For much of February, I have been working on a new edition of another text that John Dyneley Prince published, this one a story told in the teens of the twentieth century by Bennett N. Francis of Pleasant Point, pictured here in 1906. (The image is from the Maine Historical Society via Pinterest.) Prince worked with Francis at the Alqonquin Hotel in St. Andrews, NB, where Francis had probably gone to sell some of the baskets that he had made. (He listed his occupation as “basket maker” on the census in 1900, when he was living in Bar Harbor, another popular tourist destination where basket makers plied their trade.) Bennett’s story tells the adventures of a man with special powers—a motewolòn—who must defeat another such powerful personage to secure tobacco from an island. The hero goes on to overcome other adversaries, including a terrible storm, which he persuades to return to the north country from which it had come. Pukcinsqehs the Jug Woman, an evil character in many tales, makes a cameo appearance. The language of the tale is complex and difficult at points. Prince clearly found it challenging. But his transcriptions, though often inaccurate, are clear enough to make the text recoverable. I worked through much of it many years ago with the late David A. Francis (no relation) at Pleasant Point, who told me that he had known Bennett Francis in his youth. Prince’s version of the story was published in 1917 as “A Passamaquoddy Tobacco Famine,” in the first issue of a new journal: The International Journal of American Linguistics.
A hero’s quest
