USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay Harbor > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 4
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Southport > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 4
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 4
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 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63
While these were the main divisions of the two great con- federacies, in several instances these tribes were to some extent sub-divided. For instance we have record of the minor tribes, like the Pejepscots and the Machias Indians and others.
About 1614 and 1615, when the Europeans made their first estimates of the Indian population of Maine, based largely on the calculations of Capt. John Smith, it was placed as fol- lows : The total number of Abenaque warriors, 5,000, allowing to the Sokokis 900, to the Anasagunticooks 1,500, the Canibas 1,500 and the Wawenocks 1,100. The Etechemins were esti- mated at 6,000 warriors, divided thus: Tarratines 2,400, Openangos 1,400, and Marechites 2,200. The total Indian population of the territory now constituting Maine being then placed at from 35,000 to 40,000. The sources of information at that time were such that great confidence has been placed in the estimates by all writers upon this subject.
The Abenaque tribes were all subject to the Bashaba, his rule extending from the Penobscot to Cape Cod. He dwelt
37
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
with the Wawenocks, at some point within their territory, and they were his immediate subjects. Imagination has been very fertile with some writers on this matter, and Norumbegua, Arambec and Arumpeag, as each author has fancied to term it, has figured as the mythical city of this ancient race- sought, but never found. The fact doubtless is that it never existed. The Indian had his resorts and temporary abiding places. These places he went from, and came back to, and lived in often, but not continuously.
In the early part of 1615 a war broke out between the Tarratines and western Indians. It raged with great violence for two years and was the beginning of the end of the Abena- ques of Maine. In 1617 a plague or pestilence, the exact nature of which has never been known, broke out among the Indians to the westward of the Penobscot and continued into the next year. By this they were cut down by hundreds at all points along the coast and up the rivers, wherever their settle- ments extended; the disease seeming to hover over the van- quished and claim them alone for its victims.1 One great peculiarity of the disease that afflicted them was that where it raged the worst English fishermen mingled with them, even sleeping in their wigwams, and were unaffected. It has been thought that the two years' war that just preceded it, during which time the western Indians were driven from their hunting, fishing and planting grounds, forced them to that precarious kind of diet that their systems became impoverished to that extent that they fell an easy prey to the malady that followed. It is certain that the eastern Indians were not much, if any, affected by it.2 Years after the early explorers found many places where several had died together, perhaps all of a family, and had been unburied.
This wholesale scourge was referred to by the English King in one of his patents, at the time, as a visitation of God, and a providential interference with the race favoring European colonization.3 In the war the Bashaba was slain and the title
1. As late as October, 1763, a pestilence of an unknown nature broke out among the Indians of Martha's Vineyard and the following January there were left but 85 persons from a tribe that numbered 320 at the beginning of the scourge. Hutch. Hist. Mass. I, 38.
2. Annals of Warren, p. 17; Johnson's Pemaquid, p. 43.
3. Young's Chronicles of Plymouth, p. 183.
38
HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
never reappeared among the tribes. As may well be supposed from the location of the Wawenocks they were more nearly exterminated than either of the other tribes ; but it was nearly the middle of the following century before the remnant broke up and left their native country, merging themselves in the tribes of Canada. During all this period they acted generally under the influence of either the Massachusetts Indians or the Tarra- tines, their former foes, in their hostility to the colonists. The Anasagunticooks first went to Canada and joined the St. Fran- cois Indians early in 1747, followed soon after by the Sokokis. The Canibas withdrew the remnant of their tribe to Norridge- wock, where after many years with dwindling numbers they, too, went to Canada. Soon after 1747 the Wawenocks, having but few families left, went to Canada and joined their brethren at Becancourt.I
The Etechemins withstood the war and the ravages of the plague, but were much cut down in numbers. The remnant of the Tarratines, now known as the Penobscots, are at Indian Island, Old Town. The 'Quoddy tribe are on the shore of their old bay at Pleasant Point in the town of Perry, both wards of the State of Maine. The remainder of the Marechites are near Frederickton, N. B.
The principal dwelling places of the Wawenocks must have been those spots here and there alongshore which have shown the greatest amount of offal deposit. They had no fortifications or earthworks, no buildings with durable foundations, nothing that marked the surface of the earth in other than a temporary fashion, except where had accumulated huge piles of shells from clams or oysters, mingled with the bones of birds and game, various implements and cooking utensils, lost or cast away, with sometimes the skeletons of their own dead.
Ordinarily in the vicinity of one of these places, which shows to have been an Indian resort, has been found an Indian burying ground. Search where one may for these localities and they invariably will be found on a southern slope, with high, well-wooded land, as a weather shield, lying to the north and west, with a pond, spring or stream of good pure water near, and, at a convenient distance, productive clam flats, which
1. Will. Me. I, 469.
39
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
to the present day are famed for both quantity and quality of this bivalve.
There is every reason to believe that the Indian has always been a migratory being. He is that now. He was probably the same before ever a European set foot on American soil. In winter when the interior was closed down under ice and snow he came to the seashore, where he had all that that locality produced for sustenance, clams, oysters, fish and birds ; and in these regions, before civilization had placed its mark upon the territory, all the game worked seaward, too, in winter, on account of the great depth of snow back from the ocean.1 In spring the Indian followed the salmon and shad up the rivers, and hunted the forest game, which also at that season worked back along the rivers and streams.
The two great centers of Wawenock settlement were where the Damariscotta oyster shell deposit exists and about the lower Sheepscot waters, though there were many minor ones. Indications point to this Damariscotta locality as the Norum- begua or Arambec of the ancients, and also as being the resi- dence of the Bashaba, more strongly than any other place. These beds form a cliff varying from six to twenty-five feet above high water mark ; they are from eighty to one hundred rods in width, and extend one hundred and eight rods in length, and were estimated by Dr. Jackson as containing 45,000,000 cubic feet.2 There are several reasons why this place is indicated as the chief point in old Mavooshen.3 It shows to have been the center and abode of a mighty horde of eaters, much greater in extent than any other in America, and one of the largest in the world ;4 it was as nearly central in their territory as any place that could be selected ; the quality of the food was better than any other section has shown, being oysters instead of clams, and the ruling element usually takes the best in either civilized or barbarian life; lastly, when the Popham and Gilbert colony was visited by a delegation from the Bashaba,
1. As an indication that this is correct it may be said that this fact still exists in Washington County, the only county in Maine having unsettled territory to any extent near the sea; and deer are always more numerons on the borders of civilization, where there are some cleared spots, than they are in the depths of a dense forest,
2. Geological Report III, 57.
3. The aboriginal name for the Wawenock territory.
4. Fiske's Discovery of America I, 4; Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology. p. 18.
40
HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
consisting of his brother Skidwares and Nahanada, extending an invitation to visit him, a locality northerly from Pemaquid was indicated by them,1 and not the lower Sheepscot, where the next greatest aggregation of offal deposit exists.
A similar, though smaller, deposit is to be found on the Hawthorne or Barton farm in the town of Cushing.2 Another is found in Bremen, on the farm formerly owned by Jacob Keene ; again on the Benjamin Palmer place at Broad Cove : and also on the northerly end of Loud's Island, formerly known as Muscongus. Westerly from the Sheepscot, in Robin Hood's Cove, Georgetown, may be found a similar deposit. All these places have the requisites previously mentioned : a high, wood- sheltered background, a southern slope to the sun, with good fresh water and productive clam flats near at hand.
In our own locality each reader is somewhat familiar with the physical features of the country. On ancient Cape Newagen, now Southport, there are several minor spots about Ebenecook Harbor, but the one most in evidence is the southern slope from Dogfish Head, where the entire soil in some places, particularly where the old Maddocks fish stand was built, and all about where the old flake yard was, is composed of pulver- ized shell deposit to the depth of several feet. This was in mounds in Palgrave Maddocks' time, but was leveled to a smooth and regular field by his sons and grandsons. Across the cove from the Maddocks stand, near the Cameron landing, is another of the old resorts; but the most famous in our vicinity are the indications about Sawyer's Island and Indian- town.3
At the head of the cove which penetrates Sawyer's Island from the north, more than half the distance across it, were in early times quite well-defined cooking pots, cut in the rocks, which in later years have crumbled and sloughed off. It is supposed that they were used for cooking maize and vegetables by immersing hot stones in the pot holes when filled with water and the articles to be cooked. On Swett's Island Indian remains
1. Me. Hist. Coll. III, 307.
2. It may be said that all these other deposits are principally of clam shells and other offal. Few if any oyster shells are found. Cushman's Sheepscot, pp. 310-318.
3. Indiantown is thought by many to have applied as a name to the entire lower Sheepscot locality in and about Ebenecook Harbor; but this name for many years has been narrowed in its significanco to the single island now bearing that name.
CAPE NEWAGEN. The oldest place by record within the original Boothbay territory. Visited by Captain Christopher Levett in 1623.
41
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
were exhumed, where the skeleton showed that the buried was in a sitting posture, facing the rising sun, an almost universal custom, indicated by nearly every exhumation that has been made, and which has been interpreted as symbolic of their belief in a resurrection.1
On Indiantown during the fifties, while plowing in a field where the soil was largely composed of this deposit, a piece of a two-edged knife or sword was unearthed, imbedded in a human skeleton, while near by were uncovered six other skele- tons, the blade of a long-bitted iron axe, a stone axe with a grooved neck instead of an eye, a piece of old-time saw plate, a short piece of iron chain, and a table knife of ancient pat- tern.2 This shell deposit at the south end of Indiantown Island is about ten feet in depth in places. It is unmistakably an artificial rather than a natural deposit, for, like that at Damariscotta, the earth beneath it is of the same composition as that about it, and the bottom of the deposit is above high water mark. All along the lower Sheepscot are vestiges of this ancient race, but much plainer when they were young, so the old men tell us. "Time's effacing fingers" have nearly swept the lines.
The Wawenocks, as might be supposed, being the tribe which were the immediate subjects of the Bashaba, had many superior traits of character. They and the Canibas showed less hostility to the colonists than the two western tribes ; but the Abenaques as a whole, regardless of the many black crimes recorded against them, lacked much of the natural savagery of the Tarratines. Maine's leading historian says of the Wawenock race :3 "They were a brave, active, personable people, -faith- ful in amity ; and when uninfluenced they disinclined to make war upon the English. They defended their prince with much valor until overcome."
The signification of the name Wawenock is "very brave- fearing nothing." So numerous were they about the Sheepscot in early times that Douglas, an old writer, terms them in his
1. The religion, church service, marriage ceremony and manner of burial among the Indians have all changed in the last two centuries or thereabont, and for many years have taken on the Catholic forms. This has been the case ever since the French Jesuits gained an ascendancy over the Indians in matters of religions belief.
2. Ancient Dominions of Maine, p. 27.
3. Will, Me. I, 469.
42
HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
description "the Sheepscot Indians."1 They were well formed men and women, not so large as the Tarratines but better fea- tured. They subsisted entirely on cooked food and would eat nothing raw. Like all others of their race they loved gewgaws and finery, high colors and ornamental articles of dress. In war they painted their faces with red pigment into terrifying appearances, wearing glittering medals of copper or silver on their breasts, and pendant jewels in their cars and sometimes in their noses, with feathered turbans for a head gear. They lived in many cases to great ages, and deformity or idiocy was unknown among them. Their best wigwams ranged from twenty to forty feet in length by about fifteen in width. The ridgepole and plates were supported by crotched sticks driven in the ground. They were covered with bark and battened, but without doors or windows. The entrance was covered by a curtain, frequently being either a bear or deer skin. Each wigwam had a smoke hole near the center and the fire was built on the ground beneath it. Beds of evergreen boughs and twigs were ranged in a sort of windrow form along the sides, upon which they slept at night and sat upon while doing their work on garments or snowshoes during the day. They had but one regular meal and that was at evening. At other times they ate according to the demands of appetite. No bird, fish or animal which they were able to capture was ever thrown away if they needed food. All were eaten. They did not know how to make bread until they learned from the French and English. They formerly pounded their corn in stone mortars, and boiled their water in wooden troughs and trays by inserting red-hot stones. They usually smoked or broiled meats and fish, boiled or stewed vegetables, and roasted nuts in the hot ashes.
The Indians of Maine all believed in a Great Spirit, called by the Abenaques, Tanto ; and by the Etechemins, Sazoos. Their paradise was always in the direction of the setting sun. The principal Indian names of individuals of rank belonging to the Wawenock and Canibas tribes, which were best known to our English colonists along these shores from 1605 to the end of that century, and which may be found by searching the early York Deeds and local history, were Moxas, Wegun-
1. Will. Me. I, 468.
43
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
gavet, Robin Hood, Menawormet, Nichodehant, Samoset, Quesemenecke, Sebenoa, Obias, Damarine, Sasanoa, Wiwurna, Skidwares, Nahanada, Amenquin, Dick Swash, Jack Pudding, Josle, Agilike, Wittinose, Erle Dugles, Matahando, Sheepscot John and Hopehood. The last named was son of Robin Hood, and the most desperate, cruel and relentless leader from these parts. He was killed while leading a raiding band through New Hampshire, in 1690, by some Canadian Indians who mistook him for a Mohawk, with whom they were at war.1
1. It is probable that the Wawenock territory would be more exactly described if its eastern limits were set at and upon Georges or St. George River, than as extending to the Penobscot waters. It is likely that the Tarratines occupied the Penobscot and had some settlement along its western banks.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
P ARKMAN briefly covers the Spanish case when he says : " Toward the close of the fifteenth century Spain achieved her final triumph over the infidels of Granada, and made her name famons through all generations by the discovery of America. Every ship from the New World came freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame ; and to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened, thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and the rapac- ity of pirates. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds." 1
Spain confined herself, principally, to that part of America near the equator, notably to Central America, Peru, Mexico, the West India Islands and Florida. The only official Spanish expedition to the northern Atlantic coast of America was undertaken by Gomez, sailing from Corunna, soon after Feb- ruary 10, 1525, with the intention of making the intermediate coast his objective point. De Leon and Ayllon, of his own country, had discovered and explored Florida in 1512 and 1520, as far as 33ยบ north. John Cabot, in 1497, and Sebastian Cabot, who was a friend and correspondent, in 1498, had vis- ited Newfoundland and Labrador; therefore, Gomez sought an unworked field.2 He was absent from Spain about ten months, in which time he sailed along the coast from Florida to Newfoundland. Ribero's map, which followed this voyage, depicts our coast in a general way, so it would be recognizable. The triangular form of Penobscot Bay is clearly given, studded with islands, and the shores of Maine were called the land of Gomez. This name, and others that he gave to prominent
1. Pioneers of France, p. 9.
2. Me. Hist. Coll. Doc. Ser., Vol. I, p. 274.
45
EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
points on that voyage, lasted, in some cases, many years. Portuguese and Spanish fishermen were about Newfoundland, and perhaps as far west as the Maine coast, as early as that date, probably early as 1504, and continued to come to these shores well up to 1600.
The interests and efforts of France were centered farther north. As a matter of private enterprise, Denis, of Honfleur, explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506 ; Aubert, of Dieppe, followed in 1508. In 1524 Verrazzano, a Florentine in the service of France, explored the coast from near the site of Wilmington, N. C., to Newfoundland. He skirted the coast along, touching near the site of Portsmouth, and then made his cruise along the shores of the Gulf of Maine. He stated that while at the South he found the natives agreeable and gen- tle, here, on the Maine coast, they were in an irritable state, rude and ill-mannered. No navigator of his time knew better than Verrazzano just what localities had been visited up to that date by voyagers and fishermen, and he interpreted it at once as an indication that the Indian race, in these parts, was dis- affected from treatment they had received from European visitors. He noted another peculiarity of the Indians on this coast, which strengthened his suspicions ; while at the South the natives were pleased with any trinket or ornament, here they wanted nothing but fishhooks, knives, or some iron or steel instrument that would cut, and appeared as though they had learned the use of such articles. He concluded that Euro- pean barter with the natives had commenced before his visit.1
Francis I, of France, directed two vessels to be fitted for western exploration, and placed them in command of Jaques Cartier, who sailed from St. Malo April 20, 1534. His land fall was near Cape Buonavista, Newfoundland, near where Cortereal reached in 1500. He passed through the Straits of Belle Isle and entered Bay Chaleur, ascending the St. Law- rence as far as Anticosti. In 1535 Cartier made a second voyage, this time going up the St. Lawrence to Stadacone, now Quebec, and after a little tarry proceeded still further to Hochelaga, now Montreal. Again Cartier sailed with Rober- val. It is said that in 1545, during January and February,
1. Me. Hist, Coll. Doc, Ser., Vol. I, p. 266.
46
HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
an average of about two vessels a day sailed from French ports for Newfoundland. La Roche, in 1598, under a commission from Henry IV, sailed west to Sable Island. In 1556 Andre Thevet sailed from Florida along the North Atlantic coast to Newfoundland. He mentions "Norumbegue," which, he states, the natives called "Agoncy." He speaks of the region in detail, clearly indicating Fox Islands, Camden Hills and Islesboro, which, he says, the natives called "Aiayascon," and that it was inhabited only by birds and fishermen. From this trip he sailed to Labrador, and home to France by way of the Azores. He describes no other part of his voyage with the interest that he does in the case of Penobscot Bay. De Monts, the French explorer, accompanied by Champlain, reached the present Liverpool, in Nova Scotia, in 1604 ; he rounded Cape Sable into the Bay of Fundy, later anchoring in the attractive harbor, which he granted to Poutrincourt, and he, in turn, settled it the following year as Port Royal, now the city of Annapolis, N. S. De Monts' charter from Henry IV, of France, embraced the territory between the 40th and 46th parallels of latitude (from the Delaware Bay to the Gulf of St. Lawrence). He cruised about the bay for a time, visited and named the St. John River, became somewhat acquainted with the Openango and Marechite tribes, which we have had previous occasion to notice, and then settled down for the winter of 1604-05 on Neutral Island, which is situated in the St. Croix River, and had been selected by' Champlain for the purpose. Of the seventy-nine who commenced the winter, thirty-five died by the opening of spring from exposure and the scurvy. In the previous September, in a little bark of fifteen tons, he sailed west to Mount Desert, which he visited and named, and entered the Penobscot River, by him called the Pentagoet, and again, in these old records, the mystical name of Norumbegua is sounded. June 18, 1605, almost the exact time that Weymouth was about Pentecost Harbor, De Monts sailed west, past the mouth of the Penobscot, where he had been the previous autumn, erected a cross at the Ken- nebec, taking possession of that country by the act, and so proceeded westward to Cape Cod, returning to St. Croix August 3d.
47
EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
Thus far only French and Spanish voyages have been noted ; but England, though apparently lagging in the enterprise of discovery and colonization, was destined to show a lasting though a latent energy. In 1497 John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, under a grant from Henry VII, made a voy- age of three months, touching Labrador only, and returned to England. The next year Sebastian again crossed the ocean, his first land fall being near Davis Strait. He then sailed southward along the coast, stopping at Newfoundland awhile, and probably sailed along the Gulf of Maine to Cape Cod. The Cabots were seeking both territory and a northwest pas- sage to Cathay, and their knowledge of geography and naviga- tion, and the principle of what is termed "great circle sailing," led them to make those far north land falls. In the Privy Purse account of Henry VII occurs an item each year, for 1503-4-5, where cash gifts were made to parties who had brought him relics and wild animals and birds from Newfound- land, yet not a word in identification of the person or the voy- age. It simply shows the communication to have been greater than has been commonly supposed between the old world and the new at that period. Similar entries of making like gifts also occur between the date of Cabot's voyage and 1503. But for half a century after Cabot voyaged for his King, little, on the part of England, was done in following up the fisheries, in comparison to what was being done in the same line by the French, Spanish and Portuguese. This is surprising, inas- much as Cabot reported the cod in such schools off Newfound- land as to impede his progress ; but at that time, England con- trolled the Icelandic fisheries and this may account for not persevering to a greater extent, about the Newfoundland waters, early in the sixteenth century.
The Portuguese brought both cattle and swine to Sable Island and they are reported to have multiplied greatly in a native condition.1 An English navigator, John Rut, June 10, 1527, sailed from Plymouth, with two vessels, the Mary of Guilford and the Samson. The Mary reached Newfoundland August 3d, and reported finding "eleven Norman vessels, one from Brittany, and two Portugal barks, all a-fishing." Rut
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.