History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 11

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100

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Gyles replied, "he might go to war, and that would be more manly than to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery." But the savage began to cut and stab him on the breast, in defiance of all expostulation. Provoked to desperation, Gyles seized the Indian by the hair of his head, and tumbling him off, followed up the movement with his knees and fists, till copper-skin cried "enough." On feeling the smart of his wounds, and seeing the blood which fell from his bosom, "Gyles at him again," bade him get up and not lie there like a dog; reproached him with his barbarities and cowardly cruelties to other poor captives, and put him on his good behavior hereafter, on the peril of a double dose of fist and boot cuffs.

Gyles was never after molested, and was commended by the tribe for inflicting the merited chastisement.

Metallic vessels for culinary use were not required by the natives among whom Gyles was a captive. A birchen bucket filled with water, heated by the immersion of red-hot stones, would speedily boil the toughest neck-pieces of beef.

The necessity of lucifer matches was forestalled by rapidly revolving the sharpened point of an upright piece of wood in the socket or cavity of a horizontal base, till a blaze was kindled.

The incantations of the powwow, among the unchristianized natives, prevailed. For the dead great mourning was made. In the shadowy and sombre stillness of evening twilight, a squaw breaks the silence, wandering over the highest cliff-tops near her lodge, crying in mournful and long drawn numbers,-"Oh, hawe-hawe!"

But, the season of mourning being ended, the relatives of the dead end their sad memories in a feast, and the bereaved is permitted to marry again. Purchased by a French trader, during the Eastern expe- dition of Colonel Hawthorne, Gyles, after a servitude of nine years, was restored to his home and surviving friends, and for many years served his Government in the capacity of an Indian interpreter and in the army. The elder brother of Gyles, after three years of captivity, attempted to escape and was retaken. On the heights of Castine, overlooking the waters of Penobscot bay, he was tortured by fire at the stake; his nose and ears were cut off and forced into his mouth,

which he was compelled to eat; and then he was burnt as a diversion to enliven the scene of a dance.

A MODERN AFFAIR.

The following incident, of comparatively recent date, is given by Mr. Williamson, in the first volume of his History of Maine:

Among the natives the law of retaliation is considered a dictate of nature, always justifiable. The vile, they think, are deterred from the commission of crimes through the perpetual fear of the avenger, if they transgress. An Indian was never known to ask redress through the medium of our laws and courts, for an injury done him by one of his tribe. Nor was there an instance, till quite lately, where a white man ever sued an Indian in a civil action. But prosecutions have fre- quently been instituted at law upon complaints, both of the English- man and the Indian, for crimes committed by either against the other.

The trial and story of Peol Susup, so much in point, may be retold. About sunset, June 28, 1816, this Indian's turbulence and noise, in the tavern of William Knight, at Bangor, became intolerable, and the inn-keeper thrust him out of the door, and endeavored to drive him away. The Indian, instantly turning in a great rage, pursued him to the steps with a drawn knife, and gave him a deep wound, just below his shoulder-blade, of which he presently died.

On his arrest, Susup frankly said, "I have killed Knight, and I ought to die; but I was in liquor and he abused me, or I never had done it."

After an imprisonment till the June term of the Supreme Judicial Court, at Castine, the subsequent year, he was arraigned on an indict- ment for murder. to which he pleaded "not guilty." A day was con- sumed in the trial, amidst a concourse which crowded the meeting- house, and, according to the position urged by his counsel, the verdict was "manslaughter."

The Court then said to him, "Susup, have you anything now to say for yourself?"-"John Neptune," said he, "will speak for me." That Indian then stepped forward from the midst of his associates, towards the judges, and deliberately addressed them in an impressive speech of several minutes. He spake in broken English, yet every word was dis- tinctly heard and easily understood. His questions were frequent and forcible ; his manner solemn ; and a breathless silence pervaded the whole assembly. He began : "You know your people do my Indians great deal of wrong. They abuse them very much ; yes, they murder them ; then they walk right off- nobody touches them. This makes my heart burn. Well, then, my Indians say, 'we'll go kill your very bad and wicked men.' 'No,' I tell 'em, 'never do that thing ; we are brothers.' Some time ago a very bad man about Boston shot an Indi- an dead. Your people said, 'surely he should die ;' but not so. In the great prison-house he eats and lives to this day ; certain he never dies for killing Indian. My brothers say, 'let that bloody man go free ;- Peol Susup too.' So we wish ; hope fills the hearts of us all. Peace is good. These, my Indians, love it well; they smile under its shade. The white man and red man must be always friends; the Great Spirit is our Father ; I speak what I feel."

Susup was sentenced to another year's imprisonment, and required to find sureties for keeping the peace two years, in the penal sum of five hundred dollars; when John Neptune and Squire Jo Merry Nep- tune, of his own tribe, Captain Solmond, from Passamaquoddy, and Captain Jo Tomer, from the river St. John, became his sureties in the recognizance.

THE TARRATINE CHIEFS-THE BASHABA.

Some mention of this chief potentate of the Eastern Indians will fitly come in here. He is named very early in the New England literature by Captain John Smith, and it is not unlikely that the name is one of this ro- mancer's pure inventions, as it is strongly reminiscent of "bashaw," a title with which he must have become suf- ficiently familiar during his Turkish experience. The counsellors or wise men of the tribes were the sachems; the chief of these, or the chief magistrate, was the saga -- more; and the chief of the sagamores, or ruler over all the tribes, was the Bashaba.

"We have no account," says Belknap, author of the History of New Hampshire, "of any other Indian chief

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

in these Northern parts whose authority was so extensive."

"He is a great governor," said Captain Francis, one of the Tarratine chiefs. "He had under him," wrote Gorges, "many great sagamores, some of whom had a thousand or fifteen hundred bowmen;" and in another place: "He seemed to be of some eminence above the rest in all that part of the continent."

Some writers, as Palfrey, affirm difference in rank be- tween the sachems and the sagamores, saying that the former were superior; others, as Gookin, say the titles were equivalent or correspondent. Dudley, while re- marking their equivalence, says the chiefs of the Northern Indians were called sagamores; those further south were sachems.

The dominion of the Bashaba was altogether in " Ma- voshen," the present Maine. The Saco, says Purchas, in the Pilgrims, "is the westernmost river of the domin- ions of Bashebez;" and again: "To the easternmost of Sagadahock, this is the Bashaba's dominion." Smith rather doubtfully asserts, however, that, though the tribes as far westward as Naumkeag (Salem) had their own sachems, "they hold the Bashaba to be chief, and the greatest among them." Gorges and other New England writers are probably more nearly correct in representing the Massachusetts Indians as allies rather than subjects of the Bashaba, although sometimes they changed to deadly enemies. Some writers, as Williamson, would restrict his dominion on the eastward to St. George's; but the strong probability, if not reasonable certainty, is that it included the Penobscot country. Indeed, Bryant & Gay, in their Popular History, plainly say that "this great lord of the Penobscot country was called the Bash- aba; but, although a good many names of local saga- mores of distinction are mentioned in the early annals, nobody ever had an interview with the veritable Bashaba. It is probable that the term bashaba merely indicated the sagamore who happened at differ- ent times to enjoy the ascendency among the Penobscot tribes."

The Hon. Judge Godfrey, of Bangor, in a brief essay on "Bashaba and the Tarratines," in the seventh volume of the Maine Historical Collections, expresses the view that Bashaba was not a title, but the individual name of a chief, and supports his theory quite strongly. He identifies "the Bashaba" with "Bessabes," mentioned by Champlain simply as a captain or chief of the savages who had led him to the "rapids of Norumbega," above Bangor, the other chief who met him being "Cabahis." The same dignitary, he thinks, is named in the Jesuit Relation of 1611 as Betsabes, the "Sagamo of Kadesquit" (Bangor), and one of the Indian captains, the others be- ing Oguigueou and Asticon. He, says the Relation, when the priests at Mt. Desert "made as though the place did not .please us, and that we should go to another part," "himself came for us to allure us by a thousand promises, having heard that we proposed to go there [to Kadesquit] to dwell." According to Lescarbot, Bess- abes or Bashaba was killed by the English, and Asticon became his successor.

His capital, or place of residence, is scarcely less in dis-

cussion. Gorges says: "His chief abode was not far from Pemaquid." Smith, Purchas, and others, suppose that he lived towards or near the Penobscot Bay; and Williamson, latest of the historians, avers that "his place of immediate residence was probably between that river [the Pemaquid] and Penobscot Bay." Mr. Folsom, in his historical discourse published in the Maine Histor- ical Collections, says: "The place of his residence was probably on the banks of the Penobscot; and, as it was also the seat of his government, the fabulous assertions of a large city in that quarter may have arisen from an exaggerated description of the humble capital of the Ba- shaba's dominions." An old tradition fixed the aborig- inal seat of power in "Norumbega," by which name the Maine country was first known abroad and also early on the old maps, in a town-some say great city-on the east side of the Penobscot river, about opposite the site of Bangor; and the Indians of that region, when first met by the white men, also referred to a site of ancient rule somewhere in the interior. Stachey says in one place: "Early in the morninge the salvadges departed in their canoas for the river of Pemaquid, promising Capt. Gilbert to accompany him in their canoas to the river of Penobscot, where the bassaba dwells." The indications are that the Bashaba's capital, if anything more than an ordinary Indian village, in the course of generations or centuries had removed from the north to the coast about or a little above the mouth of the Penobscot, and thence gradually westward.

The Bashaba was not unlike more civilized princes, in that he expected the courtesy of a call from other potentates or from strangers who entered his realm. The Bashaba expected, says Gorges, in his Description of New England, "all strangers to have their address to him, and not he to them." When the colony of Gorges and Popham arrived at Sagadahoc, in 1607, it was cordially received by the natives, and some of the sagamores of- fered to accompany the English to the Bashaba, saying that he was a mighty prince, ruling all the sachems from Penobscot to Piscataqua, and that all visitors to his do- mains were expected to pay him their respects. Popham, President of the Colony Council, accordingly proceeded some leagues along the coast toward Pemaquid, near which the dignitary dwelt; but was driven back by head winds and bad weather. The Bashaba, informed of this, sent his own son to return the intended visit, and open trade with the company in furs and peltry. The utmost courtesy and kindness were shown the strangers, although Weymouth had but a short time before forcibly seized and carried away several natives from the coast. In Sep- tember of the same year several Penobscot chiefs, com- ing in canoes, were entertained by Popham at the Pema- quid fort. They, says the account, "besought Captain Gilbert to accompany them in their canoes to the river of Penobscot, where the Bashaba dwelt."

When Weymouth's expedition was on the coast, in 1605, one party of Indians, pointing eastward, endeavored to prompt him to a visit by signifying that "the Bashebe, their king, had plenty of furs and much tobacco;" and again, when Weymouth's pinnace was on its return to the

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

ship from the journey up the Penobscot, as is supposed, three Indians came in a canoe from the eastern part of the bay, one of whom, says the captain in his journal, "we had before seen, and this coming was very earnestly to importune us to let one of our men go with them to the Bashebe, and then the next morning he could come to our ship with furs and tobacco." Weymouth, how- ever, was naturally suspicious of treachery, as he had seized five of the Maine Indians, and had them at that moment in the hold. He therefore resisted all induce- ments and invitations of the savages to visit their great Mogul. Captain Smith, who tells the same story, with considerable embellishment, in his History of New Eng- land, also says that he was urged by the natives about St. George's to visit and pay his respects to their prince.

The one now living (in 1608) must have been the last of the Bashabas. A terrible war broke out about 1615, between the Tarratines, or Penobscot Indians, and the tribes to the westward, "on account," says Hubbard, "of some treachery committed by the western tributaries of the Bashaba, a great Indian prince, towards the Tarra- tines." The latter began hostilities, it is believed, in the early spring of 1615, and carried the war into the ene- my's country. For two years it raged fiercely, and ended only in the death of the Bashaba, whose sacred person and capital were not exempt from attack, the laying waste of his immediate domains, and the seizure and carrying away of all his women and valuable effects. He had no successor, and the power of the Abenakis was hopelessly broken. Mr. Williamson says of this struggle :

This war, not only in its course, but consequences, was, we are told, uncommonly destructive. The vanquished had been called from their hunting grounds, and prevented likewise from planting and fishing; their habitations were destroyed, and famine and distress soon filled the country with misery. Add to these the calamities of a civil war- for the subordinate sachems, having no federal head or superior to control and unite them, after the death of the Bashaba many of the chief men fell into bloody feuds among themselves.

To these distresses succeeded a pestilence, which spread far and wide, and was exceedingly fatal. It has been called the plague. It raged in the years 1617 and 1618, and its wasting effects extended from the borders of the Tarratines, through the whole country, to the Nar- ragansetts. The people died suddenly, and in great numbers, through the whole intermediate coast. It is said some native tribes became extinct, and their bones were seen years afterwards by the English bleaching above ground, at and around the places of their former habi- tations. The specific disease is not certainly known. Some have thought it was probably the small-pox; others have believed it must have been the yellow fever, from the circumstance that the surviving Indians represented the bodies of the sick and dead to have assumed an appear- ance resembling a yellow-colored garment.

LATER TARRATINE CHIEFS.

After the Bashaba, whoever or whatever he may have been, we have but few accounts of the chiefs or saga- mores. One of the most famous in Maine at the time of King Philip's war was Madockawando, adopted son of a renowned chief and reputed orator, Assiminasqua, who was in his day sagamore of the Canibas, another of the Abenaki tribes. Madockawando was father-in- law of Baron Castine, if the latter ever really married his daughter, who lived with the Frenchman upon the foot- ing of a wife. He is said to have been a sagacious, seri- ous man who, like Squando, the contemporaneous saga- more of the Sokokies, claimed to have supernatural

visions and revelations. His first officer or principal ad- viser was Mugg or Mogg, who is considered by William- son "the most cunning Indian of the age." Mugg derived great advantage during the troubles between the English and the Indians, from his former residence in English families and his acquaintance with the English language and habits. Shortly after the war with King Philip broke out, Captain Fryer, of Portsmouth, was attacked with his crew at Richmond island, where they were loading a vessel with valuable property, to keep it from being plun- dered by the savages. Fryer was wounded, and all were taken prisoners. Mugg, after making an attack upon the garrison at Wells, in which he killed two persons and did considerable mischief, carried Fryer, then dying of his wounds, to Piscataqua, and proposed on behalf of his master to negotiate a peace. Madockawando had orig- inally been opposed to the war, as he was untroubled by the English, and his people were carrying on a profitable trade with the French at Castine's post ; it is probable, therefore, that the offer of Mugg, so far, at least, as it represented his superior's views, was sincere. Mugg was sent on to Boston; and there, November 6, 1875, on be- half of Madockawando and another chief named Che- berrina, he did negotiate a treaty with the Governor and Council, providing, chiefly, that all acts of hostility should cease, that all English captives, vessels, and goods should be restored, and that the Penobscot sachems should take arms against the Anasagunticooks and any other Eastern Indians that should persist in the war. An English officer was sent in a vessel with Mugg to Penobscot, where Madockawando ratified the treaty and delivered up such captives as were at hand. Only part of the whole number, however, were returned; there was bad faith otherwise on the part of the Indians; and hostilities were renewed by the English in February at Mare Point, Pemaquid, Arrowsick, and other places. After an attack upon Wells, the garrison at Black Point was besieged, May 16th, "with an uncommon boldness and pertinaci- ty," says Williamson. A three-days' siege ensued, with very sharp fighting, during which Mugg was killed. Wil- liamson continues:

The loss of this leader so damped the courage of his companions that they, in despair of victory, departed. Mogg had alternately brightened and shaded his own character, until the most skilful pencil would find it difficult so draw its just portrait. To the English this remarkable native was friend or foe, and among his own people coun- sellor, peacemaker, fighter, or emissary, just as self-interest or the par- ticular occasion might dictate. His address was inspiring, and his natural good sense and sagacity partially inclined him to be an advo- cate for peace.

The poet Whittier, in his versified legend of Mogg Megone, gives this description of the equipment of the famous lieutenant of Madockawando:

Megone hath his knife, and hatchet, and gun, And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on; His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid, And magic words on its polished blade- 'Twas the gift of Castine to Mogg Megone, For a scalp or twain from the Yengees torn; His gun was the gift of the Tarratine, And Madockawando's wives had strung The brass and the beads which tinkle and shine On the polished breech, and broad, bright line Of beaded wampum around it hung.

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

Madockawando himself has afterwards more promi- nence in history, but not for some years. In 1689 he led a party of several Indians, with an interpreter, from Penobscot to Boston, to represent to the authorities that Castine was greatly enraged with the English for plun- dering his farm-house, and that there was reason to appre- hend another terrible war. The sagamore was very kindly received, laded with presents, and sent home in the 'colony sloop, with an apologetic letter to the irate Frenchman. The previous year Madockawando had given his voice at the outset against the outbreak which resulted in King William's war, and agreed to negotiate a treaty, in which it is thought the Eastern tribes would have joined; but all were overruled by the influence of Castine, and the war opened at North Yarmouth the next August. In 1690 he again appears, as joint leader with Castine of a force of natives going from the eastward to reinforce the French and Indians being collected at Casco Bay to attack Falmouth, which resulted in the fall of the place, the capture of Fort Loyal, and the par- tial massacre of the garrison, with many of the women and children. Two years later the third Eastern expedi- tion of Major Benjamin Church brought him into this sagamore's country. He landed a party on the Seven Hundred Acre Island, in Penobscot Bay, and was there informed by some Frenchmen, who were living with their families and Indian wives upon the island, that a great number of the savages were on a neighboring (probably Long) island, and that they hastened away in their canoes as soon as they saw the ships of Church. They could not be pursued past the peninsula without small boats, which Church had not in sufficient number; so he seized five Indians, with a lot of corn and beaver and moose-skins, and set sail for Pemaquid. Madockawando, with other chiefs, had become greatly exasperated by the outrages committed on these expeditions, and in August he visited Count Frontenac at Quebec, presented five English prisoners, for which he received a reward, and made an agreement that Frontenac should send two ships of-war and two hundred Canadians to Penobscot, while he joined them there with two to three hundred Indians. The united force would then devastate the coast below Penobscot, and destroy the new Fort Wil- liam Henry at Pemaquid. Information of this plan was sent to Boston by Nelson English, Governor of Nova Scotia after its conquest by Phips, but now in captivity at Quebec; and steps were taken to meet it. In the late autumn the French ships and men, under Iberville, arrived at Penobscot and were joined by Villebon and a large force of Indians. All proceeded together to Fort William Henry; but, finding it strongly built and de- fended, and an English vessel at anchor under its guns, the expedition returned without an attack, the savages, it is said, fiercely stamping the ground in their disappoint- ment. The next year, August 11, 1693, after a vigorous campaign by the English under Major Converse, all the Eastern tribes came into the new garrison at Pemaquid by their representatives, and negotiated a treaty. Among the thirteen sagamores signing this convention appear the hieroglyphics of Madockawando and another chief

of the Tarratines, called Abenquid. War soon broke out afresh, however, under the instigation of the Jesuit mis- sionaries, inspired by Frontenac; and in July, 1694, Ma- dockawando again comes to the front as one of three subordinate leaders, under the Sieur de Villieu, now resident commander at Penobscot, of a force of two hundred and fifty Indians, which attacked and destroyed Dover, New Hampshire, plundered other settlements farther away, returned to Maine and made a desperate attack upon Kittery, where they killed eight persons, but seem to have retired unsuccessful. With these exploits Madockawando's career as a warrior probably ended. He died soon after, as did "other sachems of the East," ac- cording to Cotton Mather, "victims to the grievous un- known disease, which consumed them [the Indians] wonderfully."

At various times during the last century, in signatures to treaties negotiated with the English, we meet with the names of chiefs of the Tarratines-in these instruments always called the Penobscot Indians. Thus, Wenemou- ett appears as the chief sachem of the Penobscots in August, 1726, signing Governor Dummer's treaty at Fal- mouth, with Espegnect as second chief, whose signature also appears under date June 17, 1727. The treaty of October 16, 1749, was signed on behalf of the same tribe by Eger Emmet, Nagamumba, Nictumbouit, Efvar- agoosaret, and Nemoon. Three years later a single head man or chief, who rejoiced in the English or French title of Colonel Louis, was the negotiator of a treaty as representative of the Penobscots. This Colonel Lewis, on this occasion of meeting the Massachusetts commis- sioners at St. George's, said, among other things: "We have have had great and long experience of Captain Bradley's friend. The lieutenant is a good truck-master. It would do your hearts good to see how kind he is to us, and how justly he treats us." He asked for a shelter by the mill, to provide for drunken Indians who lay out over night, also for a bridge, and a causeway over Long Meadow, on the road or trail to the mills. Orders were given by the commissioners that the desired house and bridge should be built by Captain Bradley. A black- smith was asked for also, and the attention of the Gov- ernment to the matter was promised. A belt of wam- pum was given to Louis to lodge at Penobscot with a copy of the treaty.

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 11

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co. Number of Pages: 1100

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100