Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation

2. Reading a Dictionary: How Passamaquoddy Language Translates Concepts of Physical and Social Space

43 Reading a Dictionary How Passamaquoddy Language Translates Concepts of Physical and Social Space Robert M. Leavitt When I sat down to proofread the thousands of entries in A Passamaquoddy -Maliseet Dictionary1 (Francis and Leavitt 2008), I expected to endure a long, tedious chore, compensated only by seeing the broad scope of the words David A. Francis and I, working with dozens of Passamaquoddy and Maliseet contributors, had compiled. But an unexpected pleasure awaited. In the words themselves and the example sentences, the Passamaquoddy world of the past hundred years came welling up from the pages. I could sense what speakers mean when they say that the language is “a unique mindset, in which I feel completely at home.”2 At a deep level, a people’s cultural history and sense of collective identity are embedded in their native tongue. The thriving, energetic culture that the Passamaquoddy language reflects is changing now as the population of fluent speakers declines. Yet in reading a dictionary, speakers’ values and attitudes, sense of social and family relationships, spatial and aesthetic perceptions, and spirituality and humor take shape. How can this happen? The dictionary presents no coherent narrative, no story or history or explanation. Instead it contains a disjointed collection of one-off ideas arranged in alphabetical order. The discussion that follows is about some of the ways in which Passamaquoddy culture is mediated by the language. The focus is on how the language itself, even in apparently isolated examples, translates the essence of the Passamaquoddy mind-set. The English glosses here are formulated to be literal rather than literary, in order that the content and 44 Leavitt configuration of the Passamaquoddy words may be appreciated. Readers will imagine their own, more idiomatic translations that capture the essence of the intended meanings. A Sense of Culture The sense of culture that comes from the dictionary would seem to have two sources: the topical content of the entry words and sentences, and the ways in which both words and sentences are constructed. Certainly the bits of oral tradition, the references to local places, and the details of community life in the dictionary present aspects of Passamaquoddy culture . But it is also speakers’ elegant, eloquent formulations of words and ideas that convey a uniquely Passamaquoddy way of thinking about the world. Native speakers themselves, listening to recordings or reading transcriptions , have observed this correlation. It would be presumptuous to say that the correlation can be explained, but perhaps some light can be shed on its sources. The Passamaquoddy mind-set is characterized in part by life experiences in the Maine–New Brunswick region that contribute the content of the words and example sentences in the dictionary. Economic pursuits include the trading, hunting, trapping, and fishing carried on since ancient times; guiding, basket making, and gardening, which developed during the colonial period; and the expanding professional, commercial, and industrial employment of today. Leisure-time activities such as storytelling and music, card playing, and baseball, respectively, also span these periods of Passamaquoddy history; spirituality and relationships with other societies have evolved continuously since the earliest times. Other themes that recur in the dictionary are marriage and family, church, and military experience. Many sentences recall ingenious acts of one-upmanship and effective strategies of social control. Until quite recently all of these activities and traditions flourished; many continue evolving among nonspeakers . The dictionary entries3 for tolehp and wiwonikuwok exemplify some of the attitudes with which Passamaquoddy speakers view their experiences, in this case card playing. tolehp [d'-LAP]. noun animate. playing card. Itom, naka nipayiw, eci tama tolamotuhtihtit tolehp, itom nit-oc kessahat. On-oc mecimiw nokalokittiyalan tolehp nipayiw, naka nokalokittiyatomon-na. He Reading a Dictionary 45 said that at night, wherever they were playing cards, he said he’d go in there. And so he used to be scared to death of cards at night, he was scared like hell of [doing] it, too. (The word tolehp is borrowed from the French trèfle ‘club [card suit].’) wiwonikuwok [wee-w'-NEE-goo-w'g]. verb ai. they grow around (something). Mam-ote nit wiwonikuwok-otehc tuwihputik etolamotultihtit . Finally they would take root there around the table playing cards (because they played for such a long time, or so frequently). In the first of these entries we learn not only that card playing dates to the colonial period—the earliest European settlers and missionaries in the region...