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 4
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Thus out of the ignorance of the narrators, grew up the confusion of names, as applied to the designation of their principal town, which confusion has left its impress on the page of history.
MENIKUK.
The ruins distinguishing the island settlement of the sea- shore men, have a site, whose true aboriginal name, proba- bly, as heard by the earliest European settlers on the lower waters of the Sheepscot, was written " Me-ni-kuk," as hand- ed down by tradition, it may be from natives themselves. In this aboriginal word, every one will at once recognize our Ebenecook.
The patches of oyster shells dispersed in the offal of the clam-at Menikuk the main deposite-the manner of bury- ing their dead, the use of copper found in children's orna- ments there, and the vestiges of royal attire wrought in cun- ning work of hair, found among the remains of the exhumed body of a royal personage, prove that Menikuk and Arâm- bec were sister cities ; and of the residents in both places, were the ancient people visited and outraged by George Weymouth in the spring and summer of 1605.
The coalescence of the aboriginal sounds, articulated in " Menahan," meaning an island, and "Pik," a home, and " Auke," a place, so as to express " Menikuk," all will see, gives us for the name of the ancient city at the mouth of the
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Sheepscot, " the island home," or the place of the island home, as more fully expressed.
How expressive ! how graphic ! how appropriate! Arâm- bec, the good ; and Menikuk, the island home!
RACE INHABITING THESE CITIES.
At a period so remote from the scenes of the earliest European acquaintance with a people which like their forest wilds, have vanished in two centuries and a half, leaving on- ly the ruins of their homes, and the ashes of their unnum- bered dead, to mark the places which knew them, it is diffi- cult to identify the race, who, with their Arambec, delightful inland capital, had also their Menikuk, or island city on the coast.
Were they of that race called east-land men, known in history as the " Wa-wen-nocks," whose very name endows them with the highest excellences of humanity-" as a peo- ple very 1 brave, fearing nothing"? a people characterized as strong, active, healthful and witty ? the immediate subjects of the Bashaba, the grand sovereign of the east-the sway of whose scepter from its center near Pemaquid, to the boundaries of Massachusetts, was all potent? to whose court all the subordinate tribes paid savage homage, from the banks of Penobscot to the shores of the Merrimac? whose prowess the fierce Tarratine alone dared to brave ?
SUCCESSION OF RACES.
It was a race eminent in many important particulars, in the savage wilds of New England ; and the indications are in favor of the view, that the original stock here, at some very remote age, was supplanted, and their favorite places usurped by a new and stranger people-a victorious, all con- quering people-more elevated in the scale of intellectual
1 Williamson, vol. 1.
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ANCIENT DOMINIONS OF MAINE.
gradation, unique in character and polity, who subdued and expelled the native race, and reared upon their ruin a monarchical state founded in feudal power.
Unless vestiges of the bloody orgies and superstitious horrors of Druidical worship are here, where dark recesses of sheltering groves of oak, thick clustering on the margins of the water-courses, hill-tops and head-lands of Sagadahock, in the aspect of the primeval grandeur and solitudes, fur- nished fit temples in which its white-robed priests ever celebrated the rites of the Druidical religion, the excavat- ed, rock-embedded kettle-bottoms, found at or near Me-ni- kuk, are the work of an earlier race than that which greeted Gosnold in these waters. These people were a sea-going people, skilled in navigating the deep in sailing vessels, sloop-rigged craft, and had vessels of copper for culinary uses. The people here residing when Weymouth's ship, the Archangel, lay in Boothbay harbor, were mariners also, and pursued the whale for food, as a pastime.
These facts indicate, that a foreign and peculiar people now occupied the sites of Menikuk and Arambec of Pema- quid and Sheepscot.
During what vast migratory period, in the impulses of human existence, could this irruption have taken place ? What epoch of the upheavings and outgoings of humanity, do the vast offal deposits of cating thousands described, mark in human history ?
From what shore did this overbearing tide of life set in ? Shall we look to the coasts of Norway ? or to the home of the Carib, near the fountains of the Gulf stream ?
They were whalemen, and as experts in the practice of European fishers, in all the details of the methods of cap- turing this mighty fish by the process of harpooning, wor- rying and destroying the ocean monarch, we perceive the rudiments of the tastes and habits of life, on the northern shores of Europe ; and in the dress of their heads, weapons
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of bone, knowledge and use of gold-colored ornaments of copper, and their love for tobacco and its culture, we find vestiges of the habits, tastes and peculiarities of a southern origin.
Did the vast copper-bearing mountains of the distant west, from the sources of Lake Superior, under some mighty throes of humanity pour out a stream of life from its teeming hordes in wild and tumultuous torrents upon our shores ?
But this is contrary to the analogies of past experience. The great flux of life is so exactly conformed to the centrif- ugal forces of the earth's motion-so palpably, that it has passed into a historic fact as a great migratory feature, that " west-ward ho! the star of empire holds its way."
That such an irruption has at some period broken in, centering at the heart of Lincoln County, leaving there an exotic race from some distant shore, seems more than prob- able. In the distant echoings of ages, we seem to catch the voices of an earlier day in the cries of a receding people, forced from their homes in a concussion of races, calling to us and saying,
They 1 waste us; ay, like April snow In the warm noon, we shrink away ; And fast they follow as we go Toward the setting day, Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the western sea.
The head-waters of the Damariscotta, as we have shown on strong circumstantial evidence, being the site of the capital of a race of sovereigns-the state residence of the great Wa-wennock Bashaba, not only solves the mystery of the vast ruins of a mighty race there, but also, the unex-
1 Drake's Book of the Indians.
4
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plained historical reminiscences floating through the distant past, over the aboriginal scenes of Lincoln County.
It will be perceived in this view, we have not ventured on entirely unsupported conjecture destitute of evidence in historic data, or vestiges still traceable on the earth's surface. We have the facts. We have traced the ruins. These cir- cumstances concur to drive us from the banks of the Penoh- scot, to the head-waters of the Damariscotta, in search of the " Norumbegua,"-the ruined Arambec of ancient fame.
SUGGESTIVE FEATURES.
Our explorations are eminently suggestive in the pregnant facts discovered.
The human remains, mingled with the offal of human subsistence, having a surface position, indicate that the hu- man bodies were left to rot where they fell, till buried in their own decay.
The circumstances thus marked with melancholy peculiar- ity in the history of savage life and times are full of meaning.
It is a point of heroism with the savage brave, to rescue and bury the body of his fallen comrade; and the remarkable non-observance of the custom here, clearly points to sur- prise, consternation and death at the hands of unexpected enemies, or by visitation of the rod of God, in a pestilence so dire and sweeping, as to give the living no time to bury the dead, but sought safety in flight from the scene of the dead and dying.
BASHABA-HIS POWER AND ENEMIES.
Both these agencies may have operated. To the east and north-east of the dominions of the Bashaba, dwelt the peo- ple of the Tarratines,1 enemies of the Bashaba, who had
1 Gorges. M. H. Soc. vol. 2, p. 61.
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many. The Wawennocks, 1 his subjects, dwelt on the Sheep- scot and Pemaquid ; but the fierce Tarratines occupied and held the waters of the Penobscot.
The Bashaba of the Wawennocks had powerful auxiliary subjects, western Sagamores, commanding " some a thou- sand-some fifteen hundred bowmen."
Mavooshen was the name of the territory, wherein was the seat of his dominion, which therefore was the aboriginal designation of the country watered by the Sheepscot and Pemaquid ; and on account of the proximity and facil- ities of water passage, the wild and ferocious Tarratine made forays into the Bashaba's country.
Thus the embers of war were sown between the two sections.
A protracted border war grew up, and ripened into a cruel and exterminating conflict, within ten or twelve years after Weymouth's visit to Pentacost harbor. Varied success marked the progress of the contest, till the Tarratine by treachery, secured an opportunity to surprise the Wawen- nock sovereign, sacked his capital, and made captive his women and escaped.2 Pestilence trod hard on the heels of war, till the utter desolation of the Bashaba's dominions was completed. Arâmbec and Menikuk may have been the chief towns of the Wawennock race, the ruins of which, in ghastly grandeur mock our curiosity and baffle our research,
1 Me. Hist. Soc. vol. 4, p. 97 .- Willis.
2 " And also for that we have been further given certainly to know, that within these late years, there hath by God's visitation reigned a wonderful plague, together with many horrible slaughters and murders, committed amongst the savage and brutish people there, (i. e. Sagadahock, ) hereto- fore inhabiting, in a manner to the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so that there is none left for many leagues together."- Extract from second Plymouth Patent, p. 105, Hazard's State Papers, vol. 1. King James' renewal and enlargement of Plymouth Patent, of Gilbert and Popham's Expedition.
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though a night of greater age, the shadows of a more hoary past gather over the scenes of their desolation.
ABORIGINAL NAME OF LINCOLN COUNTY.
We have reached the epoch of the dawn of the colonial existence of " Mavooshen," the aboriginal euphoneous name of Lincoln County, described as "a high country, full of great woods, goodly groves, and sundry sort of beasts ; whose waters teemed with sea-foul, plenty of salmon, lob- sters, and other fishes of great bigness;" a region which two hundred and fifty years ago, was of surpassing interest and attractions, to the European fisher and furrier, as a source of speculation. The center of the earliest colonial projects from the proximity of its coasts to the waters of the best fishing grounds in the newly discovered continent, em- bracing a section of the coast-wilds of the new world, early remarkable for the attraction of the public interest, as well as for its deep bays, safe harbors, and magnificent river inlets, indenting its rock-bound and sea-girt shores, as we have shown, is no less remarkable now, for its ante-colonial historic interest and importance.
Hoary centuries in mournful succession bend in solemn grandeur over the ashes of aboriginal kings and conquerors, amid the unburied ruins of a race departed-a nation lost !
The silent, simple, unsculptured monuments of life and death, in the places of their homes, are the most eloquent mementoes of their being.
The earth's surface still bears the scars of the struggle where " the silver cord was loosed, and the golden bowl was broken."
" With the wan moon o'erhead, There stands, as in an awful dream The army of the dead ! White, as the sea-fog landward bound, The spectral camp is seen.
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" No other voice nor sound is there, No drum, nor sentry's pace -
The mist-like banners clasp the air, As clouds with clouds embrace ; Encamped beside life's rushing stream, In fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam, Portentous through the night."
The historical interest of these scenes among the islands, bays, harbors, hills and valleys of this section, runs back of those in the historical data of Massachusetts. This very antecedence may account for the meager outlines of our earliest history, which have survived the ravages of war and the tooth of time, the importance of which has been hereto- fore overlooked, in the overshadowing greatness of our me- tropolitan neighbor.
But the historic reminiscences of Maine in interest and importance, begin to gather and glow over the early dawn of her day, with rising effulgence ; and we submit if it is too much to assume, that the day is not far distant, when the history of New England will have to be re-written, beginning with the records of the earth's surface in Maine ; and when, in the field of historic observation, as in the con- stellation of States, Maine will take her natural position, bearing aloft the motto of her escutcheon, "Dirigo-I lead."
CHAPTER II.
PERIOD OF DISCOVERY.
THE first adventurers in search of a new home within the boundaries of these United States, were fugitives from scenes of bloody persecution in the horrors of St. Bartholo- mew's day, which the revocation of the edict of Nantz opened in the heart of Europe. They sought an asylum and made a lodgment amid the wilds of America, allured by the hope of freedom to worship God, in the sunny south, and on the banks of the rivers of A. D. Florida. These were Frenchmen by birth and 1564. Protestants in faith. June 30.
GOSNOLD'S VOYAGE TO THE VIRGINIA OF THE NORTH.
But the enterprise of commercial adventure, in the mean- while, had discovered and opened new sources of wealth in the fisheries of the coast of Maine-the 1 " Virginia of the northern parts of America."
An entire generation had passed from the scene of human existence and action, and the dawnings of a new one had just began to break over the adorning hamlets on the banks of the rivers of Florida, when Bartholomew Gosnold, as he swept along our shores, in view of its 1602. deep bays and magnificent head-lands, from the deck of the Concord, " hailed a shallop of 1 European build,
1 Hackluyt papers, Mass. H. Col. vol. viii, 3d series, p. 73-86.
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manned with eight savages, the head man of whom was clad in a vesture of European fabric and costume. At early dawn on Friday, having passed 'Savage Rock,' westward bound, (so called because the natives here first showed themselves,) land was seen, full of fair trees, the land some- what low-certain hummocks or hills lying into the land,- and the shore full of white sand and very stony.
" At noon, anchor was cast, when a barque 1 [bark] shal- lop with masts and sails and grapple and a copper Lat. 43º kettle, came boldly aboard-one of the savages wearing a waist-coat and breeches of black serge, made sea-fashion-hose and shoes on his fect. The others were naked; loose deer skins cast about their shoulders ; and on their waists, seal skins tied fast like Irish diminie trousers. Coming near, the savages were hailed from the ship, and they hailed back again.
" In color these people were swart,-their hair long, up- tied in a knot behind the head,-tall of stature, -broad and grim of visage,-their eye-brows painted white,-their weap- ons, bows and arrows."
A few years before, the largest ship of Gilbert's fleet, southward bound, in the latitude of Wiscasset, struck and was lost; and through the recklessness of her company, near one hundred souls perished in the waters 1 of Sheepscot bay ; and near this scene of disaster without doubt, or "the river of the Kennebec,"2 Gosnold's colony could not be persuaded to remain, but returning with him to the back side of Cape Cod, began their "plantation at the Vine- yard."3
1 Bancroft, vol. 1, p. 91.
2 Sullivan, p. 272.
3 Strachey.
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PERIOD OF DISCOVERY.
PRING'S VOYAGE.
Martin Pring, under patronage of merchantmen of Bris- tol, with two vessels following the track of Gosnold, " found good anchorage among the islands in the 1603. Penobscot or Pemaquid Bay,-1 Monhegan and Pem- aquid being in sight." He examined more in detail, the bays, harbors and rivers of our coast, carrying back a glow- ing account to England, of " the very goodly groves and woods and sundry sorts of beasts," which fairly started the energies of the old world into vigorous enterprises for set- tling the new, by colonizing her children there, lest some other people should forestall the purposes of England in this particular. Mons. de Monts, a protestant, but a Frenchman, with his fragments of a colony planted on the island St. Croix-where "hoary snow farther being come caught and held them fast till spring," had entered the Kennebec, reared a cross, and planted the arms of his sovereign.
The enthusiasm and interest of England being now thor- oughly aroused by the repeated glowing pictures of our wild and distant shores,-" distance lending en- 1605. chantment to the view,"-drawn by every new voy- ager on his return, stimulated the public mind to new zeal and enterprise.
WEYMOUTH'S VOYAGE.
Noblemen enlisted both fortune and influence in efforts to explore and secure to the enjoyment of their country the El Dorado of the west. Under the patronage of Lord Arundel, a voyage of deep interest and most important results to the Geographer and Historian was pro- jected. Two and one half centuries have elapsed Mar. 5,
1 Thornton's Pemaquid, p. 21.
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10 A. M. since George Weymouth set sail at Ratcliff in the Archangel 1 for our shores.2
Running close by the wind, one month after his departure from England, urged by necessities of wood and May 6. water, to make the nearest land, in the forenoon he " came to a rippling" ahead of the ship-" a breach of water," caused by a fall or by some meeting of currents, " the weather being very fair, and a small gale of wind"-soundings were made, but no bottom with an hund- red fathoms.
Alarmed at a sudden change in the aspect of the water, soundings again made, gave but five fathom, and May 13. no land in sight. A man at mast-head, soon how- ever " descried a whitish sandy cliff, bearing W. S. W. with many breaches of the sea near to land"-and be- coming embayed with shoals on a most uncertain ground, " where was found a great store of most excellent cod fish and many whales were scen," the ship stood off all night, and the next day the wind S. S. W. and W. S. W.
Thus Weymouth, when he first made land and became embayed among shoals and sand, escaped the perils of Cape Cod.
MONHEGAN DISCOVERED.
It was on Friday, during evening twilight, that land was again descried, bearing N. N. E. in the midst of a May 17. gale of wind and raging sea, which forbade an approach to the unknown coast. The ship was put about and stood off till two o'clock on the morning of Saturday, when she stood in toward what appeared May 18. " a mean 3 high land," but was found to be an " island, six miles in compass, of a thousand acres"
1 John McKeen, Esq. Belknap.
2 Mass. Hist. Col. 3d series, vol. viii.
3 Some high land of the main .- Hubbard, p. 12.
MONIIEGAN ISLAND, JUNE 1605.
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-oblong in shape, as fair a land to fall in with as could be desired -free from sands, rocks and shoals-of bold shore and good land fall -well stocked with sea-fowl, and the waters with large cod and haddock.
At noon, a league from the shore on the north side of the island, whose margins were fringed with the gooseberry, strawberry, and wild rose, Weymouth anchored his ship. A boat's crew landed for wood and water, and discovered vestiges of human life in the remains of a recent fire. The main land from their anchorage here was seen trending from the W. S. W. to the E. N. E.
OBSERVATIONS, COURSES, AND DISTANCE OF THE ARCHANGEL IN SAILING IN TO THE MAIN.
Says the chronicler of this voyage, -" from hence we might discern the main land from the west-south-west to the east-north-east, and a great way ( as it then seemed and we after found it ) up into the main we might discern very high mountains though the main seemed but low land."
The text implies a distant inland prospect of mountain views, as land-marks, which " might" be discerned from the anchorage, under what is conceded to be Monhegan Island, though it is not positive that they could be fully seen, as they were only discerned, which implies dimness, as well as distance, of vision ; and the White Mountains, showing in their magnificent outlines, terminating the view in the lori- zon of the distant west, along the valley of the Androscog- gin, would seem to answer the object of the narrator as well as the description he gives, which was, so to shade the local- ity of the exploration and discoveries as to lead foreign voyagers, who might follow, astray. "The ship riding too open and exposed to the sea and winds weighed anchor about twelve o'clock" (it being Sunday ) May 19. and made sail for the main,-" coming along to the other islands more adjoining to the main and in the road
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directly with the mountains, about three leagues from the first Island where we had anchored"-writes Rosier. Having run in about three leagues, which brought the Archangel near to islands more adjoining to the main " she came to in the offing and a boat was sent under command of Thomas Cam the mate, to discover and sound out a passage up between the islands. The Arch-angel lay off and on till the boat should give " a token to " weffe in the ship if a con- venient harbor were found"-which, in the language of the narrator, " it pleased God to send us, far beyond our expec- tation, in a most safe berth, defended from all winds, in an excellent depth of water for ships of any burden, in six, seven, eight, nine, and ten fathom, upon a clay ooze, very tough, and which was named Pentacost Harbor."
VESTIGES OF HUMAN LIFE.
By four o'clock the ship was anchored and well moored under an island, on which, as on St. George,1 the first-dis- covered and so named by them, now called Monhegan, it was found where a fire had been made; and near by " the shells of very great eggs, bigger than goose eggs"- together with the bones of fishes and beasts. These evidences of the presence of human existence excited the curiosity of the ship's company ; and having discovered a place on the island suitable to build their shallop and fill their water, every way to their wishes, in their search they "espied cranes stalking on the shore of a little island adjoyning where it was afterward found this bird had its haunt, to breed and rear its young "; and to this day one of the islands off Boothbay Harbor is known to every fisherman as well as to tradition as " Heron Island," derived undoubtedly from the facts here given.
The material for the new boat was now taken on shore, and her frame set up, while the ship's crew digged for water,
1 Gilbert and Popham's voyage.
١
THE ARCHANGEL IN PENTECOST HARBOR, ROADSTEAD OF FISHERMAN'S ISLAND, JUNE, A. D., 1605.
=
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and finding a spring, inserted an empty cask to make it well up, and in their digging found excel- May 20. lent clay for brick and tile."
OCCUPATION OF SHIP'S COMPANY.
Yards and spars for the ship's use were cut from the neigh- boring forest by some-the shallop hastened forward by others,-and great lobsters, rock-fish, and plaice were fished, -" all the fish being well-fed, fat, and sweet to the taste."
The soil of this island was broken with the spade and hoe for the first time; and various garden seeds committed to the virgin earth, "which in sixteen May 22. days grew eight inches," in what was but the crust and much inferior to the mould of the main land.
Their wood and watering finished, " fourteen musketeers and Pike men embarked to explore the neighbor- ing islands in the harbor ; landed on two of them May 24. and marched over them ; one of which was a mile broad and four or five miles in compass, " - undoubtedly " Squirrel Island and Cape Ne-wagen "-the Nekrangan of the aborigines.
" To-day the new-built shallop was launched, and a cross set up on the shore-side among the rocks," in accordance with the custom of the age, in marking May 29. new-discovered lands, and particularly with Com- modore Weymouth's policy, who " set up crosses 1 in several places, marking his explorations here."
FIRST VIEW OF THE NATIVES.
The ship well moored, with fourteen men of her crew, was left at her anchorage, while Commodore Wey- mouth, with thirteen men, explored the new-dis- May 30. covered harbor and its several approaches, finding
1 Holmes's Annals, p. 150. Williamson, p. 192, vol. i. note.
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four entrances for ship passage and good anchorage in the sounds between its land-locking islands.
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