Abbe Museum Shop: Books

The Abbe Museum Shop carries many of the latest books by Native American authors, and on topics of Native American customs, art, archaeology, and history, plus a wide range of educational resources.

Teacher resources may be found here.

Native American Placenames of the

United States

William Bright

A comprehensive geographic guide of linguistical and anthropological information on cities, towns, and landmarks. Produced with the aid of colleagues and experts from across the U.S and Canada, this book includes 20 native languages and provides a detailed pronunciation key, in addition to symbols and sounds. Defining the landscape from coast to coast, Native American placenames are found from Maine to Alaska and from Florida to California. Bright's research on American history, geography and language is considered the first comprehensive, up-to-date, scholarly dictionary of American placenames derived from Native languages.

THOREAU-WABANAKI TRAIL MAP & GUIDE

Henry David Thoreau made his third and final trip to Maine's North Woods 150 years ago, traveling waterways and forests that shaped so many of his ideas about nature. Thought to be the first of its kind, this map tracks each of Thoreau's trips, day by day as he canoed Moosehead Lake, the Penobscot River and its tributaries, and climbed Mount Katahdin, documenting the routes taken by Thoreau and his Wabanaki guides in 1846, 1853, and 1857. This 17" by 28" map shows all three expeditions and the reverse side tells the story in text and photos, and gives a brief perspective on Thoreau's relationship with the Wabanaki people.

Produced by Maine Woods Forever, cartographer Michael Hermann received valuable information and explanation of placenames from Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis.

THE ARCHAIC OF THE FAR NORTHEAST
Edited by David Sanger and M. A. P. Renouf

The important work is the first book in thirty years to present an integrated view of Native American and Canadian First Nations cultures from 6,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. With numerous illustrations, maps and tables, and scholarly contributions by 14 leading archaeologists on Native American cultures from Maine to Newfoundland-Labrador and Quebec, is published by University of Maine Press in Orono, Maine.

AN UPRIVER PASSAMAQUODDY
Allen J. Sockabasin

Drawing on his memories and an oral tradition, Allen Sockabasin returns to his Passamaquoddy village of Mud-doc-mig-goog, or Peter Dana Point, near Princeton, Maine. When Allen was a child in the 1940s and 1950s, his village was isolated and depended largely on subsistence hunting and fishing, working in the woods, and seasonal harvesting work for its survival. Passamaquoddy was its first language, and the tribal traditions of sharing and helping one another ensured the survival of the group.

Handicrafts of the Modern Indians of Maine

Fanny Hardy Eckstrom

The Handicrafts of the Modern Indians of Maine is published by the Abbe Museum, documenting the famous Wheelwright basketry collection, and the continuity of traditional arts and crafts by Wabanaki people. One of the most interesting objects included in the publication is the crooked knife, a common tool called "mocotaugan" in the Algonquin language.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

1491 is a groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong. In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. "His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation."

The Life and Traditions of the Red Man
Joseph Nicolar

Edited, Annotated, and History of the Penobscot Nation with an Introduction by Annette Kolodny.

Joseph Nicolar’s The Life and Traditions of the Red Man tells the story of his people from the first moments of creation to the earliest arrivals and eventual settlement of Europeans. Self-published by Nicolar in 1893, this is one of the few sustained narratives in English composed by a member of an Eastern Algonquian-speaking people during the nineteenth century. At a time when Native Americans’ ability to exist as Natives was imperiled, Nicolar wrote his book in an urgent effort to pass on Penobscot cultural heritage to subsequent generations of the tribe and to reclaim Native Americans’ right to self-representation.
Joseph Nicolar (1827–94) was an elder and political leader of the Penobscot Nation of Maine. He served six terms as the tribe’s elected representative to the Maine State Legislature.
Annette Kolodny is the College of Humanities Professor of American Literature and Culture at The University of Arizona.