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 3
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
With this description, out of the summary of fact and fiction, we may pick the truth. It would appear that the reminiscences wafting to our day, all the knowledge we have of the then unexplored interior, refer to the existence of a town and river situated within, or near to the rivers Pema- quid and Sheepscot, then as now, well known localities, and unless we utterly discard the weight of all historic prepon- derance, the early existence of the place, as Province or Town in ruins, can be no fiction.
The name was on the tongue of every native, and in the
1 Purchas, vol. 4, pp. 1620-1625.
33
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
ear of every early voyager, so continually and forcibly, that it has left an indelible impress on the historic page!
But, if of inland location, Norumbegua was never seen by early navigators, no one of whom ever ascended beyond the mouth of the Penobscot Bay, or the harbor of Townsend, prior to the voyage and explorations of George Weymouth, in the ship Archangel.
LOCATION OF NORUMBEGUA.
The waifs of history, in concurrence with the pecul- iar physical features of our coast and its waters, may aid us in determining the locality of this ancient and re- nowned spot. Natural and peculiar features and facts, yet traceable off our coast, in the notable fishing island of Damariscove, we think are rational, as well as natural indi- cations, of the entrance to the river's mouth, on whose margins the " fair town" of Norumbegua may have stood. It is not a little remarkable, that the significant fact should have been overlooked in all investigations as to the location of the traditional Norumbegua, that the aboriginal term used to designate the principal island of an inland group at the mouth of a river bearing the same name, should literally mean the "fish place,"-being a compound aboriginal word " na-maas and covet," pronounced in the English tongue, Damariscove ; and the river's mouth, opening inland to the north-east of this island, called Damariscotta, meaning the river where the fishes 1 flock, or rush, bearing in its name the great natural feature of its waters in the vast shoals of the ale-wive tribe, rushing to their breeding haunts above the falls, in the upper reservoir of this remarkable river.
At the mouth of the Damariscotta, then, we have the "island very fit for fishing ;" and " the region that goeth along the sea, there, doth abound in fish ;" in all which, it
1 Illustration of the meaning of aboriginal words .- Hon. William Willis, M. H. Coll. vol. 4, p. 190.
3
34
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
seems to me, there is a literal correspondence with each of the peculiar features drawn in the historical records left us, giving the local characteristics, marking the site of the ancient Norumbegua, of aboriginal notoriety and import- ance.
On this hypothesis, based on the fact that Damariscove, or Monhegan Island, lying east and west of each other, and off the mouth of the Damariscotta River-islands remarkable for their advantages in fishing, from before the days of the colonization of Plymouth and the settlement of Boston, till now-each bearing the characteristics of that, which history alleged, lay off the mouth of the river, on the margins of whose waters the fair town of Norumbegua stood,-or the ruins of the deserted Arambec lay-then, may not the pre- cise location, marked with every historic feature, in rational solution of every remarkable vestige, have an intimate con- nection with the enormous oyster offal deposites we have described in the remains of these edible bivalves, at the head-waters and along the margins of the lower basins of Damariscotta River?
The traces of vast and ancient populousness-evidence recorded on the face of the earth, anterior to the recollec- tion even of tradition for more than two centuries, still remarkable there, we have already given in detail.
We may assume, that no body of water, no arm of the sea, than that shut in at its mouth by the Pemaquid point on the east, and by the harbor-environing lands of Booth- bay on the west, now called the Damariscotta River, afforded ever, a more ample and ready supply of human food for the subsistence of a permanent and concentrated population, in the resources of its ale-wive fisheries and ancient oyster beds,-(the members of this distinguished world-renowned shell-fish, still surviving in isolation, there amid the deadly accumulation of saw-dust and mill offal upon them,) than
35
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
this remarkable river, at the point where the head-waters of the neighboring and oyster-bearing Sheepscot approach so near, as to give easy access from one river to the other, and a natural site for the concentration and permanent abode of human beings and the support of life. Between the two points at the place designated, was the great Indian trail of " Ped-coke-gowake, " which," in Walter Philip's day, " the natives used to carry their canoes over," and which was given as a land mark 1 in his original conveyances.
EVIDENCE FROM HISTORY.
That Norumbegua of our aboriginal history was a fair town and not a Province, here located, is more fully confirmed, from facts recorded, of the observation in the earliest know- ledge we have, of the natives resident in this region. These facts are gathered from the public reports of the earliest navigators along our shores; and in their collation and exhibition, we have at once, not only a solution of the problem of the enormous oyster shells and other deposites of the refuse of human food we have described in locality, but light is shed on the scenes of the narratives of the earliest voyagers who sailed in our waters.
Three years had passed, after the shallop vision of Gos- nold's voyage had first greeted European eyes off our strange coast, and exhibited to their wondering view this earliest sketch of life, in the strange inhabitants of this unknown land, when the ship of Capt. George Weymouth,
1605. the Archangel,2 lay at her moorings in Pentacost May 30. harbor, under an island in the capacious and newly discovered haven.
ORNAMENTS OF COPPER.
In continuation of the narrative of this voyage, Rosier
1 Philip's Deed to Tappan, L. Commiss. reports.
2 Belknap. John McKeen, Esq.
1146753
36
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
goes on to say, "here we saw four of their women, who stood behind them as desirous to see us, but not willing to be seen. They were very well formed in proportion of countenance, though colored black, low of stature, and fat; bare headed as the men, wearing their hair long; they had two little male children of a year and a half old as we judged, very fat and in good countenances, which they love tenderly, all naked except their legs, which were covered with their leather buskins tewed, fastened with straps to a girdle about their waists, which they gird very straight, and is decked round about with little round pieces of red copper. 1"
PERSONAL ASPECT.
They were not naturally a beardless race. No hair was suffered to grow on their faces ; "but on their heads, very long and very black, which those that have wives bind up with a leather string in a long, round knot." They were civil, merry and thankful-of quick understanding-great capacity and ingenious.
WEAPONS OF BONE.
This quick-witted people had arrows headed with "the long shank bone of the deer, made very sharp, with two fangs, in the manner of an harping iron." Other offensive projectiles they had, as "darts headed with the bone of the deer," " which," says Rosier, "I darted among the rocks and it brake not;" "and which," he adds, "they use very cunningly, to kill fish, fowl and beasts." Their bows were peculiar, carved out of the witch-hazel and beech, in fashion much like those of European make.
FONDNESS FOR TOBACCO.
They were fond of tobacco, as well as cultivators of the
1 Mass. H. Coll. p. 140, series 3d, vol. 8.
37
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
Virginia weed. At one time, they welcomed the ship's company on shore, taking them by the hands, and leading them to seats by their fires, where thirteen of them sat together in social and friendly intercourse. Their tobac- co pipe was filled-which then was the short claw of the lobster-and says the narrator, "we drank of their ex- cellent tobacco as much as we would, with them; but we saw no great quantity to truck for, it seeming they had not much left of old, for they spend a great quantity yearly by their continual drinking, and they would sign unto us that it was grown yet but a foot above ground, and would be above a yard high, with a leaf as broad as both their hands." The process by which the narcotic luxuries of the tobacco plant are described to have been enjoyed in native purity and wildness, by drinking, undoubtedly refers to the com- mon method of the inhalation of the gases and fumes of the consuming weed, as quaffed from the bowl of the pipe -a barbarian custom, now thoroughly domesticated, as a chief virtue among the enjoyments of civilized life.
DIRECTION OF THE NATIVE CAPITAL FROM THE SHIP'S ANCHORAGE.
As the ship still lay at anchor in Pentacost harbor, west- ward from Pemaquid, the home of a constantly reappearing chieftain, whose kinsman was subsequently captured and abducted from that home, " by pointing to one part of the main, eastward," the natives about the ship gave Commo- dore Weymouth, (whom they called a Bashaba) to under- stand there was the place of the Royal residence, the great mart of trade, "where their sovereign had plenty of furs and much tobacco !"
Here then, as a center of trade and the abode of their sovereign, must have been the Capital of this people.
COURT COSTUME.
Only the day before leaving Pentacost harbor, to enter
38
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
a newly discovered river, swept by strong tides, and enliv- ened with fish, some of which were seen "great leaping above water," about noon, "two canoes boarded the ship, laying still at her anchorage there, coming from the east- ward. They bore seven natives, beautified very gallantly after their manner, with newly painted faces, very deep, some all black-some red, with stripes of excellent blue over their upper lips, nose and chin. One of their number wore a ' coronet' made very cunningly of a substance like stiff hair, colored red-broad, more than a handful in depthi. Others had the white-feathered skins of some fowl round about their heads, and jewels in their ears, and bracelets of little round bones." Such was the courtly array of this envoy group, in their persons representing the Royal author- ity of their sovereign, bearing a message from their king to Commodore Weymouth, as his ship lay under Fisherman's Island, west of Pemaquid, in Boothbay harbor ; for, con- tinues the narrative of the incidents of the voyage, "by their speech and signs, they signified that the 'Bashaba,' (i. e. their king,) sent them with an invitation, that Capt. Weymouth should bring his ' Quiden,' (as they called it,) or ship, up to the Bashaba's house, being as they pointed, up on the main, toward the east, from whence they came."
TREACHERY OF WEYMOUTH.
But George Weymouth, in violation of all obligations, natural and moral, in utter subversion of all the rights of hospitalities shown him, and of confidence he had won in the hearts of these simple nature's children, had converted his ship into a prison house, and the subjects of the Bashaba into slaves. Two, confiding in the white man's faith, as they sped their light and fragile bark about the monster ship, were enticed on board, secured below, and their canoes " of so good a fashion, made with such excellent and ingen- ious art," were disposed on the orlop of the ship's deck, as
39
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
extraordinary curiosities. Three more, decoyed to the cliff side of the harbor-sheltering island, near which the ship rode, by tempting food and proposals for trade, with much ado, had been seized by their top-nots, and dragged aboard. m
Five natives of Pemaquid, and one a Sagamore, a resi- dent there, all subjects of the Bashaba, were at this moment immured in the Archangel's hold, unbeknown to the king's envoys, and in violation of the rights of the state, whose officers had now presented themselves, in execution of the behests of a courtly hospitality, desiring to lavish its favors on the treacherous stranger. " Conscience," it is said, " makes cowards of us all."
Weymouth declined the courtesies of the sovereign, whose subjects he had forcibly abducted, and made all haste from Pentacost harbor-Pemaquid, the home of the bow men, of their outraged chief, Nahanada, being too near, and in sight in the east.
FURTHER IDENTIFICATION OF LOCALITY.
De Laet 1 wrote, "that four leagues in the direction of the coast, to the north of Kennebeck," (a course and dis- tance making the harbor of Boothbay,) "there is a bay having in its bosom a large number of islands."
The natives of this locality, he adds, are in some respects unlike the other aborigines of Maine. They shave their heads to the crown ** * but suffer the hair to grow on the back part, confining it in knots, interweaving feathers of various plumage. They paint their faces black or red. They differ, in that these natives plant corn and beans together, on which the vines run up. Besides, these sava- ges are said to have permanent abodes.
Of the natives visiting the Archangel, it was particularly noted " that nothing raw would be eaten by them, either flesh or fish."
1 Williamson, vol. 1, p. 486, note.
40
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
We have been thus minute in descriptive detail, to bring out certain facts and circumstances, establishing a relation- ship between the natives visiting Weymouth's ship, and the features and facts of the localities we have heretofore de- scribed. In the narratives above extracted, it will at once be seen that there are most striking and peculiarly concurring circumstances, coincident facts and features, unequivocally establishing a connection between the aboriginal people who stood on the decks of the Archangel in Pentacost harbor, two and one-half centuries ago, with those who were and have been dwellers about the head-waters of the Damaris- cotta, near whose mouth, west from Pemaquid, Weymouth's ship must have laid at anchor.
On her arrival at Plymouth, in England, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the commandant at that station, took from the Archangel three of the captured savages-found them all of the same nation, but different families and social condi- tion. He says they were from Pemaquid; 1 gives the names of those he had in charge, and drew out of them a full account, during a long and intimate acquaintance, " of the goodly rivers, stately islands and safe harbors" of their homes.
From the information thus derived, this nobleman dates his interest in Maine.
The misfortunes, the intelligence, the patriotism of these aboriginal children of the forests of Pemaquid, seem to have laid foundation in England of an interest in this part of the New World, which commanded the patronage, the power, and the wealth of her highest nobility, from the Lord Chief Justice up to the heir to the throne, which was absorbed in a series of movements, to secure the soil, develop the resour- ces, people the wild forest wastes of the so goodly region of Sagadahock; which embraced the home of these five forlorn
1 M. H. Col. p. 17, vol. 2.
41
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
captives, of what was esteemed the most successful voyage of the Archangel in these waters. The interest thus excited developed itself through a period of about a century and one half, in vast expenditures of means and influence, to found and rear a Royal State, in the wilds of old Lincoln.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the earliest and most reliable his- toriographer of Maine, relates "that the coasts were very populous, the inhabitants stout and warlike, in the place he and his friends first seated in," which was Sagadahock. He also tells us " the native government was Monarchical, the king bearing the title of Bashaba, whose own chief abode was not far 1 from Pemaquid."
PEMAQUID'S WHALE FISHERS.
Rosier, the chronicler of the Weymouth expedition, tells us the Pemaquid captives, whose prison ship the Archangel was, on ship board, showed themselves " peaceable, kind hearted, generous, truthful and honest."
They were a people trained to orderly, dignified, and respectful deportment, but were a bold and fearless race, who were whalemen by profession, often pursuing and capturing this mammoth fish in our waters.
In this perilous sport, an army of boats gathered, in the foremost of which sailed their Bashaba, or king, heading the flotilla. In this array, they followed the wake of the snorting water-monster, till the Royal hand could reach him with " a bone made in fashion of an harping iron, fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, and veer out after him, as the stricken fish plunges into the watery abyss, in the vain hope of eluding his pursu- ers. As he seeks the surface to take breath, in his flight from death, the pursuing army of boats gather about the opening he makes on emerging from the deep, and shoot the king-stricken fish to death."
1 M. H. Coll. vol. 2, p. 62.
42
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
DAMARISCOTTA THE SEAT OF ANTE-COLONIAL EMPIRE.
The facts we have grouped in these details, derived from the Pemaquid captives and their captors, must be reliable and authentic, as any historical data can well be, and are certainly remarkable indications of the origin and peculiar character of the ante-colonial dwellers here, and most cer- tainly point to the conclusion as a summary of these indica- tions, that the Archangel of the Weymouth expedition, must have had her anchorage when the five natives visited her and were captured and abducted from their homes at Pemaquid, west from that point, near the lower waters of the Sheepscot, with the head-waters of the Damariscotta, (of whose mouth, Pemaquid is the eastern main land mar- gin,) bearing north-easterly, distant some fourteen miles, up a deep, broad inlet of tide waters, where ships of more than one thousand tuns have often swam to the sea !
I leave it for common sense to decide, whether these facts are not unequivocally suggestive, that up this inlet, above Pemaquid, to the eastward of Townsend harbor inland, was the abode of their king, whom they called Bashaba, to which the royal, crowned and feathered envoys invited George Weymouth to bring up his "Quiden," when they pointed him up on the main toward the east from whence they came ? and which would be the course up the river he should steer to reach the Royal abode ?
But more specific coincidences gather, as we review the details given, to shed light on the scenes of our ante-colonial days.
The bone-made darts and javelins, and offensive weapons of this manufacture, the knowledge and use of copper ornaments and utensils, together with the use of tobacco in such extravagant forms; the costume and array of their persons ; the mode of dressing the hair of their heads; or- namental hair work as a part of the Royal vesture, or court
1
43
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
costume of the great officers of state ; the evidences of per- manency of abode and of a people " who would eat nothing raw ;" eminently a people of culinary tastes and habits, discoverable in the sites of ancient and eloquent ruin at the head-waters of the Damariscotta and on the Sheepscot at the entrance of the harbor of Boothbay, connect the people who visited the Archangel of Commodore Weymouth's ex- pedition in Pentacost harbor, as the dwellers there at that date.
The bone daggers, darts or "stilettoes," and the orna- ments of copper, which excited the admiration of our State Geologist in his exhumation of the bodies and remains of the ancient dead of Damariscotta, from the offal of their subsistence there-the little round pieces of perforated cop- per, in shape of Spanish coin of the size of a quarter, found as relics among the ruins of the Nekrangan, and the hair- wrought scarf, the badge of royalty, exhumed with the remains of the chieftain's body there dug up, together with the presence of the oyster offal among the shell deposits here, where the oyster does not grow nearer than the head- waters of the Damariscotta and Sheepscot above-clearly and palpably establish an identity between the barbaric abo- riginal inhabitants of the lower waters of the Sheepscot, and the upper water settlements of the Damariscotta, together with the women and children of the people visiting Wey- mouth's ship, and the residents of the island dwellers on the Sheepscot, if not also with the savages of Gosnold's shallop vision !
The offensive weapons of bone manufactured above, and the perforated copper ornaments exhumed among the ashes of the dead below, with which the savage mother decked her savage babes, described by Weymouth, as seen on the persons of those who visited his ship at her anchorage in Pentacost harbor, are all rationally explained.
-
44
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
It can leave no doubt where the anchorage of Weymouth's ship was, and from whence the people visiting her came.
We think we have the best of 1 historic authority in proof that the Capital of the native Sovereign of Lincoln was with- in the precinct, not far from, but not at Pemaquid. Connect- ed with the natural features which we have traced, as mark- ing the locality of the historic Norumbegua, it seems to us there is strong presumptive evidence, that the royal abode of the Bashaba and Norumbegua were identical; and that the ruins at the head-waters (and the only ruins that would be likely to survive an ancient vast aboriginal city, even of the material now used by us in building) of the Damaris- cotta, near the aboriginal Ped-coke-gowake-mark the seat of ancient empire-of which the island city of lodges on. the Sheepscot, at the "Ne-krangan" of native travel through the harbor below, was a sea-board town. Such is the con- clusion to which we are led by the facts.
ABORIGINAL NAMES.
We have reached the final stage in the investigation, in which we find that the analysis of our aboriginal names afford remarkable confirmation of the view taken.
The native Mexicans gave an account of the appearance of the Spaniards on the coast, by sending to Montezuma " a large cloth, on which they painted 2 what they had seen."
This fact is a type of the action of the native mind, in the expression of its perceptions.
It usually seizes on some leading physical characteristic, whose prominent features shape the sounds, articulated into the names of persons or places. Therefore, every sound entering into a name, in the aboriginal tongue, is rounded to fullness with significancy. The name is in fact
1 See Sir F. Gorges' account and statement.
2 Sullivan, p. 99.
45
ANTE-COLONIAL PERIOD.
and was designed to be, a painting of the subject to which it was applied, taking strong impression from the moulding of the highly figurative cast of the savage conception.
It was not from letters, but " sonans voce," that the names we have, were shaped from aboriginal lips, and dropped into the ear of history ; and hence it is not out of the orthography, but combination of sounds, we must pick the meaning.
Light has been shed on the darkness of aboriginal nomen- clature, from the pen of Hon. Wm. Willis, in the valuable and laborious research he has made into the meaning of Indian terms and the composition of the language, in the vocabulary he has gathered.
SIGNIFICANCY OF NAMES.
Guided by this light, in applying the principle we have developed, as a rule of interpretation, we reach the conclu- sion that Norumbegua is a series of words, and not a proper name, having in combination the possessive pronoun "N" of the native tongue-the adjective " ourim," and the noun "pik," and represents three words; the pronoun "N," meaning our, the adjective "ourim," good, in the sense of delightsome, pleasant, or excellent to the senses; and the noun "pik," meaning a place of residence or home. To- gether, the words signify, our excellent residence ; more perfectly expressed, as our chief pleasant city !
Norumbegua and Arâmbec, are therefore of the same import, as names of the same aboriginal city. Cutting off the possessive prefix N as used in the Indian tongue, we have left, the suffix " orumbegua," all the sounds of which are fully expressed in Arâmbec, as the great descriptive element in the body of the word.
ARAMBEC.
Arâmbec is therefore the true name, meaning chief city
1
46
ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
or capital-residence of the king, place of the palace, as more freely and fully expressed in English ideas.
Not understanding the composition of their language, as the sounds reached the unaccustomed cars of the early voy- agers, who listened to the calls of native courtesy, to visit their sovereign at his capital, as they swept along our shores, pointing in the direction, the savages would say "Norumbe- gua ;" and sometimes in the earnestness of the invitation, only Arâmbec, i. c. to our chief city.
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.