#algonquian

by Soufiane Idrassi

This person has a more expansive definition of plagiarism than me, and I think some of the translation problems likely are more of a problem in their specific domains. But the points about re-wording the sources to be less accurate and just incorrectly citing sources altogether (using them as references for things those sources don't even say!!) seem likely to affect Wikipedia in general. I've certainly noticed plenty of poorly written, confusing sentences on Wikipedia just in my casual browsing.

A series of common English words with Native language origins!

Moose

Language of Origin: Eastern Algonquian family

Place of Origin: Northeastern US/Southeastern Canada

The largest extant species of deer in the world, and the second-largest animal in North America. The Eastern Algonquian languages spoken in what is now New England, Quebec, and New Brunswick all have a similar word for this animal: Massachusett/Wampanoag moos or m8s, Narragansett moos, Penobscot mos, Passamaquoddy mus, Mohegan-Pequot mos, Abenaki mos or moz. The English adoption could have come from any of them; it is first attested in English in the 1610s as “Mus” and “Moos.” Speculated to ultimately derive from the proto-Algonquian *moswa “(he) strips off” referring to moose stripping off bark to eat.

Ethnonyms: Wôbanakiak, Wabanaki, Alnôbak, Alnanbal, Abenaki, Abnaki, St. Francis River Indians

Total population: 5,075

Ethnolinguistic classification: Algic > Algonquian > Eastern Algonquian

Homeland: Ndakinna

Regions with significant populations: the Connecticut River Valley (Kwanitekw), the Lake Champlain Basin (Bitawbagok), the Merrimack River Valley, the White Mountains (Wôbiadenik), the Penobscot River Valley (Panawahpskek), the Kennebec River Valley, the Saco and Androscoggin River Valleys, the Gulf of Maine Coast (Sobagwa), the St. Francis River Valley (Moliantegw), The Bécancour Region (Wôlinak)

Languages and dialects: Abenaki, Western Abenaki, Eastern Abenaki, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, Mi'kmaw, English, French

Religion: Traditional Abenaki Spirituality, Catholicism (Roman Catholicism), Protestantism, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, Congregationalism, Methodism, Syncretism

Some double curved motif drawings before bed😴 definitely not symmetrical lol

The Powhatan Mantle is an artefact that opens a door onto the history of some of First Peoples of North America.

Today, it is kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It was made in the early 17th century by Algonquian-speaking peoples from the Southern Chesapeake region, in Virginia.

(The name Chesapeake comes from an Algonquian language and may mean "great shellfish bay"/ "great water". Today Chesapeake refers to a large region on the eastern coast of North America around the Chesapeake Bay, including Virgina, Maryland, Delaware and Washington D.C.)

The mantle is associated with the Wahunsenacawh, whom the English called "Chief Powhatan". He was the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, the Powhatan Confederacy, a powerful Indigenous political organization in the Virginia region. He was also the father of Matoaka, better known as Pocahontas.

In colonial memory, Pocahontas has often been presented as a symbol of peaceful encounter between Indigenous peoples and British settlers. But other readings, Indigenous and critical ones, remind us that she was a very young girl who was taken away, Christianized, displaced, married to a cultural stranger (John Rolfe), and brought to England.

The mantle also introduces the story of Opechancanough, Wahunsenacawh's close relative, who became a major Powhatan figure of resistance. Face with English expansion, the stealing of food, the desire for Indigenous lands and the development of tabacco cultivation, he led major uprisings againt the Britsish settlers; in 1622 and 1644.

What touches me about this artefact is that it materializes some aspects of their cultural world : political organization, spirituality, material culture, skills, animas, beads, skins, signs and territories.

There are some moments in the archive that stick with you. For me, one such moment was seeing this 1668 deed for “Secunk” — a place now called Rehoboth, Massachusetts — in the stacks of the John Carter Brown Library my first week working there.

On the page was a signature line reading: “The marke of phillip Sachem,” and between those words, the bold pictographic mark chosen by Metacom (called “King Philip” by the English). I had read so much about Metacom, but had never before seen a stroke of pen on paper, chosen by him to represent himself.

Seeing that mark collapsed so much historical distance. These marks were not about myths, symbols, or abstractions, but human beings with relationships, responsibilities, griefs, humor, strategies, families, and dreams. Ancestors who lived and loved on these lands for millennia before the United States existed — and whose descendants are still here.

That moment became one of the sparks for Their Marks. It sent me searching for the lives, circumstances, and pictographs of Northeastern Native ancestors so often flattened, erased, trivialized, or rendered invisible within dominant historical narratives. Narratives that celebrate “American exceptionalism” while treating so many Native people as footnotes to someone else’s story.

I’ve come to think of them not only as evidence of Native presence, but as assertions of belonging. As forms of memory. As refusals. As calls across generations. If, for so many years, academia had known how (or been willing) to truly read these marks, perhaps the histories told about this place would have looked very different.

Every pictograph represents a person who understood themselves as part of a world shaped by land, kinship, language, diplomacy, innovation, spirituality, and responsibility. A person whose experiences were - and are - worthy of recording and remembering. A person whose descendants still carry those histories forward.

Their Marks, for me, has always been about calling ancestors back to us. About looking beyond colonial handwriting and legal language to the human beings who put hand to paper. About imagining fuller stories for them than the archive often allows. Stories tied not only to dispossession, but to endurance, creativity, governance, survivance, and dreams for the future.