though the excerpts do not indicate whether he transcribed the cylinders phonetically or in translation. His comparison of the weird child's story to Moses suggests he is alert to possible European influence, yet he does not dismiss the tale as inauthentic. The reader is left to consider how the collector's presence and technology shaped the narratives, and how much of the original performance—including tone, pacing, and audience—is lost in the printed text.

Fewkes's report offers a rare glimpse into late-nineteenth-century fieldwork methods and Passamaquoddy oral narratives. Readers should note that the tales are filtered through the collector's choices: which stories to record, how to present them, and what comparative notes to add. The excerpts suggest a living tradition with recurring motifs—transformation, medicine, and prophecy—but the full range of the tribe's folklore is only partially represented here.

I recall how Fewkes feared the fading of Passamaquoddy voices, yet trusted his wax cylinders to hold them close. Reading that, I thought of another quiet preservation, the hushed hearth-tales of Breffny waiting patiently between covers. Both books keep their ghosts warm. Folk Tales of Breffny — Inside the Classic shares that same gentle, faithful ear.