A[n]mes[oo]k-ka[n]tti, ’where there is plenty of alewives or herrings;’ from Abn. a[n]ms[oo]ak (Narr. aumsuog; Mass. ommissuog, cotton;) literally, ‘small fishes,’ but appropriated to fish of the herring tribe, including alewives and menhaden or bony-fish.  Rale gives this as the name of one of the Abnaki villages on or near the river ‘Aghenibekki.’  It is the same, probably, as the ‘Meesee Contee’ or ‘Meesucontee,’ at Farmington Falls, on Sandy River, Me.[49] With the suffix of ‘place’ or ‘land,’ it has been written Amessagunticook and Amasaquanteg.

[Footnote 49:  Coll.  Me.  Hist.  Society, iv. 31, 105.]

‘Amoscoggin,’ ‘Ammarescoggen,’ &c., and the ‘Aumoughcawgen’ of Capt.  John Smith, names given to the Kennebec or its main western branch, the Androscoggin,[50]—­appear to have belonged, originally, to ‘fishing places’ on the river, from Abn. a[n]m’s[oo]a-khige, or a[n]m’s[oo]a-ka[n]gan.  ‘Amoskeag,’ at the falls of the Merrimack, has the same meaning, probably; a[n]m’s[oo]a-khige (Mass. ommissakkeag), a ‘fishing-place for alewives.’  It certainly does not mean ‘beavers,’ or ‘pond or marsh’ of beavers,—­as Mr. Schoolcraft supposed it to mean.[51]

[Footnote 50:  The statement that the Androscoggin received its present name in compliment to Edmond Andros, about 1684, is erroneous.  This form of the name appears as early as 1639, in the release by Thomas Purchase to the Governor of Massachusetts,—­correctly printed (from the original draft in the handwriting of Thomas Lechford) in Mass.  Records, vol. i. p. 272.]

[Footnote 51:  Information respecting the Indian Tribes, &c., vol. iii. p. 526.]

Madamiscomtis or Mattammiscontis, the name of a tributary of the Penobscot and of a town in Lincoln county, Me., was translated by Mr. Greenleaf, in 1823, “Young Alewive stream;” but it appears to represent met-a[n]ms[oo]ak-ka[n]tti, ’a place where there has been (but is not now) plenty of alewives,’ or to which they no longer resort.  Compare Rale’s met-a[n]m[oo]ak, “les poissons ont faites leurs oeufs; ils s’en sont alles; il n’y en a plus.”

Cobbosseecontee river, in the south part of Kennebec county, is named from a place near “the mouth of the stream, where it adjoineth itself to Kennebec river,"[52] and ’where there was plenty of sturgeons,’—­kabassak-ka[n]tti.

[Footnote 52:  Depositions in Coll.  Me.  Histor.  Society, iv. 113.]

‘Peskadamioukkanti’ is given by Charlevoix, as the Indian name of “the river of the Etchemins,” that is, the St. Croix,—­a name which is now corrupted to Passamaquoddy; but this latter form of the name is probably derived from the Etchemin, while Charlevoix wrote the Abnaki form.  The Rev. Elijah Kellogg, in 1828,[53] gave, as the meaning of ‘Passamaquoddie,’ ‘pollock fish,’ and the Rev. Mr. Rand translates ‘Pestumoo-kwoddy’ by ’pollock ground.’[54] Cotton’s vocabulary gives ‘pakonnotam’ for ‘haddock.’  Perhaps peskadami[oo]k, like a[n]ms[oo]ak, belonged to more than one species of fish.