A: Saco | B: Sokoki | C: Amarascoggin | D: Arosaguntacook |
Gordon M Day, who was Eastern Canada Ethnologist (Emeritus)
at Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa when he died in 1993, was
the person most qualified to solve the current problem of searching out
both proper and improper names for the Sebagoland Native peoples. He was
by specialty a linguist as well as an ethnohistorian, and already had
started the work on southwestern Maine, by bracketing our Lakes Region
with two nomenclature studies: Amarascoggins (not Arosaguntacooks)
on the Androscoggin River; and Sacos (not Sokokis) on the
Saco River. [See Note
5] and map. |
Dr Day had been the Outside Reader on my own doctoral dissertation committee in 1974, and I had high hopes that someday he would guide my efforts to label Sebagoland's former occupants. But, alas, my Sebago research had to await my full-time retirement, which came too late for his direct help. Yet as a role-model he continues to influence me nonetheless.
Way back in 1966, in his first letter to me (responding to my first to him), Gordon Day offered a warning that I have never forgotten - but that the general public still knows not of. He clearly stated the bold truth about prior Euramerican attempts to identify the tribes and dialects of the Wabanaki peoples: "Much of the material in print is just plain wrong." While that statement may make Gordon sound pompous & cavalier, he was in fact one of the most humble & cautious scholars that I have ever known. Indeed, he was so cautious that it greatly disturbed him when either less-cautious writers or outright bluffers let neither the facts nor the lack of facts interfere with telling a nice tight story.
In the decades since Gordon Day first warned me that many already written statements about Sebagoland's Natives might be "just plain wrong", I have found countless examples of what he meant. (Sometimes it really seems that accuracy about Native Americans is of absolutely no concern at all to some antiquarians who are fastidious about details of Euramericans.) However, "Day's Warning" has to be recognized as a genuine problem by the general public before the ethnohistorical work of current & future scholars can meaningfully make any corrections in the accepted story of the Lakes Region's past. If the public doesn't care, then accuracy matters not.
Indeed, if Indian land-claims cases arise, the public may
prefer to keep the inaccurate street-signs saying "Sokoki
Drive" in several modern residential neighborhoods in southwestern Maine!
And even without land-claims cases, it costs money to change street-signs
& stationery; accuracy can be an expensive nuisance! [See Note
5 & map about Saco yes / Sokoki no]
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