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Gc 974.102 B47s 1804196
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01083 7455
1
STORIES
and
LEGENDS
of
OLD BIDDEFORD Me.
Pt, 1+2
1600-1800 Part I - 1600-1747
The First Settlers
The Indian Wars
Prepared by The McArthur Library for the City of Biddeford 1945- 1946
...
1804196
Special Note
In preparing "An Introduction to Biddeford's History", in 1944, many old tales were found that seemed to have more than a germ of truth. Strictly speaking, they were not history; practically speaking, they were often the very folk-stuff of history. They were genuinely a part of Biddeford's heritage from the past.
Thus this present series of "Stories and Legends of Old Biddeford." The first part was originally put out in a small edition in 1945, and has now been rearranged into its present form. It covers the best stories that have survived, dealing with happenings ( legendary or otherwise) up to the close of the Indian Wars. For the first time, all of these stories have been gathered into one place. They have been put down simply, without literary effect or embroidery, and they largely preserve the earliest tellings that have come down to us. Wherever supporting historical evidence has been found, the facts have been given along with the story.
Part II will continue the stories through the rich material of Colonial, Revolutionary, and post-Revolutionary times in Biddeford.
Dane Yorke
August, 1946
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IABLE o f CONTENTS
I. Stories before the White Men came
a. Kuloscap and the whale 1
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= b. 11 = rattlesnake c. = 11 Saco River giants 3-4
II Stories after the White Men came
a. Captain Richard Vines and the stories of 1630 - 1650 6-10
b. Major William Phillips and his "Silver Mine", and stories of 1660 - 1675 10-14
III. Stories of the Indian Wars, 1675 - 1749
The First Indian War, 1675 - 1678
a. Squando's child 14-15 b. The Indians attack the Phillips' garrison, and burn all houses above the Pool 15-18
The Second Indian War, 1688 - 1698
a. Governor Andros makes trouble with the Indians 19
b. The Indian named Robin Doney
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c. The Indians capture Pendleton Fletcher and his sons, on Cow Island 20-21
d. The Scamman Mug, and the boy who swam the Saco on horseback 21-22a
e. Captain John Alden and the Salem witchcraft trials 23-24
f. Colonel Pepperrell sends a barrel of rum and a cask of wine for a ship launching at the Pool 24-25
The Third Indian War, 1703 - 1713
a. Ebenezer Hill and wife carried to Canada by the Indians 26-27
b. Battle at the Pool between Indians in canoes, and white men in small ships 27-28
c. Pendleton Fletcher captured for the fourth time, but Mary Dyer escapes 29-30
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d. The Jordan garrison house, and Captain Jordan's adventures with the Indians
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e . John Stackpole's adventure 31
f . The Haley house on the Pool Road, and its Indian stories 31-33
The Fourth Indian War, 1722 - 1725
a. "Lovewell's Fight"
The Fifth Indian War, 1744 - 1749 33
a. The Biddeford garrisons
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b. The two Biddeford girls who were chased by the Indians
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c. Indians kill the two Gordon brothers on the Pool Road, and the ballad written about them
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d. The Indians attack the Murch farm
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e. Parson Morrill rides fast, "as though the De'il was after him!" 38
f. Where the Indians used to camp in Biddeford 39
g. An Indian wigwam 39
The Legend of the Missing Biddeford Bell 39a-c
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I. Before the White Men came
No one can say just what were the first stories told in Biddeford. For those stories were told before America was known. They were told by Indians, among themselves, and there was neither writing nor books to preserve them. Most unfortunate of all, the first white men to come to New England and Maine had no interest in what are now called folk-stories; and even when the last Indians were driven from the Saco Valley more than 200 years ago, no white man had studied their stories or attempted to write them down. In fact it was not until 1882 (and long after our Sokokis Indians had left here) that a gifted American scholar, Charles Godfrey Leland, discovered a large number of old Indian legends still surviving among the Algonquin tribes of northern Maine and Canada. Some of these legends he found in the St. Francis tribe, and this fact is of particular interest to us in Biddeford. Because it was to the St. Francis tribe of Canada that the remaining Indians of the Saco Valley fled in 1725, and combined. These stories found by Leland are probably good examples of the tall tales told by Indian storytellers, around their camp-fires in Biddeford, before the white men came.
The most remarkable of the Wabanaki stories (as Leland called them) had to do with the adventures of a great Indian hero, known as Kuloskap, whom the Indians believed had made Man by shooting arrows into the bark of an ash tree. He also made all of the animals, and he made them to fear and to serve Man. It was Kuloskap who taught Man how to hunt and fish, and how to build fires and shelters and canoes. He knew all the magic words and tricks, and with them he fought and overcame the great giants and sorcerers who threatened Man. But even in the most serious stories there is always some element of comedy, because the Indians had a keen sense of humor. The old tales are full of amusing touches, such as the time Kuloskap magically persuaded a huge whale to give him a ride on its back over the sea. The story goes on that when they finally reached land again the whale asked Kuloskap for a favor, saying "Hast thou not such a thing as an old pipe and some tobacco?" So Kuloskap gave the whale a short pipe, some tobacco, and a light - and the whale swam away, contentedly smoking, with a long plume of tobacco-smoke trailing over him. And thus when Indians at the Pool would see a whale "blow" offshore, and shoot a stream of spray high in the air, they would laugh and say that the whale was smoking Kuloskap 's pipe.
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A drawing made by a Maine Indian, on. birch bark, showing Kuloskap watching the whale smoke his pipe.
Another old story explained how the rattlesnake got its rattles. The Indians told it this way:
"Long time ago the rattlesnakes were saucy Indians. They were very saucy. When the great Flood was coming they were warned about it by Kuloskap. The se smart Indians said they did not care. Kuloskap told them the water would come over their heads. They said that would be very wet. He told them to be good and quiet, and pray. Then the se so-bright Indians hurrahed. He said, 'A great Flood is coming'. They gave three cheers for the Flood. He said, 'The Flood will come and drown you all'. And then these Indirns hurrahed again, and got their rattles (which were made of turtle-shells fastened together and filled with pebbles) and rattled them and had a grand dance. Yes, they had a great dance. The rain began to fall, but they danced. The thunder roared, but they shook their rattles and yelled at it.
Then Kuloskap became angry. He did not drown those smart Indians - but he changed them into rattlesnakes. When they see a man coming, they lift up their heads and move them about. That's the way snakes dance. And they shake the rattles in their tails just as Indians shake their rattles when they dance."
One of the most interesting legends found by Le land, directly mentions the Saco River. It reveals again the Indian belief in magic, and it also shows that the Indians played some
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sort of a game resembling our soccer football. The Indian storyteller said solemnly:
There was a father who had three sons and a daughter. They were mighty magicians. They were giants. They ate men, women, and children; they did everything that was wicked and horrible. Yet when this family was young, Kuloskap had been their friend: he had made the father his adopted father, the brothers his brother, the sister his sister. But as they grew older, and he began to hear on every side of their wickedness, he said: "I will go among them and find if this be true. And if it is, they shall die. I will not spare one of those who oppress and devour men: I do not care who he may be. "
This family then lived on a great sandy field near the Saco River, and Kuloskap went there. Now the old man, the father of the evil magicians, had only one eye and was half gray. And Kuloskap, by magic, made himself exactly like the father and in that form entered the Indian hut and sat down by the old man. And the evil brothers, hearing some- one talking, locked in slyly and saw the newcomer who was so like their father that they knew nct which was which. And they said to each other, "This is a great magician. But he and his magic shall be tested, ere he goes, and that bitterly. "
So the sister took the tail of a whale and cooked it for the stranger to eat. But as it lay before him on the platter which was on his knees, the elder brother entered and said rudely, "This is too good for a beggar like you" - and snatched up the whale-tail and tock it to his own wigwam. Then Kuloskap spoke: "That which was given to me was mine; therefore I take it back again." And sitting still, he simply made a wish and the meat came flying back through the air to the platter where it was before.
And Kuloskap ate it.
The brothers locked at each other and said, "Indeed, he is a great magician. But he shall be tried more ere he goes, and that bitterly.
After he had eaten they started again. They brought in a mighty bone, the jaw of a whale, and the eldest brother with great fuss, and using both his arms and all his strength, managed to bend it a little. Then he handed the whale-jaw to Kuloskap who, just with thumb and fingers, snapped it as easily as a pipe-stem. And the evil brothers locked at each other again and said, "Truly this is a great magician. But he shall be tried thoroughly before he goes, and bitterly.
So now they brought a great pipe full of the strongest tobacco; no man who was not a magician could have smoked it.
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The pipe was passed around, every one smoked, and the brothers ( to show what really tough magicians they were) proudly blew the smoke through their nostrils while they watched for Kuloskap to keel over. But instead, when the pipe had gone around, Kuloskap insisted on filling it again and this time burnt all the fresh tobacco to ashes at one pull, and blew all the smoke through his nostrils at one puff! So that test failed, and still the evil brothers weren't satisfied. They said angrily, "This is indeed a very great magician. Yet he shall be tried again ere he goes, and that bitterly."
So they thought awhile and then one said, "This is idle; let us go and play ball. " The place they decided to play on was the large sandy plain on a bend of the Succ River. And when the game began they tried more magic - Kuloskap discovered that the ball they kicked and rolled at him was really a hideous skull. It seemed alive; it snapped at his heels, and had he been like other men it would have bitten off his foot. But Kuloskap only laughed and said, "So this is the game you play, eh? Good, but let us try a livelier ball." He stepped over to a tree on the edge of the river and broke off the end of a bough - by magic he turned it into a skull ten times more terrible than the one the evil brothers had used. And those brothers, those too-smart magicians, ran wildly before the new ball as it chased them all around the field: they were thoroughly beaten at last. Then Kuloskap showed what he really could do. Ho stamped on the ground and away off the waters rose suddenly and came rushing down from the mountains and flooded the Soco River - the whole land rong with the terrible roar. Then Kuloskap sang the magic song which changes all beings, and the three brothers and their father were turned into the chinamess (a fish that is as long and as large as a man) and they went rushing headlong down on the flooded Saco River, clear to the deep sea where they lived ever afterwards.
Note: For a metrical version of these and other Algonquin legends, see the book: "Kuloskap, the Master", by Charles Godfrey Le land and John D. Prince. New York, 1902.
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It is a pity that no early settler was either interested enough, or gifted enough, to leave us a drawing or portrait of the early Indians found here. And of course the camera had not been invented, and was not to be until 200 years after the first white settlers arrived.
But one thing is clear: the Indians found here were not quite the same as those later found in the West and Far West. Also, when the Indians of the Saco Valley were driven out after "Lovewell's Fight" in 1725 they did not go West. Instead they fled to Canada where they merged with a tribe later known as the St. Francis Indians. Thus pictures of Western Indians are no guide to the Indians of early Maine.
The drawing shown here is based on careful scientific reconstruction of Indian remains found in Northern New England. It is as near as we can get today to the appearance of the Indians found here by Captain Vines and the first settlers.
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Early Maine Indian
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Where the Indians were first seen
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Chovacoit R.
River
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This map was drawn in 1605 by Samuel de Champlain, the first white man to visit and map and describe the Indian village at the mouth of the river.
The map covers from the Pocl almost to Ferry Lane. It shows Hill's Beach to have then been a marshy stretch.
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2. Indians on shore, at Pocl
3. Indian huts on river bank
4. . Indian palisade and corn field
5. Fort Hill was then an island
6. Wood Island 7. Site of Camp Ellis 8. Champlain's spelling of the Indian name for the river
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Samuel de Champlain:
Champlan-
His signature
His best-known portrait
Born in Brouage, France, near the Bay of Biscay, about 1567, Samuel de Champlain served as a young man in the army of Henry of Navarre. Later he became an explorer, and in 1605 he made a voyage of discovery along the Maine coast in which he entered the Saco River, visited and carefully described the Indians then living here, and made the first detailed map of the mouth of the Saco River and Biddeford Pool. He founded Quebec in 1608. Lake Champlain, which still bears his name, he discovered in 1609. In 1615 he visited the Great Lakes and was the first white explorer to describe, map, and name Lake Huron. He named it for the Huron Indians for whom he fought against the Iroquois.
He died in Quebec, on Christmas Day, 1635, just five years after the founding of the first permanent settlement here by Richard Vines.
How Champlain used the astrolabe in his exploring and map making
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2. After the White Men came
The first white man known to have visited here was Samuel de Champlain, of France. In July of 1605 he spent several days with the Indians then living at the mouth of the river. But if he heard any stories from the Indians, he did not write them down.
The first white man known to have spent any real time here was Richard Vines, of England. Eleven years after Champlain, Captain Vines sailed into the Pool and spent the winter here the first white man known to have wintered here. It was 1616, the year that Shakespeare died in England, and Captain Vines is known to have visited the Indians on what is now Factory Island, and he and his men slept in the Indian wigwams. But unfortunate - ly he never wrote a book of his adventures and so we do not know the stories he must have heard. Then, fourteen years afterwards, (in 1630) he came again and founded the first permanent settle- ment here. This time he lived here for fifteen years - until 1645 when he moved to Barbadoes where he died. The home that Vines built here (in 1630) was burned by Indians some thirty years after he left to go to Barbadoes, and no description of it has come down to us. But we know that it was no log hut; it was, rather a comfortable English frame house of the period, with big open fireplaces and a dining-room. Old deeds show that Captain Vines took good care to have his dinner-table well supplied and some of these documents specifically provide that he would have a "fatt goose" or other fowl for special feast days. A record of that time remarks that the people here then had " a custom of taking Tobacco, sleeping at noon, sitting long at meals sometimes four times in a day." And when men eat and live that way there is nothing surer than that they relax after eating, and gladly listen to stories.
At Captain Vines' home, therefore, we can be certain that stories were told of the first New England pirate, named Dixy: Bull, who raided the Maine coast for several years after Vines established the first permanent settlement in Biddeford in 1630. Stories were also told of another piratical character, Walter Bagnall (whose nicknamewas "Great Watt") who was killed by an angry Indian near the mouth of the Saco River in 1631. Bagnall's trading-post had been on Richmond's Island and there, in 1633, some Massachusetts men (disappointed in searching for Dixy. Bull) hung an Indian known as Black William - to avenge Great Watt's death. It is significant that neither Captain Vines nor any other local settler was involved in this affair. The Indians were their friends.
Over at Black Point (now Prout's Neck) another English gentleman, Henry Josselyn, was settled. To his comfortable home, in 1638, came his brother, John, an English lawyer, who later wrote one of the most interesting and entertaining books
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of early America. From his book we can get an excellent idea of the life on this coast at that time, and of the stories that Captain Vines and his fellow-settlers must have heard. £ This is John Josselyn's account of one day's storytelling:
"June, the six and twentieth day (1639) very stormie, Lightning and Thunder. I heard now two of the greatest and fearfullest thunder-claps that ever were heard, I am confident. At this time we had some neighbouring Gentlemen in our house, who came to welcome me into the Countrey; where amongst variety of discourse they told me of a young Lyon (not long before) kill'd at Piscataway by an Indian; of a Sea-Serpent or Snake that lay quoiled up like a Cable upon a rock at Cape-Ann: a Boat passing by with English aboard, and two Indians, they would have shot the Serpent but the Indians disswaded them, saying that if he were not kill 'd outright they would be all in danger of their lives.
"One Mr. Mittin related of a Triton or Merman which he saw in Casco-bay; the Gentleman was a great Fouler and used to goe out with a small Boat or Canow, and fetching a compass about a small Island (there being many small Islands in the Bay) for the advantage of a shot, was encountred with a Triton who laying his hands upon the side of the Canow had one of them chopt off with a Hatchet by Mr. Mittin which was in all respects like the hand of a man. The Triton presently sunk, dying the water with his purple blood, and was no more seen.
"The next story was told by Mr. Foxwell, now living in the province of Maine, who having been to the Eastward in a Shallop, as far as Cape-Ann, in his return was overtaken by the night and, fearing to land upon the barbarous shore, he put off a little further to Sea. About midnight they were wakened with a loud voice from the shore calling,
"Foxwell, Foxwell, come a shore, ' two or three times: upon the Sands they saw a great fire, and Men and Women, hand in hand, dancing round about it in a ring. After an hour or two they vanished, and as soon as the day appeared Foxwell puts into a small Cove, it being about three quarters floud (tide), and traces along the shore where he found the footing of Men, Women and Children, shod with shoes; and an infinite number of brands-ends thrown up by the water - but neither Indian nor English could he meet with on the shore, nor in the woods.
"The se with many other stories they told me, the credit whereof I will neither impeach nor inforce, but shall satisfie myself (and I hope the Reader hereof) with the saying of a wise, learned and honourable Knight, that there are many stranger things in the world than are to be seen between London and Stanes."
And those are the first tall stories known to have been told on this coast, and that last sentence was John Josslyn's way of saying, "Believe it or not. "
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The First Dwellings of Biddeford
The first settlers probably built a temporary shelter like this. Such shelters were then used in England, and were known there as wigwams. The frame was of poles, lashed together, covered with thatch and sheets of bark. The chimney was built of crossed sticks, daubed with clay. This wigwam served until better dwellings could be built, as shown below.
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The first settlers did not know how to build a log house. The houses they had known in England were framed houses - houses built of planks nailed (with wooden nails, called tree nails) to a frame. So the settlers sawed the trees into planks, in saw pits, as above. For 25 years after 1630, all planks were sawed by hand in this way.
Below are shown two types of the early dwellings built here. Roofs were thatched; chimneys were of sticks daubed with clay; windows were covered with oiled paper, at first, until glass was imported from England.
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In 1642 the settlers here were excited by the visit of a man named Darby Field who came down the Saco River with stories of what he had found on the top of the White Mountains. With two Indians he had made his way from some point in New Hampshire - being the first white man known to have visited those mountains. He told stories of how the Indians were afraid to go too near the mountains, in fear of evil spirits; of how he had found a pond filled with black water, and another pond with red water. He said that there was "muscovy glass" (by which he meant mica) and that pieces could be cut that were forty feet long and seven or eight feet wide. He showed "shining stones" that he hed picked up, which he was sure were diamonds. And he probably also repeated an Indian legend of a great gem (then called a carbuncle) of immense size and value, that was supposed to hang from a rock over a pond hidden deep in the mountains. He was eighteen days making the trip, and the time was probably May of 1642.
Darby Field may have visited Captain Vines' home. At any rate, Vines was so impressed with the story that later that season (about August) he and another white man went from here up the river in birch canoes. They were fifteen days going and coming, but once more Captain Vines apparently wrote no account of his experiences. The only report known is that given by Governor Winthrop, of Boston, with whom Vines was friendly and to whom he probably told the story of the trip. Captain Vines found that Darby Field had been a little over-excited. There
was no great carbuncle and the "shining stones" were not diamonds but just pretty quartz crystals. But the Field stories led Richard Vines to be the first man from Biddeford to visit the White Mountains and, especially, Mount Washington which in those days (more than 300 years ago) was called "the twinkling mountaine" from the way its snowclad peak danced in the haze of the horizon when seen from this coast.
From Governor Winthrop comes another story that Richard Vines must have heard and retold in Winter Harbor. Because Winthrop records that Vines was visiting Boston at a time in 1643 (the next year after the White Mountain trip) when Boston was buzzing with the tale told by a Captain Carman who had just returned from a voyage to the Canary Islands in a small ship of 180 tons. Captain Carman had sailed from New England with a load of clapboards to be sold in the Canaries. Just off the island of Palma (one of the Canary group) Captain Carman said he had been attacked by a pirate ship. The Canary Islands are not far from the haunts of the famous and fierce Algerian pirates who were not finally crushed until American sailors (under Stephen Decatur) did the job in 1815, more than a century and a half after Captain Carman told his story.
This is the way Richard Vines must have heard it:
"At the Island of Palma, he (Captain Carman) was set upon by a Turkish pirate of 300 tons and 26 pieces of ordnance (cannon) and 200 men. He fought with her three
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hours, having but 20 men and but 7 pieces of ordnance that he could use, and his muskets were unserviceable with rust. The Turk lay across his hawse, so as he was forced to shoot through his own hoodings, and by these shot killed many Turks. Then the Turk lay by his side and boarded him with near 100 men, and cut all his ropes, etc., but his shot having killed the captain of the Turkish ship and broken his tiller, the Turk took in his own ensign and fell off from him, but in such haste as he left about 50 of his men aboard him. Then the master (Captain Carman) and some of his men came up and fought with those 50 hand to hand, and slew so many of them that the rest leaped overboard. The master had many wounds on his head and body, and divers of his men were wounded, yet but one was slain. "
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