Case Study

The Woman With Two Names

Identifying Geneviève Abitakijikokwe
as Geneviève Pachitabanok8e

In May 1799, a priest at the Oka mission buried a woman he called Geneviève Pachitabanok8e. Three years earlier, the same priest had recorded Geneviève Abitakijikok8e as the mother of a child at the same mission. The names share nothing obvious on the page. No search algorithm links them. No database connects them. Yet the evidence — built across thirteen years, seven colonial spellings, and a discovery that changes how we read Indigenous names in missionary records — points to one conclusion: they are the same woman, the wife of an Algonquin war chief, and the matriarch of a family that connects two centuries of Indigenous and Métis history at the crossroads of the fur trade.

1 7 8 6 – 1 7 9 9

7 Colonial Spellings of One Name

2 Name Systems — One Woman

3 Simultaneous Pachitaban- Carriers

Typed transcription of the 1799 burial record of Geneviève Pachitabanok8e at the Oka mission, signed by Father Malard

The Challenge

The genealogist Jean-Guy Paquin identified her as Geneviève Abitakijikokwe, wife of the Algonquin war chief Kitchiwabisi. He recorded her children, her husband’s death, her son Bernard’s rise as a young chief. But the fiche left one field blank: no death date. The burial register held a Geneviève who died at the right time, at the right place, at the right age. Her name was wrong.

On May 8, 1799, Father Malard buried Geneviève Pachitabanok8e in the cemetery of the Oka mission. She had died the previous day, aged approximately forty-eight years. The witnesses were Basile Charlebois, a French-Canadian settler, and Jacques Chibanako, an Algonquin man. Neither could sign.

The name Pachitabanok8e appeared nowhere else in the genealogical record linking to Kitchiwabisi’s family. The wife of the war chief was documented under an entirely different name — Abitakijikokwe and its variants — in every record from 1786 through 1796. For any researcher relying on name-based searching, these were two different women. The name discrepancy was absolute.

The Woman in the Records

Geneviève Abitakijikokwe appears throughout the Oka mission registers from 1786 to 1796, always in connection with the chiefly family of Kitchiwabisi — “Wabisi the Great.” In 1786, she served as godmother at a baptism under the name Abitakijig8k8e. In 1788, she was explicitly identified as Abitakijig8ek8e femme de 8abizi le grand — wife of Wabisi the Great. In 1793, she appeared as mother of Thérèse, with her husband identified as “the Great 8abissi.” After Kitchiwabisi’s death in April 1794, she appeared once more in 1796 as the mother of Joseph, a fils naturel born to a man named Simon Na8ak8eskan — a child conceived outside of marriage, consistent with her widowed status.

After 1796, she vanished from the registers. No burial was recorded for a Geneviève Abitakijikokwe. No death date appeared in Paquin’s genealogical fiche. The only Geneviève who died at Oka in the right timeframe was the woman the priest called Pachitabanok8e.

The Naming Problem

The name variants documented across Geneviève’s lifetime already showed dramatic variation within the ABITAKI- family: Abitakijig8k8e, Abitakijig8ek8e, Ontakijikok8e, Kontakijikok8e, Abitakijikok8e. These are all recognizably the same root name, rendered differently by different priests at different times. But Pachitabanok8e shared no visible root with any of them. The challenge was not a spelling variation — it was an entirely different name. Either the identification was wrong, or the assumption that Indigenous individuals carried only one name was wrong.

The Stakes

The answer carried direct genealogical consequences. Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe — the researcher’s 4th-great-grandmother, who married the voyageur Gabriel Guilbault at Oka in 1801 — shared the same clan name as Geneviève. If Geneviève was the wife of Kitchiwabisi and the mother of Bernard Wabisi, then Marie Josephte belonged to the same Algonquin kinship network as a chiefly family — and the identification of Geneviève’s burial would anchor the entire Abitakijik family chronology at the mission.

Original 1788 Oka mission register in Father Lebrun’s hand, showing Geneviève Abitakijig8ek8e identified as godmother and wife of 8abizi le grand — with modern transcription below

The Breakthrough

The answer was not in the burial record. It was in a typed transcription made in 1927 by a woman named Pauline Cadieux, who copied every word of the original registers — spelling variations and all. When three women carrying the same Pachitaban- name appeared on the same page in May 1786, the name discrepancy dissolved. It was never a discrepancy at all. It was a second name system hiding in plain sight.

The Cadieux Transcription

Pauline Cadieux’s typed transcription of the Oka mission registers — received by the Public Archives of Canada on April 7, 1927 — is a faithful copy of the only surviving original. Her preface states it plainly: “Ce travail est une copie fidèle et conforme des registres de l’état civil du Lac des Deux Montagnes (Oka), dont un seul exemplaire existe.” Everything was preserved, including the spelling variations that would prove essential: “Dans la copie, tout a été respecté, orthographe comprise.”

The Cadieux transcription of Volume 2 (1786–1806) is critically different from Volume 1 on the same reel. The Volume 1 title page (image 374) explicitly states: “Moins les actes entièrement relatifs aux Indiens” — it excludes all Indigenous records. Volume 2, by contrast, includes every baptism, marriage, and burial of every person at the mission. The original pre-1786 registers were destroyed in the 1922 fire at Oka. Volume 2 is the most complete surviving record of Indigenous community life at the mission in the 18th century.

May 1786: Three Women, One Name

The breakthrough came on pages 5 and 6 of the Cadieux transcription. In the space of twelve days in May 1786, three women carrying variants of the Pachitaban- name appear in the registers:

Key Evidence — Simultaneous Pachitaban- Carriers

May 18, 1786: Marie Josette Patchitabanik8e — mother of Cécile, recorded at her daughter’s baptism. Alive, active, married to Ignace Méja8ka iatch.

May 27, 1786: Geneviève Abitakijig8k8e — serving as godmother at a baptism. The woman who would be buried as Pachitabanok8e in 1799 was alive and active under her Abitakijik name.

May 30, 1786: Marguerite Pechabankk8e — buried on this date. Wife of Michel L8tinatch. A different woman carrying the same root name.

Three women. Three variants of Pachitaban- (Patchitabanik8e, Pechabankk8e, and the later Pachitabanok8e). All present at the same mission in the same month. This is the evidence that collapses the name discrepancy argument: Pachitaban- is not a personal name. It is a clan or family name, carried by multiple women simultaneously. Just as multiple women in a European parish might share the surname “Martin,” multiple women at Oka carried the Pachitaban- identifier. Geneviève carried both names — Abitakijik from one kinship affiliation and Pachitaban from another — depending on which context the priest was recording.

The Same Priest, Two Names

1796 — Father Malard records: Strong Baptism of Joseph, fils naturel of Simon Na8ak8eskan and Geneviève Abitakijikok8e. July 4, 1796.

1799 — Father Malard records: Strong Burial of Geneviève Pachitabanok8e, died May 7, buried May 8, aged approximately 48 years.

The same priest wrote both records. Father Malard, a French Sulpician who arrived in Lower Canada in 1794, knew this woman. He baptized her child in 1796 and buried her in 1799. He used a different name each time — not because he was recording different women, but because Indigenous individuals carried multiple names from different kinship systems, and the name a priest recorded depended on the social context of the moment.

Seven Variants, One Woman

Name System 1 — Abitakijik

Abitakijig8k8e · Abitakijig8ek8e · Ontakijikok8e · Kontakijikok8e · Abitakijikok8e

Fathers Guichart, Lebrun, and Malard — 1786, 1788, 1793, 1796

Name System 2 — Pachitaban

Pachitabanok8e

Father Malard — 1799 (burial)

The Convergence of Evidence

The identification does not rest on any single record. It rests on the convergence of eight evidentiary streams: the same Christian name (Geneviève, uncommon at the mission); compatible age (born c. 1751); the same location (Oka mission throughout); the same recording priest for the critical 1796 and 1799 records; the absence of any separate burial for Geneviève Abitakijikokwe in the complete 1786–1800 registers; widowed status consistent with Kitchiwabisi’s 1794 death; the proof that Pachitaban- is a clan name carried by multiple women; and the blank death date in Paquin’s genealogical fiche, suggesting this connection had not previously been made.

Pauline Cadieux’s 1938 index to the Oka mission registers, showing Abitakijikokwe variants appearing across 1799 through 1806 — evidence of the family network persisting across decades

The Result

A burial record becomes a biography. An unnamed death becomes the passing of a chief’s wife, a war chief’s mother, and the matriarch of an Algonquin kinship network that spans half a century at the Oka mission. The woman buried on May 8, 1799 was Geneviève Abitakijikokwe — and her identification rewrites the Abitakijik family record.

Who Geneviève Was

Geneviève Abitakijikokwe, also known as Geneviève Pachitabanok8e, was an Algonquin woman born around 1751, likely at or near the Mission du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes. She married the Algonquin chief Kitchiwabisi — “Wabisi the Great” — no later than 1786, and probably in the late 1770s. Their marriage record, if it survives, is lost within the gap in the mission registers from August 1777 to February 1785, when Father Guichart certified only statistical summaries — eighty-one Indigenous marriages reduced to a number on a page.

She bore at least four children with Kitchiwabisi: Marie Jeanne (documented 1787), Thérèse (baptized 1793), Marie Angélique, and Bernard Wabisi, who would become a young Algonquin war chief. After Kitchiwabisi’s death on April 21, 1794, Geneviève remained at the mission as a widow. By 1796, she had a child — Joseph, fils naturel — with a man named Simon Na8ak8eskan, recorded by Father Malard without any title or marital designation. She died on May 7, 1799, approximately forty-eight years old, and was buried the following day in the mission cemetery.

The Abitakijik Family Network

The Cadieux transcription and index reveal that Geneviève was not an isolated figure but the center of a substantial kinship network at Oka. The ABITAKIJIK root name appears across multiple individuals documented from 1786 through 1832: Catherine Abitakilaik8e (buried 1795, age 60 — possibly Geneviève’s older sister or aunt); Guillaume Abitakyiko8itch (married 1795, buried 1800); Jean Atabitakijik (father of Jean Baptiste, 1795); Martin Abitakigiko8ich (buried 1802); and Marie Josette Abitakijikokwe, who married Gabriel Guilbault in 1801. By the 1820s, the name had evolved into TABITAKIJIK, with Michel Tabitakijiko appearing repeatedly through 1830 — the core element -TAKIJIK- persisting across fifty years of colonial record-keeping.

Why This Identification Matters

The identification of Geneviève Pachitabanok8e as Geneviève Abitakijikokwe does three things that extend beyond a single family record. First, it completes the biography of a chiefly wife and fills the blank death date in Paquin’s genealogical fiche for Bernard Wabisi — a correction that may be original to this research. Second, it demonstrates that the Pachitaban- name is a clan or family identifier, not a personal name, which has implications for how other Oka mission records are read: any researcher encountering an unfamiliar Pachitaban- name should consider whether the individual also appears under a different name system. Third, it anchors the Abitakijik kinship network in a firm chronological framework, from Geneviève’s first appearance in 1786 through the Tabitakijik generation of the 1830s, establishing the family context into which Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe — the researcher’s direct ancestor — married.

The Archival Discovery

This research also uncovered a critical distinction in the archival record itself. Volume 1 of the Oka registers on LAC reel C-2895 (1721–1786) carries the explicit notation “Moins les actes entièrement relatifs aux Indiens” — it was deliberately stripped of Indigenous records. Volume 2, containing the Cadieux transcription, preserves them faithfully. The original pre-1786 registers were destroyed in the 1922 fire at Oka. However, the 1786 judicial authentication page — signed by René Ovide Hertel de Rouville, judge for the district of Montreal, dated December 28, 1785 — confirms that civil doubles were deposited at the Montreal courthouse. These courthouse doubles, if they survive in the judicial archives at BAnQ, may contain the Indigenous records excluded from the transcription, including Geneviève’s baptism and marriage.

The Evidence Base

Documented from: Cadieux Transcription, Volume 2, page 5 (Marie Josette Patchitabanik8e, May 18, 1786); page 6 (Geneviève Abitakijig8k8e as godmother, May 27, 1786; Marguerite Pechabankk8e burial, May 30, 1786); page 248 (burial of Geneviève Pachitabanok8e, May 8, 1799); Pouliot-Thisdale Index (1788: Abitakijig8ek8e femme de 8abizi le grand); Paquin genealogical fiche, Bernard Wabisi (weskarini.ca); Parish Registers, L’Annonciation-de-la-Bienheureuse-Vierge-Marie, Oka, 1786–1806; Library and Archives Canada, MG 8, G 21, Reels C-2895 and C-2896; Cadieux Index, MG 8, G 21, prepared September 26, 1938.

Researcher’s Note

The researcher behind this case study is a direct descendant of Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe, who married Gabriel Guilbault at Oka in 1801 — their 4th-great-granddaughter through the line: Gabriel & Marie Josephte → Gabriel Guilbault fils (1791) → Evangeliste Guilbault (1845) → Elisabeth Emma Guilbault Gilbert (1883) → Thomas Eugene Hamall (1904) → Thomas Kenny Hamall (1932) → Researcher. Marie Josephte carried the same Abitakijik clan name as Geneviève. This identification confirms that the researcher’s ancestor belonged to an Algonquin kinship network that included a war chief’s family — a connection that was invisible until the Cadieux transcription revealed the dual-name system that colonial record-keeping had obscured.

Open Research Questions

Where is Geneviève’s baptism record (c. 1751)? The original pre-1786 registers were destroyed in the 1922 fire, and the surviving transcription excludes Indigenous records. Courthouse doubles deposited at Montreal under the Hertel de Rouville authentication may survive at BAnQ. What was Geneviève’s relationship to Marie Josette Patchitabanik8e, who carried the same Pachitaban- clan name in 1786? Is Angélique Pitabanok8e (1800) the same person as Marie Angélique Abitakijikokwe from Paquin’s fiche? And what does the standalone “Geneviève” entry at page 271 of the Cadieux transcription — no surname, no acte type — represent?

Full Methodology: Dual-Name Systems in Algonquin Mission Records →

This summary presents the case study findings. The full methodology documents each record with complete primary source transcriptions, analysis of the Cadieux transcription’s role in preserving Indigenous name variants, the linguistic evidence for dual Algonquin name systems, and the eight-stream convergence logic that confirmed Geneviève’s identity across two name systems and seven colonial spellings.

Read the Full Methodology → Case Study: The Woman at the Grave → The Guilbault Line: Series Index →

The Woman With Two Names

The Challenge

The Breakthrough

The Result

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