USA > Maine > Ancient dominions of Maine : embracing the earliest facts, the recent discoveries, of the remains of aboriginal towns, the voyages, settlements, battle scenes, and incidents of Indian warfare, and other incidents of history, together with the religious developments of society within the ancient Sagadahoc, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid precincts and dependencies > Part 12
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Denye'd : 15ª of Septemb 1676.
E. R. S.
2 Original Commission in hands of J. W. Thornton Esq.
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Judge, with Humphrey Davie and Richard Coleycote, ( Col- licot ?) in holding courts in the county of Devonshire, under jurisdiction of the Government of Massachusetts Bay. Law- rence Hunnewell was his assistant.
By this savage incursion, the large and beautiful estab- lishment of Messrs. Lake and Clark-the mansion house- the mills- the out buildings-the entire village was re- duced to ashes! Such was the fate of the Arrowsic towns of more than half a century's growth.
THE PLANTATIONS ABANDONED.
Filled with dismay, the planters on the Sheepscot, on learning the fate of Hammond and Lake, deserting their fields of ripening corn, leaving their herds and homes, at once fled. John Dale, 1 a fugitive from the massacre of the Arrowsic Towns, reached the dwelling house of Thomas Gent on Sheepscot Great Neck, and gave him warning of the hostility of the savages. Thence he hasted to the house of Walter Philips, " which stood on the great hill" overlook- ing the Damariscotta from the west, at the "lower falls," bearing the terrible tidings, giving his family the earliest and timely notice of their peril. Thus warned, Philips, leaving hi's home in the midst of a thriving orchard, ( from which apples were gathered nearly a century after,) and great improvements, gathered his family and neighbors and fled to Salem, Mass., escaping "only with his life and the loss of all his goods."
John Dale continued his flight to Pemaquid, heralding the approach of savage calamities.
Among 2 the English emigrants to Maine, was James Gyles, a brother of Judge Gyles, slain at Pemaquid. Gyles had landed at the Kennebec, and taken up his abode at
1 Dale's deposition - Lincoln Com. Reports, pp. 98, 100, 15.
2 Gyles' MSS. Narrative, from John McKeen, Esq.
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Merry Meeting ; and was an interested spectator of the open- ing scenes in this drama of death and devastation. In the Merry Meeting plantation he had taken up his abode at the " Whisgeag House," and purchasing of the natives a home- stead, finally built at " Muddy River." These localities all were within the marginal circuit of the same body of water.
The outbreak of the Indians forced him with his neigh- bors to desert their homes, and go into the garrison house of Samuel York. Thirty days these refugees of Merry Meeting were crowded in this strong hold.
Every day the savages became more violent. The cattle and swine were slaughtered, and the deserted homes were burned. But nine persons remained to defend the place, the " faint hearted" having left their garrisoned neighbors. So about the middle of September all retired to the " Row- sick House," down the river-the main defense of the region. From hence, the frontier men were accustomed to visit their clearings and plantation sites, to sow and reap. This was the year preceding the massacre described. One of these planting expeditions brought the settlers in collision with a body of natives. A skirmish ensued. Sev- eral savages were slain and the remainder put to flight, which gave peace for the winter ensuing. Crowded in their strong hold at the " Rowsick House," the planters, five fam- ilies, and Gyles among them, crossed to the west shores of the Sagadahoc opposite, and occupied the house of Sylvanus Davis the balance of winter. Peace, the result of the Pemaquid conference, being in good promise, cheered these pioneers of the Kennebec with strong hopes of a safe and speedy return to their deserted planting grounds.
But Gyles removed still further down the river, and occu- pied the empty house of Mr. Wiswell, and planted his crop for the season. "Early 1 in the morning, when no English-
1 Gyles gives the date as Aug. 9, instead of that given in history.
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man had a thought of war," like an avalanche from the sides of a sleeping volcano-the savages fell on "Rowsick" __ "killing and destroying all in their way." Fifty people fell a sacrifice to savage barbarities in death and captivity.
Gyles seized a canoe, lading his family therein, leaving all else to the mercy of the Indians, fled for Damariscove, where were congregated the fugitives from "Sheepscot," Pemaquid, and all the surrounding regions.
Three hundred souls, the fragments of the neighboring plantations, now broken up, had made this island at the mouth of Boothbay Harbor their refuge.
INCIDENTS OF THE RETREAT.
For a week they made ineffectual attempts to reach the plantations on the main and recover something for subsist- ence from their former homes.
The entire circuit of the main, landward, was alive with savages. Every point of approach was ambuscaded; and the hardy and suffering fugitives were beaten back to their island retreat.
By night, two days after the sacking of Arrowsic, an express reached Pemaquid. The residents of the place, at the story of Dale, at once took to the shipping in the har- bor, designing to fly to Monhegan. Adverse winds com- pelled them to turn aside into Damariscove, where Wiswell and Collicott had gathered with the Kennebec refugees.
The first attention was given to the fortifications of the island. Forty days the people labored at the works. But difficulties arose, and a mutinous disposition, consequent on the want of food, from the sudden accession of forlorn and destitute fugitive men, women, and children, soon made it apparent nothing effectual could be done to secure the island against savage incursion.
It was therefore abandoned as a place of refuge. The larger portion of the fugitives continued their flight to Mon-
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hegan ; and scarcely had the refugees from the Main and Damariscove reached their sea-girt retreat, and removed from their deserted houses at Pemaquid a portion of their household stuff, when the whole circle of the horizon land- ward was darkened and illumined by the columns of smoke and fire rising from the burning houses of the neighboring Main and adjacent islands ! The entire perspective was a scene of conflagration ! Richard Padishall abandoned his island home-an ancestral abode-and with his family and coasting sloop made good his escape to the better protected neighborhood of Pemaquid. Worn out and discouraged, all but the Pemaquidders yielded to the necessities of their condition, and scattered to remote parts westward.
The planters of the Davis hamlet near Wiscasset and on the Sheepscot waters, first warned by the intelligence of the tragedy at Stinson's Point, by the tale of the maid servant who fled on the night of the massacre, retired to the fort at Cape Newagen.
Proposing to maintain their position till succor could be received from Boston, a guard of twenty-five men was kept out, and measures of defense were organized. But the peo- ple were panic-stricken, and all hope of speedy relief being crushed out by the sad recollections and gloomy aspect of their state, the newly launched ship of Wm. Phips became to them an ark of salvation. Embarked in the unfinished hulk, they put to sea for a port westward, leaving the entire region to desolation and solitude !
CARD'S ESCAPE.
Francis Card, the captive of the savages who had destroyed Hammond's Town, was taken near to the planting grounds of the Kennebec Indians, up the river.
Card had been set to threshing out corn in a barn. These savages preferred horse-flesh to the best of beef. A. captive was employed to catch the horses of the planters,
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now wild in the woods, to be butchered to satisfy the mor- bid longings of his masters' appetite. Card was permitted to aid him; and while thus engaged in a horse hunt, the two captives sent word to the lodge that their return at a given time could not be expected, on account of ill-success. Thus finding the coast clear, the prisoners secured a canoe, swept down the river with the tide, crossed Casco Bay, and in two or three days reached the fort at Black Point in Scarboro'.
It was a full fortnight after the sacking of the Arrowsic towns that the Norridgewock Indians, numbering eighty warriors, returned from their retreat up the Kennebec, to destroy the herds and burn the deserted houses of the plant- ers on the Main. Reaching Damariscove, they put fire to the village on that island, killed two men, and captured their shallop and ketch. Thomas Cobbet, the son of the Ipswich minister, ( a captive at the date of these events, and because, said the savages, "his father was a great preach-man," he could be redeemed only with a coat,) relates that fifty to sixty captives from the Kennebec and Sheepscot plantations were held in bondage ;- the women being compelled to make up garments out of the plundered fabrics of Hammond's and Lake's store-houses. These for- lorn men and women he met in December, on the Sheep- scot, where he was taken to navigate for his captors a small vessel they had seized, and there he was compelled to walk over land to Damariscotta five miles, and thence paddle a canoe fifty miles to Penobscot, where his redemption was secured.
ABBOT'S ADVENTURES.
John Abbot, the master of the vessel in which Cobbet had been captured, was also employed on the Sheepscot waters. After Cobbet's departure for Penobscot, the vessel in use by the natives lay moored for the winter, probably in the harbor of the ancient Me-ni-kuk.
-
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It was now the month of February. With their usual improvidence, the savages had consumed both food and ammunition. The shallop was a thirty-ton craft. They required Abbot to fit her for sea, on a voyage to Penobscot for supplies. Ten savages embarked with Abbot. Hardly had he put to sea when a storm arose, with wind ahead. It was a dead beat against a heavy sea, and Abbot so man- aged as to increase the perils of the sea, and strike terror to the hearts of his sea-sick masters, who begged for land. The nearest point, Cape Newagen, was reached, and eight savages landed. Two remained. Persuading these that their anchorage was perilous, Abbot made sail for Damar- iscove.
On the passage he so used the helm as to ship a sea, wash his decks, and thoroughly frighten his savage companions and guardsmen, who, as soon as the vessel reached the har- bor, hasted on shore.
Two native children had died on board, and their bodies were taken to land for burial. With the plea of the neces- sity of his presence on board to save the ship, Abbot per- sisted in remaining ; but soon as the Indians were landed, greasing the mast of his sloop with the pork taken for food, he ran up the sails with his own hand, and with no living soul save himself and a child some three years old, he pushed off with a free sheet and stiff northeaster in his rear, which speedily wafted him to the "Isle of Shoals," beyond the reach of his masters.
WALDRON'S EXPEDITION.
These outrages on the eastern frontiers roused
1677. Government to action. Major Waldron, the chief Feb. 17. commander in this section, was dispatched with a force deemed adequate to recover the lost planta- tions and chastise the lawless savages, reduce them to subordination and rescue the captive citizens of Sheepscot
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and Kennebec. Waldron embarked for that river. Here was the center of the Massachusetts interest. Two hundred and fifty men accompanied his command. Cold and adverse winds, an icy and perilous ocean, embarrassed his progress eastward. The waters of Casco Bay, being free from ice, invited the fleet bearing the little army to discharge its liv- ing freight on the shores of the plains of Brunswick.
Bivouacked on "Mare Point,"1 amid the snows and frosts of mid-winter, "Squando," the head of the Sekokis, and " Simon, the Yankee-killer," from the broken forces of King Philip, met Waldron in a conference. A proposal for the recovery of the captives was made. Suddenly a flotilla of fourteen canoes shot up the bay toward a projecting headland. The parley was ended. It had been Waldron's design to surprise the enemy ; but the fleet-footed, sharp- sighted Indian had long followed the fleet, tracing the pro- gress of the voyage from the headlands of Cape Elizabeth.
The flames bursting from the roof of a solitary dwelling on the point of landing clearly indicated the hostile pur- poses of the savage flotilla. Shouts of mutual defiance went up. The scouts came in. Captain Frost was detached to cut off the enemy's retreat. Detecting this movement, the savages fled. The whole command opened their fire, and several were supposed to fall. The fire was returned, but without disaster : " though," it is added, " some of their bullets hit some of our men,"-the spent shot failing of their design.
A flag of truce ended further violence. A parley opened with mutual recrimination, but closed with the assurance on the part of Simon, the Yankee killer, that the project to surrender the captives, under discussion when the skirmish began, should be carried out in good faith.
Disheartened with the prospect of meeting the enemy
1 The residence of a Mr. Mare.
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where he was, Waldron set sail for Kennebec. At sunset the same day, he anchored under the " Cliffs of Parker's Head,"-the southern point of Arrowsic Island, in the mouth of the river.
The next day he pushed his way up the river ; and on reaching Merry Meeting, within twelve miles of " Abagadus- set Point," the ice barred his progress.
The troops were landed and marched to the Feb. 22. fort ; and at eight in the evening the force entered the works, to find them deserted. Here the little army quartered for the night. Bewildered by the numerous trails of the enemy crossing in every direction, the scouts returned from their pursuit.
A council of war determined to push on to the Penob- scot, with a portion of the troops, and fortify a position near the river's mouth with the remainder.
During the march of the troops around the bay, numer- ous fires shot up their flames in the horizon, and a burning dwelling-house below indicated the proximity of the enemy.
FORTIFICATIONS ERECTED.
The next morning the commander-in-chief embarked and examined the grounds, with a view to an eligible site for a fort. Near the abode of John Parker, at a point on the Main opposite the lower end of Arrowsic Island, in a cove convenient for a harbor, easy of access, where water for the supply of the garrison abounded, a site was chosen. Here were moored the transports ; and a large portion of the command was detached to build the works.
WALDRON AT PEMAQUID.
The Major with sixty men, while the remainder of his force was thus engaged, sailed for Penobscot.
Off " Gyobscot Point," appeared an Indian canoe ; and by the waving of the boatman's cap, it was understood
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an interview was desired. The ship's boat soon return- ed, bearing the intelligence that a considerable body of Indians with captive English people were then at Pem- aquid. The fortress had survived the universal confla- gration, or Capt. Gardiner had returned and had erected another defense. At all events, he was then in com- mand ; and the village may have been spared. Thomas Gardiner had been made chief of the military forces of Pemaquid, 1 in the county of Devonshire, under a commis- sion of the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, two years before ; and although in the general conflagration of the deserted houses of the planters, on the first startling intelli- gence of savage barbarities, " Pemaquid, New Harbor, Corbin's Sound, and Widgin's were all seen on fire within the same two hours," 2 yet the " castle," whose existence was prior to that in Boston Bay and its appendages, may have and probably did escape destruction. Waldron moored his transports in the bay. Descrying a canoe speeding her way up the river, bearing a white captive, with whom it was not permitted to communicate, a party was landed for reconnoissance.
Word was returned that Modockawando, the native lord of the Penobscots, and other sagamores, " and sundry sorts of Indians" were encamped near the place. Modocka- wando sent specific messages to Major Waldron. Captain Davis and a volunteer ventured on shore, and three saga- mores visited the transport ships. Thus an interview was secured, and the pledges of good faith exchanged to prepare the way for pacific overtures. The commander-in-chief, with six unarmed men, next went on shore, where suspicions of treacherous dealing were roused. Finding Waldron in force, under the cogency of this argument, though the proj- ect of the treaty was acknowledged, yet no captive was suf-
1 Thornton's Pemaquid, p. 249. M. H. Soc.
2 Hubbard.
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fered to go on ship-board; and delay in executing the treaty on various pretenses was contrived. Waldron and his attendants were searched on landing. The emergency required promptitude and decision. Waldron was peremp- tory and energetic. He demanded immediate compliance with treaty stipulations, in the surrender of the captive Sheepscot and Kennebec planters-and the enrollment of a company of auxiliaries, to fight the savages on the Andros- coggin. The auxiliary force was declined ; and " twelve beaver skins apiece," with "plenty of liquor," were re- quired as a ransom for the captives. The ransom was paid. William Chadbourn, Jolin Wannick, and Warwood were secured and set free.
Suspicions of foul play augmented. On ship-board, it was determined to secure the release of the captives, and then surprise the savages and fight them. In pursuance of this design, Waldron, with but five men, with the ran- som went on shore, proposing, after careful reconnoissance, to return to the ships, and prepare for the encounter. But the plot thickened faster than his calculations matured.
The swing of the commander's cap was the signal of alarm agreed upon, as a call for succor, should any emer- gency require it. Waldron reached the place of conference, and cautiously observing the ground and the arrangement of things, with a view to ascertain the purposes of the sav- ages, discovered the exposed point of a lance and other con- cealed weapons of war. He grasped the point, and drew the lance from its hiding place, and with the weapon in hand, went to the savages, charging them with treachery. The warriors threw off all disguise-rushed on Waldron to wrest from his hold the tell-tale weapon of death.
His resolute bearing, determined attitude, and the fearful brandishing of the lance in his hand, kept the savages at bay, till the signal cap called succor to his side from the fleet. The devoted band were driven to the wall, and de-
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struction menaced them at every turn, from the overwhelm- ing force of the constantly increasing numbers of the Indians. The squaws mingled in the strife. One of the women seized a " bundle of guns," and like a deer bounded away with her load, into the thickets. Many of the Indians, at the outset, taken by surprise, and filled with consterna- tion, took to flight and deserted their comrades. It was a hand-to-hand struggle. Capt. Frost sprang on the Saga- more Me-gun-na-way, a notorious and bloody barbarian. Aid- ed by his Lieutenant Nutter, Me-gun-na-way was dragged to the ship's boat, and forced into the hold. Waldron had fallen on a pile of fire arms, with which his men now armed, suc- cessfully assailed the enemy; and at this juncture, the land- ing of the force from the ships turned the tide of battle. The Indians fleeing on all sides, some made for the forest coverts, and others to their canoes. The fire of the whites strewed the whole course of their flight with dead and dying. Those fleeing to their canoes, encountered a boat's company from the ships just as they were putting off from shore, whose deadly aim riddled one birchen canoe with her living freight, burying five savages in a watery grave, and many others were so disabled they could not paddle away. The chieftain, Matahando, and with him a Powwow, or Med- icine man of the tribe, were slain. The sister of Modoca- wando and three others were made captives. Me-gun-na- way, hoary in years and crime, was shot at once, whose bones and blood have mingled with the soil of Pemaquid. Much booty was taken, and the enemy received a blow from the hand of Waldron they never forgot. His agency in this transaction, and the Dover sham-fight, where he again outwitted the crafty red men, was never forgiven, till the savage with his battle axe and knife, crossed out the bloody account in the quivering flesh of this early and distinguished hero pioneer of the east !
Sheepscot was not visited by the returning fleet. At the
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mouth of the Kennebec, after a four days' absence, it again cast anchor. An expedition was here organized, to proceed to Sheepscot, under Capt. Fisk. It consisted of forty men. The store houses of the Sheepscot planters remained ; and forty bushels of undamaged wheat were recovered. Two pieces of heavy ordnance were taken away from Sagadahoc, and an hundred thousand feet of boards at Arrowsic, the native " Tuessicke" ? 1
In exploring the ruins of the recently sacked towns, the remains of Judge Lake were found. Two savages, incau- tiously paddling to the shore, were shot. One was killed. The other, too, must have died, as the canoe, all bloody and torn, was found the next day without an occupant.
Stationing Capt. Sylvanus Davis with a force of forty men, at the garrison on the Main, near the mouth of the Kennebec River, Major Waldron returned to Boston with- out the loss of a man. A captive squaw had been released and sent to the Kennebec Indians. A week had elapsed since the sailing of the fleet westward. A detachment from the garrison on the Main crossed over to bury the dead on Arrowsic, whose bodies and mangled remains had lain where they fell, for more than half a year. Unconscious of danger, unsuspicious of peril, the detachment proceeded, perhaps incautiously, to execute the last sad offices of humanity. But the savage had made the place of the dead his lair for the living prey. Hanging on the path of the burial party, its retreat was intercepted by an ambuscade. The woods of Arrowsic and the rock-bound shores of the lower Saga- dahoc once more mingled the whoops of war, with the echoes of musketry, and the scream of the leaden messen- ger of death ! Nine of the burial party were laid dead in their track.
Panic stricken, and reduced by this unexpected blow, the
1 Deed to Robert Gutch.
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survivors, disheartened, deserted the garrison, and the re- gion of the Sagadahoc was left to the mercy of the savages, without an inhabitant, where towns and villages of half a century's growth had caused the wilderness to bud and blos- som.
RETURN OF THE INHABITANTS.
Andros 1 had been appointed to the office of Gov- ernor of the Ducal Territory in America. Half a 1677. year had elapsed since the occurrence of the sad events above narrated. Fearing that his master's estate, the Dukedom of the east, might be lost, if permitted to remain void of inhabitants, in June, a military organization was dispatched from New York, the seat of Gubernatorial au- thority, to rebuild the fortifications and restore Pemaquid.
This was the first movement towards recovering the lost foothold of the English settlements.
Cæsar Knapton 2 commanded the expedition. Landing on the margins of John's Bay, the fortress at Pemaquid was rebuilt, a Custom House erected, and a considerable body of troops stationed there. The place thus revived rapidly filled up with population ; and was called Jamestown. Tranquility reigned throughout the region ; and the Indians, disposed to peace, entered into arrangements for trade. Prisoners and captured vessels were brought into Pemaquid and surrendered to Captain Knapton.
Boston, Salem, Piscataqua, were visited by Government transports, " to invite and bring as many of the inhabitants, particularly fishermen driven from the Duke's Territory, as will come." 2
Andros soon succeeded in reviving the settlements about Pemaquid by facilitating the return " of ye fformer inhabit- ants." Many fishing vessels, recovered from the natives,
1 Williamson's History, vol. i. p. 552.
2 Pemaquid Papers, pp. 9, 11.
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were restored to their owners. Stringent regulations of trade and intercourse among the citizens and Indians were adopted ; and Captains Knapton and Brockholls, with fifty men and a ship of war were stationed at Pemaquid, which force overawed the savages and secured the peace.
" No one on any pretence whatever," it was ordained in council, " doe range or goe into the woods or creeks :" "Pemaquid and no where else should be the place for trade." Fishing stages were allowed on the fishing islands ; but none on the Main, except at Pemaquid, near the fort.
No Indian could visit the fishing islands ; and no rum could be " drunk on the side where the fort stands."
Trading houses, or stores, were ordered to be erected under command, but at convenient distances from the fort, landward, so that a street of good breadth be left directly from the fort to the narrowest part of the neck, going to the great neck, toward New Harbor.
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