In March 1890, Walter Jesse Fewkes traveled to Calais, Maine to work with the Passamaquoddy Tribe to test out the new phonograph technology.  Over three days, Fewkes made recordings on 35 wax cylinders. 31 of these cylinders remain. He recorded songs, vocabulary, numbers and important Passamaquoddy cultural narratives. Peter Selmore, Noel Josephs and Perle Lacoot have been identified as three key individuals who Fewkes worked the most closely with. These are the first sound recordings ever made featuring Native American voices. Fewkes made contact with members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe through his benefactor Mary Hemenway from Boston who had a friendship with Mrs Louisa Brown in Calais, Maine. 

Esunomawotultine  is the Passamaquoddy name for song 2 on cylinder 17. Esunomawotultine means lets trade. It was sung on the cylinder by Peter Selmore, who also provided the cultural narrative. This narrative is found in Fewkes’ Calais Field Notebook and was written up in the Journal of American Folklife 1890. The song and dance is common to Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmac and Penobscot communities. According to Nicholas Smith, the Wabanaki had at least three different types of trading dances. "The important gift-giving trait was an element in two of them. One was the trading dance of the ceremonial prelude to the actual trading at aht efur trading posts. I have called another the hunter's trading dance...The third was the misunderstood peddler dance, a dance song in which the Indian satarizes the peddler as a highly motivated businessman. They despise greedy traders. The Peddler was apparently ignorant of the importance of the gift-giving role in Indian culture." (Smith 1996) According to Smith, who interviewed Maliseet (Peter and Minnie Paul of NB) and Passamaquoddy (Sabattus Tomer of Peter Dana's Point) elders about the various trading dances, the peddler dance cannot be considered a trading dance song, but it added humor at social gatherings.