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 14
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26
Great efforts were made to heal the wounded honor of the semi-Gaelic chieftain of Penobscot, and conciliate his dusky and barbarous hordes. Modockawando was sent back from Boston, laden with presents for himself and his braves. Peace was promising.
ENGLISH REVOLUTION.
But William and Mary having ascended the throne of England, vacated by the fugitive James Stuart, who had taken refuge from the fury of his exasperated subjects in the heart of France, opened a new scene, and touched new springs of action in our blood-stained history.
191
INDIAN WARS.
As a natural consequence of these facts, war ensued between France and England, whose people were in a revo- lutionary state. Rival religious organizations, Popery and Protestantism, the one a religion of forms, the other a relig- ion of faith-the one sympathizing with prerogative and power-the other, with the rights of conscience and human- ity-met in a desperate struggle for the supremacy in Eng- land.
French priests lashed into fury the savage hordes of New England, till a wave of fire and blood swept with extermin- ating fury over the fair reviving prospects of the eastern frontiers.
Col. Tyng and Capt. Minot, with one hundred and fifty- six men, were detached for the eastern service, and Capt. Brockholls and Lieut. Weems were left in command of Fort Charles.
The collision in England between the rival houses of the Stuart dynasty and the Prince of Orange gave a shock which was felt in the remotest hamlets and rudest cabins of the frontiers of New England.
TREACHERY OF GOV. ANDROS.
A partisan warfare raged. The sympathies of all the office-holders, appointees of the Stuart dynasty, were in the interests of James, and, of course, sided with the French influence and the assumptions of Popery, which had espous- ed the cause of the fugitive James.
Andros was suspected, -indeed, was charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy. While at Pemaquid, it was said he was visited by two squaws ( one the sister of Modoc- awando, the native lord of Penobscot, ) who "remained with him two days in the fort : leaving it half drunk under an escort- a file of soldiers : and that they carried with them baskets and bundles of gunpowder and bullets."
This story, taken in connection with Andros' expedition
192
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
in the frigate Rose 1 to the fort of Castine, wears an aspect of improbability, to say the least. But everything fore- boded evil. The heavens above glowed with unnatural and portentous omens, " very terrible in appearance." A blaz- ing star showed its little head through the clouds, but flung a tail thirty degrees in length to the zenith ; " growing con- tinually broader and broader, and brightest on its 2 sides."
The administration of Andros had become odious ; 1689. and on the report that the Governor's guards were Apr. 18. to " massacre 3 the citizens of Boston," the yeo- manry round about Boston poured in, seized Capt. George of the Rose frigate, surrounded the defenses on Fort Hill, which were surrendered, and Andros captured therein. The Governor was imprisoned ; and the revolu- tion in favor of the Prince of Orange was completed in New England. The consequences were most disastrous to the frontier plantations of Maine.
Anarchy ensued. This state of things encouraged the savages to renew their barbarities.
A considerable village had grown up at "New Harbor," a suburb of the capital at Pemaquid. The effacement of the ancient landmarks disturbed titles and disquieted the returning inhabitants, who complained that having been at great charge in rebuilding their houses, as yet they had " no assurance of house lots nor bounds of place."
The " customs" were onerous. They desired they should be taken off, " because it never used to be paid by any ffish- ermen in the world, as we know of," say they, in a petition to Government. 4
I Holmes' Annals, vol. i. p. 474, note.
2 Hutchinson's Hist. vol. i. p. 313, note.
3 Holmes' Annals, vol. i. p. 475.
4 M. H. Coll. vol. v. p. 137.
193
INDIAN WARS.
CENTRAL POINTS OF DEFENSE.
At Dartmouth, Captain Withington, with a company of sixty men, had been stationed. A detachment of twenty- four men under command of Lieut. John Jordan was assigned to garrison duty. The small fort on the eastern Sheepscot shore-( the defense of the township on Mason and Jewett's Neck )-was to be occupied by a weekly relief from New Dartmouth.
Newtown on the Sagadahoc, a Fort at Sagadahoc, a Redoubt on the Damariscotta, Pemaquid, New Dartmouth, and Sheepscot were all occupied as points for military defense.
But the excitement of the revolutionary changes in the English government had pervaded the eastern settlements.
The partisans of William and Mary became suspicious of the crown officers. The appointees of the Stuart family were suspected. Commander Brockholls 1 was denounced as a Papist, and as is alleged, was ordered from Pemaquid, which order he disobeyed ; and being suspected of a design to desert to the French, was seized by the inhabitants of New Dartmouth, and sent to Boston, Lieut. Weems being left in command at the request of the people of Pemaquid.
The soldiery became demoralized. Desertion ensued, and the forces distributed by Andros at favorable points to over- awe the hostile natives, were dispersed.
The state of things must have been known to the Indians.
OPENING OF HOSTILITIES.
The first blow was struck at North Yarmouth, which was entirely broken up.
The northern margins of Merry Meeting were next swept by the war trail of the infuriated savages, and the houses of the settlers there were burned, while those who made a
1 Answer to Andros, M. H. Soc. Coll. vol. v. p. 394.
13
1
194
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
show of defense were slain, and the remainder made cap- tives, many of whom were most barbarously murdered in a drunken carousal soon after. Nine persons were spared from the island settlements and mouth of the river below, to be led into captivity. The mutinous proceedings at New Dartmouth had left the defenses there unprotected, and the community exposed in the height of its greatest peril to the fury of an excited, ruthless, and barbarous foe, amid all the horrors of a religious and partisan warfare !
DESTRUCTION OF NEW DARTMOUTH.
These circumstances invited assault. A war party passed from the bloody horrors and savage orgies of the sacking of the Merry Meeting towns over to the thriving and populous plantations of the Sheepscot, " called the garden of the East."
Cautiously approaching from the eastward to Sept. 5. the attack, the Indians surprised and secured Henry Smith and his family. The next day Ed- ward Taylor and family fell into their hands. By this time the alarm had roused the entire population ; and panic- stricken, all had fled into the forts, and secured their retreat before a general onslaught could be made.
Very soon the surrounding forests echoed with the whoops and yells of disappointed rage. The prey had escaped. "The entire village of New Dartmouth was consigned to the flames, with here and there a solitary house left as a monu- ment of mercy, standing alone amid the blackened ruins of a general conflagration ! The garrisoned inhabitants had vainly sought to treat with the enemy for the security of their lives and property. The messenger, with his life in his hand, who had gone from the fort on this mission, was maltreated and murdered in the presence of his friends, who were powerless to save.
How long the savages were held at bay, or by what means
195
INDIAN WARS.
those who had made the fort a refuge finally escaped, is not stated. 1 It is related, however, that the German popula- tion retired from the scene of such desolation, never more to return ; and the villages, so lately flourishing and so long inhabited, were consigned to waste and solitude for a whole generation.
The forts were destroyed ; and to these ancient plant- ations the catastrophe was a fatal and final overthrow ; and to this day New Dartmouth, the Newcastle of the present, has not recovered the position of influence and importance of her ancient fame.
OVERTHROW OF PEMAQUID.
Pemaquid, the ancient capital of New England, had not yet lost the prestige of her position in the 1689. native mind ; and had become an object of special offense, as the point at which a death-blow might be struck. at the English interest in the East. It was therefore deter- mined to blot out the capital of the Ducal territory, which, though shorn of its importance and power by the revolu- tionary issues of the British Empire, still was a central bar- rier to the barbarism of the East.
The anarchical condition of civil authority had left it as defenseless and exposed as was its suburban village, New Dartmouth above. As we have before said, Lieut. Weems, alone with fifteen men, a stipendiary of the Government of the Massachusetts Bay, held the post and defenses of Jamestown.
Thomas Gyles, a large landed proprietor and chief justice of the Pemaquid district, resided at this date in town. This eminent pioneer of the East at first had entered the Kennebec, and settled at Pleasant Point in Merry Meeting,. prior to King Philip's war. At the opening of its tragic.
1 Tradition says they were suffered to construct a small vessel, and retire- in her, by agreement with the Indians.
196
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
scenes, Gyles had been made a prisoner, and his wife slain in her garden picking beans. 1 Redeemed or escaping, he returned to England ; but attracted back to his wild castern home, on reaching America, savage hostilities had again broken out, and he took up his abode on the shores of Long Island.
The bleakness of the climate there disturbed him; and by the overtures of Gov. Dongan, abandoning his Merry Meeting estates, Gyles made a new home at Pemaquid, and hela the chief seat of the Judiciary there. He encountered much difficulty in the discharge of his official duties, " from the immoralities of a people who had long lived in lawless- ness."
A descendant of Judge Gyles, made a captive at the time of the sacking of Jamestown, has left a narrative of the terrible scenes of blood enacted on this occasion. The sav- ages, numbering about one hundred warriors, had lurked in the suburbs of the town some days. A wayfaring man, Starkie by name, passing from Jamestown of Pemaquid to New Harbor, was seized by them, from whom, with too much truth, they learned the weakness of the public defens- es ; that no suspicions of peril existed, and that Gyles had gone with his workmen, fourteen in number, to his farms at the falls above.
The savages divided,-the one party to follow Gyles, and the other to assault the town. It was carly in August. Those who were assigned to attack the town finally gained a street and effected a lodgment. Ten or twelve houses of stone were occupied, from which the Indians securely assailed the garrison till dark.
The fort was summoned to surrender. To this the defend- ers replied with much sang froid, -" we are now weary and must sleep." ! 2 Daylight dawned, and the fort still held
1 Vinton's MSS. Narrative, Archives M. H. Soc.
2 Williamson's Hist. vol. i.
197
INDIAN WARS.
out. Two days the assault was persistently continued, and as vigorously repelled. But the assailants could not be dis- lodged from their coverts of stone, and had great advantage in the fight. Weems was at length picked out and wounded by the sharp shooters of the enemy, and the bravest of his force disabled.
A capitulation was therefore concluded, on condition that Patishall's sloop should be restored, and the garrison with their captives and arms should be suffered to depart without molestation. The reduction of the place was thus effected, and it is said the articles of capitulation were faithfully observed, and that Weems and his handful of men retired in safety. Captains Skinner and Farnham returning from the islands, as they leaped on shore, were shot dead ; and Captain Patishall of "Paddishall's Island near the mouth of the Kennebec," 1 whose sloop lay at the Barbican, was taken therefrom and slain.
DEATH OF GYLES.
Meanwhile the party, some forty in number, led by Moxus, pursuing Gyles, came up with him at the farm some three miles from town, where he, with two of his sons, were overseeing the workmen, some of whom were gathering the harvest of hay in one field, and nursing the young growing shoots of corn in another. The Indians came upon them about noon. Gyles and his sons were still at the farm house, where dinner had just been served, when the roar of cannon-the alarm guns of Fort Charles-arrested their attention, and awakened the solicitude of all.
The elder Gyles remarked, "that the alarm guns, he trusted, were harbingers of good,"-the announcement of aid from abroad. From the crest of a hillock near the barn, the savages immediately appeared, heralded by their
1 Clark's Deposition. Thornton's Pemaquid, p. 105, note.
198
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
wild whoops of war. Simultaneously with their appear- ance, the flash of their fire-arms revealed their purposes of blood and violence. Their demoniac yells mingled with the scream of bullets through the air, and the wail of the dying workmen, opened a scene under the lurid and sul- phurous cloud of smoke, which hung heavily over the bloody field, both grand and awful ! m
John Gyles and his brother James sought safety in flight, at the first onset. Thomas, an elder brother, reached the Barbican opposite the Fort, gained a fishing boat, and sailed away the same night. 1 All who had not fallen sought safety in flight. Pursued by the stout and painted red-men, with upraised tomahawk and unsheathed scalping knives gleaming in the smoky sunlight, all were scattered. The younger Gyles in his haste had fallen to the earth, and was seized and bound hand and foot. The captive boy was taken to a neighboring stack of hay. He passed his aged father who had been shot, pale and bloody, still tottering on his feet.
In the hayfield the men lay where they were shot- down ; and others, tomahawked, still called upon God in their agony for mercy ! The Indians gathered with their cap- tives, preparatory to their departure for the East. Not long after, the elder Gyles was brought in ; and in answer to the taunts of Moxus said, "I am a dying man, and ask no favors but to pray with my sons "! The boon was granted. The captive boys were confided to the merciful protection of God Almighty. He gave them a father's counsel, and took an affectionate farewell with the hope of meeting them in that " better land," where the wicked cease from troub- ling. With a cheerful voice he bade his children farewell, having now become faint from loss of blood, " which gushed out of his shoes." The savages led him aside ; and adds
1 Drake's Tragedies of the Wilderness.
199
INDIAN WARS.
the narrator, his own son, " I heard the blows of the hatchet, but neither shriek nor groan." His body, pierced with bul- lets, was covered where it fell with the branches of trees. Suchi was the melancholy fate of Judge Gyles, a distin- guished resident of Jamestown at Pemaquid.
FATE OF THE TOWN.
Within a mile and one half of the town, all the captives were now gathered, in full view of the smoke and flash of the musketry and cannon of the contending parties. Am- buscades between the dwelling places and farms, and near the more frequented by-paths to the town, had surprised, captured, and killed most of the out-settlers. A dozen houses or more adorned the hamlet of Brown at New Har- bor, the occupants of which generally escaped. Another remove concentrated the captives in the heart of a swamp, three-fourths of a mile distant from town, -where the lurid clouds of battle and the din of war, from burning homes and butchered friends-the sacrifices to the orgies of war -only greeted the forlorn victims of this savage demon- stration. The fortifications had now fallen into the hands of the assailants, and very soon the works, the dwelling houses, and shops of Jamestown of the Virginia of the North, the capital of the eastern Dukedom, were reduced to a lieap of smouldering remains and ruins. Such was the catastrophe which inflicted irreparable desolation on Pema- quid at the hands of the warriors of Penobscot, who had been consecrated to this work by the benedictions of Mother Church of Rome, and who went from her confessional and altars of hallowed sacramental rites to the work of butchery and the blood of heretics, while their wives and children performed the same holy rites, and raised their pure hands to heaven in aid of their fathers and brothers in battle with the heretics. 1
1 Charlevoix, Williamson's note.
1
200
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
THE CAPTIVES' EXPERIENCE.
In the swamp to which they had been taken, the captive boys met their mother and their two little sisters, also cap- tives. Many of their town's people were there gathered in sorrow and dismay. From the lips of her boy the wife learned the fate of her husband. The natural burst of grief provoked their savage masters. The captive son was removed and tied to a tree, out of reach of his mother. Once more he looked on her who gave him life, and heard her voice as they all embarked for the East. "Poor babe," said she, " we are going into the wilderness, the Lord knows where !" Their canoes now parted, and with bursting hearts and swimming eyes the mother and child were separ- ated forever ;- the mother and sisters to be redeemed, and the child to wander in hopeless captivity.
At Mata-wamkeag, up the Penobscot, they encountered a lodge of dancing women. Young Gyles was flung into the midst of the circle. An old squaw led him into the ring, when some seized him by the hair of the head, and others by his hands and feet, with great violence and menaces of evil.
At this moment his master entered, and bought the child off from the horrors of the gauntlet dance, by flinging down a pledge.
THE BEAR HUNT.
The flesh of the bear is much coveted, and is the favorite game in the winter hunts of the natives of the Penobscot. This animal burrows in the caves and dens of the earth in autumn, with no store of food to break his long winter fast. . During the period of hibernation, it neither waxes nor wanes in flesh. If fat and well fed when it seeks its wintry repose, it will appear the same in spring, the tear and wear of life being stayed in the suspended activity of its mechanism.
201
-
INDIAN WARS.
" I have seen some," says Gyles, " which have come out with four whelps, and all very fat."
The plunder of a bear's nest makes a merry lodge. An old squaw and a captive are stationed without the wigwam, who stand shaking their hands and bodies as in a dance, singing -" Wegage oh nelo woh !" -fat is my eating !
THE GAUNTLET DANCE.
Gyles, the second year of his captivity, was sent toward the sea, with other natives, to plant corn near the fort.
On reaching the village of wigwams, he was greeted by three or four Indians who dragged him to the great wigwam, where, with savage yells and dances, the warriors were leap- ing about a James Alexander, recently captured at Fal- mouth. Two families of Sable Indians, whose friends had been lost by the attacks of English fishermen, had reached this point, on a scout westward, to avenge the blood of their slaughtered friends. These savages were thirsting for the blood of an Englishman. They rushed upon Gyles and tossed him into the ring. He was then dragged out by the hair of his head, his body bent forward by the same painful process, when he was cruelly beaten over his head and shoul- ders. Others, putting a tomahawk into his hands, bid him " sing and dance Indian." The Sable Indians again rushed upon him in great rage, crying-" Shall we who have lost relatives by the English suffer an English voice to be heard among us ?" He was beaten with an axe. No one showed a spark of humanity, save a Frenchman, whose cheeks were wet with tears of pity at the sorrows of the captive white- men.
The trials of this scene lasted a whole day. Another dance was projected. Gyles had been sent out to dress a skin for the manufacture of leather. A friendly Indian sought him at his place of labor, and warned him that his friend Alexander had fallen into the hands of his enemies
202
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
again, and they were searching for him. His master and mistress bade him fly and hide himself, till they both should come and call him, which they would do when the peril was ended. Gyles retired and sought concealment in the fast- nesses of a neighboring swamp, and had scarcely attained his refuge, when deafening whoops mingled with threats and flatteries told him that the savages were on his track. They sought him till evening, and then called -" Chon, Chon !" But Chon would not trust them. Thus he escaped till the company had dispersed ; when he went forth from his cov- ert, assured of his safety by the appearance of his master and mistress.
THE FRIGHT.
Onerous and servile duties were required of captives. One of these, in the case of Gyles and Alexander, was that of toting water from a cool and distant spring to the village lodge.
Wearied with toil, - in the language of Gyles - " being almost dead, James and I contrived to relieve our toil by frightening the Indians."
At this period, the Mohawks were a great source of alarm to the eastern tribes, the rumor of whose alliance with the English had now generally obtained. The traditions of this race were a commentary of deeds of daring and success, handed down from remote periods in the history of the abo- rigines of the American coast.
The two prisoners adroitly turned this infirmity of their savage masters to good account, on a dark night.
Alexander, having been sent out for water, set his kettle on the brow of the declivity, ran back to the lodges and told his master, he feared there were Mohawks lurking near the spring below, which, by the way, was environed with stumps.
The braves of the tribe, with the master, accompanied the
203
INDIAN WARS.
captive Alexander on a reconnoissance. Approaching the brow of the hillside, whereon the kettle sat, James, pointing to the stumps, gave it a kick with his foot, by which his toe sent the iron vessel down the declivity toward the spring ; and every turn of the revolving bucket reared a Mohawk on every stump, the clatter of whose arms was the signal of preparation for battle ; and he who could run fastest was the best fellow ! The result was a regular stampede of thirty or forty warriors into the interior forests, beyond the reach " of strange Indians."
THE CHASTISEMENT.
Natural admiration is excited in view of acts of personal courage and physical prowess, and this would seem to be a spontaneous development of the human mind.
At one time, Gyles, during his captivity, encountered an ill-natured savage. He had been cutting wood, which was bound up with thongs, and borne in bundles to the wigwam. While thus engaged, a stout, ill-natured young fellow pushed him on to the ground backwards, sat upon his breast, pulled out his knife and menaced him with death, saying -"he never had yet killed one of the English."
Gyles replied -" he might go to war, and that would be more manly than to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery." But the savage began to cut and stab him on the breast, in defiance of all expostulation. Provoked to desperation, Gyles seized the Indian by the hair of his head, and tumbling him off, followed up the movement with his knees and fists, till copper-skin cried enough. On feeling the smart of his wounds, and secing the blood which fell from his bosom, " Gyles at him again ;" bade him get up, and not lie there like a dog; reproached him with his barbarities and cowardly cruelties to other poor captives ; and put him on his good behavior hereafter, in the peril of a double dose of fist and foot cuffs.
204
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
Gyles was never after molested, and was commended by the tribe for inflicting the merited chastisement.
Metallic vessels for culinary use were not required by the natives among whom Gyles was a captive. A birchen buck- et filled with water, heated by the immersion of red hot stones, would speedily boil the toughest neck-pieces of beef.
The necessity of lucifer matches was forestalled by rapid- ly revolving the sharpened point of an upright piece of wood in the socket or cavity of a horizontal base, till a blaze was kindled.
The incantations of the pow-wow, among the unchristian- ized natives, prevailed. For the dead great mourning was made. In the shadowy and somber stillness of evening twi- light, a squaw breaks the silence, wandering over the highest cliff-tops, near her lodge, crying in mournful and long-drawn numbers, -" Oh hawe hawe !"
But the season of mourning being ended, the relatives of the dead end their sad memories in a feast; and the be- reaved is permitted to marry again. Purchased by a French trader, during the eastern expedition of Col. Hawthorne, Gyles, after a servitude of nine years, was restored to his home and surviving friends ; and for many years, served his government in the capacity of an Indian interpreter, and in the army.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.