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 2
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
REMAINS OF NEKRANGAN.
Leaving this remarkable locality, and crossing the penin- sula formed by the Sheepscot and Damariscotta waters, some fifteen miles south-westerly, we reach the sea near the west head of Townsend harbor, at the mouth of the Sheep- scot. At this point is the only ingress and egress, by an inland passage, to the magnificent harbor below. The physical features of this entrance are very peculiar; which in the felicitous, expressive sounds of the aboriginal tongue, are described as the "Ne-kran-gan"-our "gate-way." Here, enters the great shore trail from Pemaquid, by " Winneganne," (meaning carrying place, or portage to the harbor,) for the Merrymeeting and Casco travel, of which Cape Ne-wagen, (doubtless an English corruption of the aboriginal Nekrangan,) forms the western wall. Here is another remarkable locality of deep, unexplored, histor- ical interest.
LOCAL FEATURES.
The ruins near to Ped-coke-gowake of the cataract, at the head-waters of the Damariscotta, would seem to have been reproduced here, on a more magnificent scale if possi ble, within sound of the " thunder of the sea."
The " Krangan,"1 or gate-way, to the harbor passage, is a deep, narrow water-way of bold shores; and at its point of junction with the Sheepscot, expands into an elongated pool of cone-like outline, whose base, resting on the over-looking slopes of Sawyer's Island, stretches its apex some three or four miles south-westerly, into the upper end of Cape Ne- wagen Island, making what is now known as Ebenecook Harbor.
The western outlines of this body of water are shaped at its base by the shores of "Sweet's Island," swollen into a sandy cliff-side ; and then, sweeping back into the usual
1 Ralle's vocabulary, p. 100, M. H. Coll. vol. 4.
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
margins of coarse, sea-girding granite, letting into view Boston and Green Islands. Rocky shores running up into the rounded evergreen eminences of " Indian Town" Island, shape the left and eastern view, so as to merge each line of vision in the head of Ebenecook harbor.
HUMAN REMAINS.
The islands environing this body of water, skirted with southern and land-ward slopes and margins falling back in gentle declivities, sheltered on every side from bleak winds, bear remarkable vestiges of human occupancy antecedent to the periods of European colonization on our shores.
These island-lawns are covered with the remains of a vast primitive population, whose bones, blackened, broken and decayed, are everywhere diffused in the offal of their sub- sistence ; and the soil of their planting grounds, where clustered their lodges, is full of the fatness of the ashes of the unnumbered and forgotten dead !
The margins of each of these land-locking islands, and which, in relation to the body of water described, present a concentric aspect, have a superficies of shell-soil on an under-laying granite, or clay basis, ranging from eight inches to many feet, or yards in depth, where the surface has been leveled by the process of cultivation ; but where it remains in primitive condition, there the shell-offal lies in hummocks. The original method of deposition here, would seem to have been like that on the margins of the reservoirs of the Damariscotta, viz : by successive aggregation of de- posits along the water margins, which have fallen back in thinner layers, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty rods, as the slopes of the sheltering back ground may favor.
At the base of the watery cone, the chief deposits lie back from the shore margins altogether, exhibiting a surface rolled into hillocks of more than five feet depth.
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
The entire deposites are estimated to cover an area of some ten acres of soil, consisting of the debris of the bony struct- ure of man, beast, fish and fowl, in every stage of decom- position, from the dusty outline of crumbling earth-crusted bones, to perfect skulls, joints and teeth, in good preserva- tion. The remains of the "mya edulis," or common clam, constitute the great deposite here; and the entire superin- cumbent mass of animal matter has generally reached a stage of decay, in which it has become a very productive dark colored soil.
The slopes of Sawyer's Island, broken to the plow some thirty years ago for the first time, interspersed with the layers of the common clam, (which here is the prevailing deposite,) disclosed patches of oyster shells of large size in a good state of preservation. Antlers of the red deer, bones of the cod, skulls of the canine, and teeth of large gramin- ivorous animals were found, mingled with the teeth, ball and socket, skull-bones and sections of the vertebral col- umn of the human frame.
Indeed, it would appear that the ashes of the human dead were everywhere strewn throughout the mass of decomposing superficies, which the hoe and the plow-share everywhere discover.
INDICATIONS OF HUMAN AGENCY.
In each deposite, below as well as on the surface, we find decisive indications of the agency of man in the accumula- tion of these remains, as well as of the character of the remains themselves, in the abundance of various sized rocks, from one to three pounds weight disposed throughout the mass, with the fragments of charred wood and coal. The rocks bear marks of igneous and aqueous action, as if used for culinary purposes, in the process of boiling food, some of the stones exhibiting marks of volcanic fires, like pumice stone.
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
Weapons of war, implements of art-the workmanship of rude but skillful hands, have been abundantly found. Brok- en from the dykes and veins of green-stone and horn-blend injected into the structure of Emerald Island, 1 a bare, bald surface of rock, intruded into the entrance of the harbor passage, these articles are wrought out of the bed of native material in locality there.
Stone axes, arrow-heads of jasper and flint rock, stone- headed spears, a variety of stone and earthen pipes, and an ornament of copper, the size and shape of a Spanish quarter, with perforations in three several places, have been found. Among the pipes, was picked up' one, the bowl of which was of the size and shape of an ordinary tea-cup-possibly, the calumet of the tribe-with walls an inch and one-half thick, having a perforated stem ten inches long, all wrought out of the solid rock, in a single piece. The material of this gigantic pipe was of fine grained sand-stone. Frag- ments of pottery, of a coarse iron hue, or dingy, pale burnt brick color, ornamented with devices of plants, pricked into the fresh moulded clay, are not infrequent.
Such are the discoveries made in the track of the plow, among the offal remains of shell-fish consumed centuries ago, and strewn over the slopes and margins of Sawyer's Island, and which would appear to have been the central and principal site of the lodges of this aboriginal town.
ARTIFICIAL EXCAVATIONS.
There are remarkable indications of permanency in the abode of this extinct race, at this point. A narrow cove penetrates Sawyer's Island from the north-dividing it nearly through to its southern slopes, across the mouth of which lies a ruined wall covered with long-grown sea weed. Near the head of this cove, an island-shaped, soil-clad rock
1 Alex. Johnson, Esq.
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
strikes off in a lateral spur, from the eastern shore-side. The rock is of a very coarse granite. Sunk into the bed of this solid rock, with the perfect circles and shape of an iron pot, near three feet deep by two feet five inches in diameter, are the remains of several perfectly shaped and truly cut perforations, just at the line of high-water mark. The outlines of two similarly shaped openings, are traced imme- diately above the more perfectly excavated ones at the tidal margin ; and the whole mass of this rocky bed seems to be affected by a process of chemical decomposition, like to calorific agency of heated water, so that on its lower side, this rock-embedded stone-carved kettle has partially sloughed off.
The indications are entirely in favor of artificial and designed construction ; and adverse to the view of their being the product of any natural and accidental causes, like the " pot holes," created by attrition, in the rush and fall of water, of geological interest.
On the opposite western shores of the Sheepscot, at an elevation of sixty feet above the sea, two like excavations are said to be found, near the mouth of Robinhood's cove, but of larger capacity, (one of eight feet deep by four feet in diameter, and the other six feet deep by three feet in diameter,) 1 and evidently a work of art.
There would seem to be some relationship between the excavations on those opposite shores, the one set, at the entrance of the " goose rock passage" to Bath, and the other set-at the "Krangan" of the harbor passage to Boothbay.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS.
These excavations are obviously the results of artificial agencies by all ordinary rules of judgment; and what pur- pose were they to serve ? If a culinary use, where are the
1 Sewall's Bath, vol. 2, M. H. Coll. p. 19.
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offal remains-the indications of such a use ? True, the boiling of clams and lobsters, and the flesh of fowl and fishes, deer and bear may have been done here, and when cooked borne away to the lodges below ; or here may have been the kitchen of the king, and these excavations sunk to serve a public use in the preparation of food for a people who, history tells us, " would eat nothing raw." 1. Do these excavations mark favorite camping grounds and resting plac- es ? and are they indications of hospitality, in provision made for the comfort and convenience of strangers and trav- elers at the public expense, from the resources of the Ba shaba, who was the great sovereign of the country ? O1 were they designed for religious and festive occasions, in the bloody rites of druidical worship ? Echo answers what ?
EXHUMATIONS.
The margin of "Sweet's Island," back of Spectacle Is- land, a low spectacle shaped mass of rocks and sand, rises in a sand cliff, over-looking the basin of the harbor passage, land-ward, whose face presents a bank of about thirty feet high. From the face of this bank, a few feet below the soil- surface, the protruding remains of a human body led to the discovery of an imbedded skeleton, in a sitting posture, facing the rising sun. In the subsequent explorations, a sarcopha- gus of double wrappers of birchen bark, enclosing the skull and frame of a human body, was exhumed. The mass had become flattened, from the falling in of the frame, which, on being exposed, discovered a winding sheet of delicate furs, in several thin wrappers, enclosing the skull and a mass of greenish colored bones, and the debris of the human frame, and which, under the influence of atmospheric action, were speedily converted into an impalpable dust. The re- mains of a sash or belt, like a fisherman's comforter, fringed
I Rosier's Narrative of the savages of Pentacost Harbor.
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
and curiously wrought of plaited hair, was found with the mass, which was also soon dissipated in the air. Stone axe blades lay cross-wise the body, with arrow-heads above. A. further examination disclosed a few feet north, a structure of clayey fabric, slightly hardened by igneous action, in a vertical position, oval-shaped, some three feet high, the locality of which was not indicated from the surface soil. The blow of an axe, alas, that vandal stroke! broke in the tumulus, and discovered it to be a charnel house, about which vestiges of ancient fires were distinctly traceable. The facts above narrated have but recently transpired ; and were gathered on the spot by an eye-witness of the exhuma- tion.
WHITE MOUNTAIN VIEWS.
The locality has long borne the traditional name of In dian Town, now exclusively applied to designate the most central and conspicuous of the group of islands, land-locking the body of water, on the margins of which these relics of an extinct people are disposed ; and whose rock-crowned heights command grand views of the White Mountains along the valley of the Androscoggin River in the distant north west.
The prospect of these inland mountain views from the sea is so peculiar, that from off Monhegan,1 they have ever been taken as notable land-marks. In nearly a west north- west aspect, a vast gorge, or geological feature in the earth's surface, termed " a fault," opens a deep inland view, run- ning back by a very gentle elevation from the sea, subtend- ing laterally a cone-shaped outline of vision, some miles in diameter. In the line of the axis of this view, against the
1 Levett's voyage to Cape Ne-wagen, 1623-24.
The Crystal Hill is to be seen at the sea side. And there is no ship arrives in New England, either to the west so far as Cape Cod, or to the east so far as "Monhegan" but they see this Mountain, the first land, if the weather be clear .- M. H. Coll. vol. 3, p. 84.
..
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
horizon of the distant west, filling the entire space to the · very clouds, is projected a rounded mountainous outline- a huge, dark-swollen mass, which reappears above the cloud- capt surface, in a symmetrical summit outline of dazzling brightness, whose lustre in the beams of an ante-meridional sun-light, must certainly eclipse the eye. It is this feature which early gave the appropriate descriptive name of the " Crystal Mountains."
These grand outlines, showing in distant relief against the western horizon, especially from the eminences of "Sweet's Island," as well as from the heights of Indian Town, in a favorable state of the weather and atmosphere, add much to the romance of the site of this ancient settlement, at the "Krangan" of the great aboriginal thoroughfare from the east.
The western slope of Indian Town Island exhibits a hiatus, between the elevated back-ground, and the rocky bluff of its extreme western verge, injected with a nearly right-angular plain of sand of some two or three acres. To this spot, tradition has pointed from the carliest European recollection, as the site of an Indian garden, wherein grew strange and peculiar plants and herbs of reputed medicinal virtue, and wlicre snake-root is said still to abound.
COLONIAL VESTIGES.
There too, are vestiges of civilized life, among the barba- rian remains of this interesting spot. When the plow-share was first driven through the soil of these deposits of decaying shell and bones, the point, a fragment of an ancient two- edged sword was turned out in the furrow, from its burial place in a mass of the bones of a human frame just under the surface, where the body would seem to have fallen. The hilt, the blade, from which the point would seem to bave been broken off while in the hands of him who drew and wielded the weapon, have no where been recovered.
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
Near the bones of the body in which the broken and blood-rusted sword point was plunged, the same plow-share discovered the remains of six other bodies lying promis- cuously about. The blade of a long-bitted iron axe, the head of one of smooth hard stone, bearing a grooved neck swollen into a knob, in place of an eye; the fragments of an ancient saw-plate ; piece of a chain; with a table knife of ancient fashion and peculiar make, having a right-angular depression surmounted with a button shaped point on the upper side of the blade, were all turned out together in the furrow, near the group of dead men's bones ; and near by, was an earth- dug opening, indicative of an early civilized human home.
These relics, from the broken blade to the knife, have a history of their own, a history distinct from that which those of barbaric life more remote and extensive, indicate here. And it is a history of blood, valor and death, detailing a conflict, marking a new and more recent period, shaken with the collision of savage and civilized life in a struggle for supremacy of the soil, in a contest of races for a home ! They mark a later epoch in our history-the epoch of the colonial development, when in the scenes of frontier life inscribed in the blood written tokens of this fragment of a sword, the symbol of civilized life and European power, read we the heroism, desperation and success of some fond father, some loving husband, in the defense and rescue of his wife and children from the death grasp of wild and savage men, whose insidious approach had surprised his forest-sheltered retreat, but whose yells of savage delight were to be silenced in the dust they were made to bite, or choked with their own blood, as it fol- lowed the thrusts and cuts of the keen edged steel ?- Have we here a tale of the horrors of the battle field, where the tomahawk and scalping knife wielded a poor defense to the strokes of the skillful sword-man's battle blade ?
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
SUGGESTIVE FEATURES OF THE REMAINS.
It is a remarkable and significant fact, that the remains described have a surface locality, reached by the plow-share, and are commingled with the debris of the offal of a mighty horde of eaters, whose bodies seem never to have had sepul- ture, but have mouldered away where they fell !
Such are the facts, bearing on scenes of a remote antiqui- ty, lost to tradition, forgotten of history, and now existing in conjecture alone ! But they are eloquent facts. Every relic, each ruin, has a tongue !
More eloquent they, and louder spoken, than the earth covered remains of the supposed sites of Nineveh and Baby- lon. They tell us that the head-waters of the Damariscotta in the interior, and the lower waters of the Sheepscot, at the sea-side, have been points remarkable in human history, as centers of vast populousness to an early race, more than commonly expert in all the arts of barbaric life !
They assert the existence and agency of a people addicted to permanency of abode, a home-loving race, high in the scale of savage eminence, and go far to identify the two sites described, as homes of one people-resorts of the same nation, central points in the same aboriginal state !
The facts suggest that a common fate, the same sudden and terrible catastrophe, over-swept each hamlet of these island homes ! Therefore, the unburied bones of this an- cient people are left to bleach, moulder away and mingle with the offal of their food, till their lodging places and planting grounds have become a golgotha of ghastly re- mains ! Surprise, consternation, violence and death are the great features of the unsolved problem of the extinction of this people and the desolation of their homes !
As will have been perceived, the facts detailed relate to events and were co-existent with a state of things anterior to the advent of the European, or white race, to our shores ;
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
and refer us to the existence here, of a primitive people of vast antiquity, and great density, who held original posses- sion of the soil to which we have succeeded, where our homes are planted, a people eminent among their kind; peculiar in their distinctive characteristics, now utterly ex- tinguished from the face of the earth, and as early as the period of our first settlements here, two centuries or more ago ! The facts exhibited, in the traces we have of them, on the earth's surface, show them to have been a mighty people to have left such permanent vestiges behind them, " such foot-prints on the sands of time !"
These facts demand and admit of a rational solution. In solving them, the realization of the vision of Iagoo, in the Song of Hiawatha, the historical epoch of the myth of which we have now reached, may help out the mysteri- ous riddle of life and death in our midst.
Now it was, that o'er the water, to the wondering children of our native forests-
" Came a great canoe with pinions, A canoe with wings came flying, Bigger than a grove of pine trees, Taller than the tallest tree tops.
From its mouth he said to greet him, Came Way-was-simo, the lightning, Came the thunder, An-ne-meekee. In it, said he, came a people, In the great canoe with pinions,
Painted white, were all their faces, And with hair their chins were covered !"
In this wondrous vision, were opened to this aboriginal seer-
" All the secrets of the future, Of the distant days that shall be ; Were beheld the westward marches Of the unknown and crowded nations.
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
In the wood-lands rang their axes ;
Smoked their towns, in all the valleys. Over all the lakes and rivers, Rushed their great canoes of thunder ! Then a darker, drearier vision Passed before him, vague and cloudlike ! Saw the remnants of his people Sweeping westward, wild and woeful Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered leaves of autumn."
RUINS ACCOUNTED FOR.
In tracing the facts we have above explored, in their natural localities, up through the dark recesses of the past, into the light of historic truth, we must, at the outset, be guided by the natural and rational indications to which their relations to recorded events and other circumstances lead. Entering, and taking our stand, therefore, on the very threshold of the colonial epoch, at the opening of the scenes of New England history, as proposed in the premises of our second proposition, we think we may there gather data for their solution, in the historic recollections of the earliest voyagers who swept our shores, or in the rumors of that day, wafted to us from a remote antiquity, and put on public record, as they were caught.
NORUMBEGUA.
Amid the fog-banks of more than two centuries and one- half, a mist of history, indeterminate in shape and locality, has appeared to puzzle the antiquary and appall the historian, whose outlines have been preserved in the sounds of aborig- inal articulation pronounced "Norumbegua," but more simply and truly expressed, as " Arâmbec," as in the sequel will appear.
Let no one be startled ! There is good evidence that we have here but one shape, and that it is no ghost. "Norum-
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ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
begua," cotemporaneous with the aboriginal Mavooshen, is one of the earliest of ancient names on our shores. While central Maine has seemed to be its most definite locality, yet, from the non-existence of vestiges and remains, tradi- tional and topographical evidences, corresponding to the prevailing accounts and description, this subject of historical speculation has by some, been set down as a fiction of the early age in which it became known. Ready, as this meth- od of solving the problem presented in the facts, may seem to have been, it will be perceived that it is all assumption founded in ignorance of facts, still traceable on the face of the earth's surface in this region of country ; and would appear to have had its origin in the suggestions of French authority. Such is a brief summary of the historical atti- tude of this celebrated name, which, by general consent, in face of the facts and reasoning of De Monts, has latterly attached to some undetermined locality on the water banks of the Penobscot.
HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE NAME.
Sullivan, the historian of Maine, has embodied the most perfect accounts in fullest detail, which assure us, "that Norumbegua was a province or country lying between Nova Scotia on the north and New England on the south, whose people were supposed to be an ancient people,-that they lived on the Penobscot, near which, as it was imagined, a great city once stood, called by the name of Norumbegua." Such is one view. Another, in more definite detail, on the same authority, locates Norumbegua, so that the "Pemaquid and Sheepscot,"1 (then called Chevacovett), made its west- ern boundaries, and were within its domain.
The character of this historic subject seems to have been as indeterminate as its locality ; i. e. as to whether it was
1 Sullivan, p. 270.
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
a town or province. "Some supposed it to be a collection of Indian huts ; others, an ancient town."
The early historian, Ogilby, described Norumbegua to be " the ruins of an ancient town, which the natives called Arâmbec, and had deserted."
We shall cite one more authority, yet more clearly mark- ing and defining the locality and character of Norumbegua, and then proceed with our investigation.
Cotemporaneously with the appearance of a town A. D. 1607. of fifty houses on the west bank of the Sagadahock at its mouth, defended by a fort, adorned with a church, echoing with the hum and clatter of saws and maul, in the hands of busy artisans, on the frame of the Virginia of Sagadahock, there was published at Doway, the " Universal History of the West Indies." 'This book, of two and a half centuries ago, describes Norumbegua " as a city toward the north, which is known well enough by reason of a fair town and a great river." In a further description, it is affirmed, that at the mouth of the river, " is an island very fit for fishing ***** and the region that goeth along the sea, doth abound 1 in fish." This is the fullest, and probably the most authentic account we have,-it likely being the summa- ry of all that was known about " Norumbegua" at that date.
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