History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 15

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

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DE MONTS.

After the appointment by the French king of Pierre du Guast, the Sieur de Monts, as Lieutenant-General of Acadia, a vast country stretching from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, he sailed from Havre de Grace in March, 1604; in about two months reached Nova Scotia, and wintered at a fort he built upon an is- land in the St. Croix River. With him was the restless and daring navigator Samuel Champlain, and during the winter the latter made a coasting voyage as far as Cape Cod, concerning which little has been related. About the middle of May, 1605, De Monts abandoned his fort, and himself sailed southward in search of a better loca- tion for his colony. He visited Mount Desert, entered the Bay of Penobscot and viewed "Norumbegua," as the adjacent country was then understood to be called; entered the Kennebec also, and upon its banks erected a cross and took possession for the French crown; also penetrated the Casco and the Saco, sailed up Portland Harbor, which he named Marchin, from an Indian chief he met there; went on to Cape Cod, whence he returned to St. Croix, unable to make a settlement through fear of the natives, and finally went to Port Royal with his colony.

The voyage of this French explorer is forever linked with the interesting story and beautiful scenery of Mount Desert. Mrs. Clara .Barnes Martin, in her interesting guide book to this island, has the following :

From the voyages of this De Monts and of his associates and suc- cessors, Mount Desert derives all the human interest of those early years. Champlain first named it "Mons Deserte," from its wild and savage solitudes, and the name " Frenchman's Bay," now applied only to the water lying immediately northeast of this island, then belonged to the whole expanse eastward to the Bay of Fundy. The name per- petuates the memory of the sore strait to which came one Nicholas D'Aubri, a priest who accompanied De Monts in his first voyage. Be- ing one of a party who left their boat to explore the forest, he dropped his sword by a brook where they stopped to drink. Returning to find it, he soon lost his way; and his companions, after vain efforts to res- cue him, were obliged to leave him to his fate. For sixteen days the poor priest wandered along the shore nearly starved, till he was dis- covered by a party who had returned to the spot in search of reputed gold and silver, and was carried back to his companions, who received him as one from the dead. This story, it may be added, is given upon the authority of one of the early historians of Maine. Remembering what war of words has arisen concerning the planting of settlements but little farther west, these traditions are proffered, subject to such amends as more able research may supply.

SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.

This famous French voyager appeared off the coasts of Maine, which he called "Norumbegue," in September, 1604, with a small vessel sent from the St. Croix as an expedition by the Sieur de Monts. He found and named the isle "de Monts-deserts," and the Isle au Haut, at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, which have retained their names ever since; sailed up the Norumbegue or Penob-

scot River to the site of Bangor, where he is believed to have moored his vessel at the foot of Newberry street, just below the rocks in the stream ; had an interview with the chiefs Bessabez and Cahabis; descended the river safely, and went on coasting to the southwestward, prob- ably to the St. George's River, whence he returned to the St. Croix. He observed on the voyage the Camden Hills, which he called the mountains of Bedabedec. The next year he, with De Monts, was again in Penobscot Bay, among the Fox Islands, but did not ascend the river. Once more, in 1606, Champlain was in the bay, where he stopped to repair his vessel.

GEORGE WEYMOUTH.

Dr. Belknap, in the second volume of his American Biography, holds that the Penobscot Bay and River were discovered by Captain Weymouth and his associates, in June, 1605. He was sent out by the Earl of Southamp- ton and others, in the English interest, to check the de- signs of the French, whose claim to the Northeast coast was denied. Ostensibly, Weymouth was sent to discover the northwest passage ; but he sighted the American coast instead, near Cape Cod, and ran northwardly to the island of Monhegan (which he named St. George), and there dropped anchor. He remained here nearly a month, and made a beginning of agriculture on these shores. His subsequent movements are much in discus- sion. The following is an extract from the journal of the voyage :

June 12 [1605] .- Our captain manned his shallop with seventeen men and ran up the codde of the river, where we landed, leaving six to keep the shallop. Ten of us, with our shot, and some armed, with a boy to carry powder and match, marched up the country toward the mountains, which we descried at our first falling in with the land, and were continually in our view. To some of them the river brought us so near, as we judged ourselves, when we landed, to be within a league of them; but we found them not, having marched well-nigh four miles and passed three great hills. Wherefore, because the weather was hot and our men in their armour, not able to travel far and return to their pinnace at night, we resolved not to travel further.

We were no sooner come aboard our pinnace, returning down toward our ship, but we espied a canoe coming from the further part of the codde of the river, eastward. In it were three Indians, one of whom we had before seen, and his coming was very earnestly to importune us to let one of our men go with them to the Bashabe, and then the next morning he would come to our ship with furs and tobacco.

June 13 .- By 2 o'clock in the morning, taking advantage of the tide, we went in our pinnace up to that part of the river which trendeth west into the main, and we carried a cross to erect at that point [a thing never omitted by any Christian travellers]. Into that river we rowed, by estimation, twenty miles.

Whatever profit or pleasure is described in the former part of the river is wholly doubled in this; for the breadth and depth is such that a ship, drawing seventeen or eighteen feet of water, might have passed as far as we went with our shallop, and much farther, because we left it in so good a depth. From the place of our ship's riding in the har- bor, at the entrance into the sound, to the furthest point we were in this river, by an estimation, was not much less than three-score miles.

We were so pleased with this river, and so loth to forsake it, that we would have continued there willingly for two days, having only bread and cheese to eat. But the tide not suffering it, we came down with the ebb. We conceived that the river ran very far into the land, for we passed six or seven miles altogether fresh water (whereof we all drank), forced up by a flowing of the salt water.

June 14. We warped our ship down to the river's mouth, and there came to anchor.

15. Weighed anchor, and with a breeze from the land came to our watering-place in Penobscot Harbor, and filled our cask.

The last named place has been reasonably conjec-

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

tured to be the present George's Island Harbor ; the "codde" or bay of the river, the Belfast Bay, in the Penobscot waters; and the canoe seen to have come from Bagaduce, on the east side of Penobscot Bay. The voyage with the shallop, or pinnace, is argued to have been up the channel of the river. Weymouth is sup- posed to have anchored his ship off the peninsula now called Old Fort Point, and the mountains seen are iden- tified as the Penobscot Hills. The reasoning to support some of these conclusions will be found in the second volume of Belknap's American Biography.

They are sharply controverted, however, by Mr. John McKeen, in a paper contributed to the fifth volume of the Maine Historical Collections, who is supported by writers in a subsequent volume of this series. He holds that Weymouth, according to these entries in the Jour- nal, entered Townsend Harbor, since called Booth Bay, and thence explored the Sagadahoc River. The editor of the Collections does not agree with his arguments, but holds to the Penobscot theory, which ex-Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain, now President of Bowdoin College, in his Centennial discourse on Maine: Her Place in History, seems also to favor. Dr. Palfrey, in his History of New England, suggests the Kennebec as the river of Weymouth's exploration, and others say the St. George's or Sagadahoc; but it must be said, we think, that the weight of authority is with the Penobscot. The fact which seems to us conclusive, is the depth of water the diarist mentions about three-score miles "from the entrance into the sound," which is true of the Penobscot, but not of any other of the rivers in discussion.

The adventurers were greatly delighted with the noble river and the country it waters. The Journal says: "Many who had been travellers in sundry countries and in the most famous rivers, affirmed them not com- parable with this-the most beautiful, rich, large, secure harbouring that the world affordeth." One of the old authors says Weymouth set up several crosses upon the land. He made no settlement, however; but sailed down the coast, carrying away five captive Indians, two of whom afterwards appeared in the streets of London, to wonder-eyed and gaping throngs.

SAMUEL ARGALL.

This English adventurer, who three years afterwards by strategy carried off Pocahontas from her father's cap- ital to hold her a prisoner at Jamestown, visited the coast of Maine in 1610, on a fishing voyage. He was driven out of his course by a storm, and landed on a rocky island off Penobscot Bay, where he found "great store of seals," and so called it Seal Rock, a name still appertaining to it. About three years afterwards he re- turned-Champlain says with sixty soldiers and fourteen pieces of artillery-and learning from the natives of the mission and settlement just beginning under the French in this region, at St. Sauveur, he suddenly at- tacked them, killing one of the missionaries, as else- where related, and completely breaking up the settlement, on the plea that it was within the patent of the Virginia

Company. He then sailed up the coast and completed the reduction of the French settlements in Acadia.

THE JESUIT FATHERS.

It is worthy of note that the pious expedition set on foot by Madame la Marquise de Guercheville, the French lady to whom De Monts had ceded his Acadian title, and which bore the Fathers Biard and Masse, Quen- tun and Gilbert du Thet, was originally destined for Kad- esquit, which occupied the site of Bangor. Biard, who had preceded the latter two into the wilderness, had al- ready selected this as a mission station; and when they reached the harbor of St. Sauveur, on Mount Desert, they eagerly inquired the way to Kadesquit. The na- tives answered that their place was better, and, under plea of a visit to their sagamore Asticon, who was sick, they led the way to a beautiful site on the shore of Some's Sound, so advantageous that the cross was there planted, a slight entrenchment thrown up, and settlement begun, to the utter abandonment of the Kadesquit scheme. Had they gone up the Penobscot instead, they might have escaped the overwhelming disaster which fell upon them, as just above related.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

This celebrated explorer and soldier, of whom so many romantic stories are told, including the story of Pocahontas, was on the Maine coast in 1614. He land- ed at Monhegan the last of April, with two vessels from London, and presently, in small boats, explored the shores each way, from Penobscot to Cape Cod, making a map of the coast as he went, which was prefixed to his History. In the title of this first appears the name New England, which some say Prince Charles gave; others say more probably, he only confirmed the name which Smith suggested. The name is contained in Smith's claim that he "broughte our newe England to the subjection of the kingdom of Greate Britain." In his explorations the shrewd Captain picked up a valuable cargo, which was sold abroad to great advantage. His best trading was not in the Penobscot country, where, he says, "our commodities were not so much esteemed," as "the French traders bartered their articles on better terms."

In 1615 Smith made another start upon a voyage to reach New England, but was driven back by storms; and a third venture was intercepted by French pirates, and he was once more compelled to return. He was not heard of again in the New World he had done so much to discover, develop, and advertise.

SUBSEQUENT VOYAGES

to the coast of Maine have no special concern with this history. The Penobscot waters were now well known to the world, and scarcely ten years more elapsed before the habitations of civilization began to rise upon their picturesque shores.

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

CHAPTER IV. GEOGRAPHICAL DESIGNATIONS.

Vinland-Skrællinge Land-Mavoshen-Drogeo-Terra de Baccalhaos The Land of the Bretons-The Country of Gomez-Norumbega- The Term in Literature-Acadia-North Virginia-New England- Nova Scotia-The Waldo or Muscongus Patent-The County of Canada-The Territory of Sagadahock-The County of Cornwall- The Dutch at Penobscot-New Ireland-The Province of Mayne- The District of Maine-The State of Maine.

NO SMALL part of the early history of this Northeastern country is involved in the definitions given by the ex- plorers or early cartographers to the territory now occu- pied by the State of Maine, or to larger tracts within which that territory was included. As the process of colonization went on, and the demands for more localized government increased, we shall also find that the valley of the Penobscot, or some part of it, was included in va- rious successive county organizations, until at last Pe- nobscot county, with its present limits and subdivisions, stood full-formed.

VINLAND.

Leif, son of Erik the Red, a Norseman and the first settler of Greenland, set out from the settlement at Erik's Fiord in the year 1000, and sailed with a crew of thirty-five men to the southwest, over a track pursued nine years before by Biarne, whose ship Lief had bought. First they reached the land seen by Biarne, Labrador or New- foundland, which they called Helluland, or the Stone Land. Sailing thence to the coast of Nova Scotia, they called it Markland, or the Woodland. Reaching. finally Cape Cod, and, it is believed, the south shore of Rhode Island, and finding there the marvel of vines and grapes, they gave to this south country the name of Vinland, which needs no interpretation, and which the Norsemen subsequently applied to the whole coast between that re- gion and Markland, or Nova Scotia. Vinland, then, was the first country of European designation in which the Penobscot territory, or any part of it, was included.

The "Promontorium Vinlandia," as a designation for our Cape Cod, stands out conspicuously upon the chart of the North Atlantic, published by the Icelander Sigurd Stephanius, in 1570. This point, however, because "it was long to sail by," the daring voyagers themselves had called Furdurstrands, or the Wonder-strands.

In the year 1112 Pope Paschal II. appointed Erik Upsi, a Norse ecclesiastic, as Bishop of Iceland, Green- land, and Vinland ; and he is very doubtfully said to have visited personally the last-named or North Ameri- can division of his diocese, in 1121.

"SKRÆELLINGE LAND,"

or the country of the wretched dwarfs-that is, the sav- ages, who were designated by the rude Northmen with the contemptuous epithet of Skrællings (chips, parings, or mere fragments of humanity)-is the term applied upon the map of Stephanius to the whole country between the Promontorium Vinlandiæ and "Marckland."

Mr. Gay, in his Popular History of the United States, starts a very interesting inquiry as to these dwarfish Skrællings. He says:

The assumption is that that these people of the Vinland vicinity were Esquimaux. If that be true, and the term was used merely for want of any other to apply to copper-colored natives, then we are to conclude that the Indians were later comers in that part of the country. Did the first displace the Mound-building people, and then, in the course of time, move upon and displace the Esquimaux of the Atlantic coast? Was it this race who were not smokers, and who made the shell-heaps where no pipes are found?

MAVOSHEN.

The aboriginal designation by which the territory now embraced in the State of Maine was known, is that of Mavoshn, Mavooshen or Mawooshen (Belknap) Mai- vooshen (Purchas), or Moasham (Gorges). It was the general name, apparently, given by the red-skinned na- tives of the land. Mr. Belknap, in the second volume of his American Biography, says it was a title for the whole country of Maine and comprised nine or ten rivers, whereof the westernmost was Shawakotock, known to the French as Chouakoet, and to the English as Saco. The easternmost was Quibequessen, somewhere east of the Penobscot. The northern part of the same district, he remarks further, included the Penobscot bay and river, which were also called Pemaquid, though the latter name was afterwards appropriated to the point or reach of land six leagues to the westward. Not far from here dwelt the great chief, the Bashaba, who presumably ruled the dominions of Mavoshen. Purchas' Pilgrimage describes Mavoshen as "a country lying to the north and east of Virginia, between the degrees of forty-three and forty-five. It is forty leagues broad and fifty in length, lying in breadth east and west and in length north and south. It is bordered on the east side with a country, the people whereof they call Tarrantines ; on the east with Ephistoma ; on the north with a great wood, called Senaglecouna; and on the south with the main ocean, sea, and many islands. In Mavooshen it seemeth there are nine rivers, the west- ernmost of which is Shawacotoc. At the head of this river, to the northwest, there is a small province which they call Crokemago, wherein is one town. This is con- jectured by the historian Williamson to have been“ prob- ably the Indian Pegwacket."

The present tract of Penobscot county was, then, anciently a part of "Mavoshen." We shall in like man- ner proceed briefly to indicate the several geographical designations and civil jurisdictions including the region of which this History is more immediately to treat.

DROGEO.

The sea-chart of the Venetian brothers, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, drawn about the year 1400, nearly a cen- tury before the discovery by Columbus, published in 1558, and beautifully reduced and printed in fac-simile by Dr. Kohl, in the first volume of the new series of the Maine Historical Collections, exhibits three unknown lands in the Western Hemisphere-Icaria, Estotiland, and Drogeo. The first of these, an island, has been identified with reasonable probability as Newfoundland; the second as Nova Scotia; the third as the Norse Vinland, or New England, and upon the map of Lewelel, published at Brussels in 1852, with his Geography of the Middle Ages, it appears precisely in the locality of the present State of

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

Maine. It is blind work identifying the tracts, from the meager indications presented; but the conclusions reached above seem the most probable of any. Drogeo, then, is another pre-Columbian name for the country with which this History deals .*

Drogeo was afterwards depicted upon the old charts as an island, floating somewhere in mid-ocean.

TERRA DE BACCALHAOS.

Upon several of the Portuguese and other old maps, the New England country is included in the vast tract designated as Terra de Baccalhaos, a Portuguese term for the Land of Codfish, said by some to have been discov- ered by the father of the Cortereals before the time of Columbus. The English sometimes called it "the Coun- try of Bacallaos," and likewise "the Newfoundland," and "the New Isles." The Baccalhaos name designated the island of Newfoundland for a long time.

THE LAND OF THE BRETONS.

Early in the sixteenth century, the hardy Bretons of St. Malo, the Normans of Dieppe, and other Frenchmen, began to appear in fishing voyages upon the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The former gave the title to the island of Cape Breton, which bears, as Dr. Kohl remarks, the oldest French name on the American northeast coast. From them also was derived the desig- nation Terre des Bretons, or Land of the Bretons, which appears upon maps of that time as applicable to a wide extent of territory, including Nova Scotia and a large part of New England. It was also described by Ra- musio as La Terre Nerroe (the New Land), extending from forty degrees to sixty degrees north, and he says many called it, particularly the southern part, La Terre Francais (the French Land).

THE COUNTRY OF GOMEZ.

On the old Spanish maps of North America, the tract of which Maine is now a subdivision is laid down as " La Tierra de Gomez," from Estevan (Stephen) Gomez, a Portuguese in the service of Spain, who sailed in 1525 from Newfoundland, probably, to Florida. He may have seen or touched the shores of Maine, but there is no certain record of it, except, perhaps, a remark here- after quoted from the beginning of Hakluyt's Discourse concerning Western Planting. Dr. Kohl says, however :

Gomez probably entered this inlet [Penobscot Bay], and explored it more accurately than any other part of the coast; and in his report to the king may probably have lavished his praises on its harbors, its islands and its scenery.

We have already noted a fact which lends additional probability to this statement, that the Penobscot river was called the Rio de Gomez on the maps, and also by another Spanish name, the Rio Grande. His voyage adds one more to the nationalities that have claimed jurisdiction or given a name to this region. After that event the fishermen of Biscay, for more than a hundred years, appeared in the waters about Newfoundland with

many vessels, amid the fishing fleets of the Bretons, Nor- mans, and Basques, until they were forced away by rival nations about the middle of the seventeenth century.

NORUMBEGA.

This -or Norombega (Purchas and Belknap), Nor- umbegua (Sullivan), or Norimbagua (Champlain), etc., etc.,- is more strictly a local designation, probably ap- plied, rather than found, by the Europeans who earliest visited the Penobscot waters. Williamson says, however, in treating of De Monts' expedition :

In ranging the coast westwardly, they entered the bay of Penobscot, which, with the neighboring country, some European adventurers had previously understood by the natives, was called Norombegua.

L'Escarbot, in his History of De Monts' Voyages, notes the name, in the same passage with "St. Croix," as that of a river in the country of the Etchemins. Pur- chas's note is "Pemptegoet [Penobscot] is that place so famous under the name of Norombega." M. Denys, in his Geographical and Historical Description of North America, 1672, mentions "Norimbagua " as the previous name of the first province in what he calls Canada - that province extending "from Pentagoet [Penobscot] to St. John." Belknap's remark seems to cover the exact ground of the real information on the subject :

Norombega was a part of the same district comprehending Penobscot bay and river, but its easteru and western limits are not described.

Finally, the following interesting discussion of the sub- ject is embraced in Governor Sullivan's History of the District of Maine : .

The people of Norumbega were supposed to be an ancient people who lived on the river Penobscot, then called Pemptegeovett, near to which, as it was imagined, a great city once stood, called by the name of Norumbegua. The bounds of New England was conceived to ex- tend to the river Pemaquid, and the country of Norumbegua to be bounded west on that, and to run as far east as Penobscott, including Sheepscott river, then called Chavacovett. Some suppose it to be a collection of Indian huts, and others an ancient town. In ogilby it is conjectured to be the ruins of an ancient town, which the natives called Arambeck, and had deserted it. Some thought that the country had been called by this name because a colony of Norwegians had anciently been settled there.

The appellation of this part of the country, and of the several parts which were supposed to be within the same, and of the rivers supposed to be there, are not known in the Indian language, nor have the natives any traditions of such towns or cities as are conjectured in the old writers of the American history. On the whole, it may be safely con- cluded that there never was an ancient country or city called Norum- begua, but that the rage of the day for new discoveries, and the idle tales of the voyagers, gave an imaginary existence to such a place.

The name Arambec, or Arambeag, sometimes found instead of Norumbega, is believed to come nearer the original word, as eag is a well-known termination in many geographical names in the Northeast, meaning land or place. A corruption of this, and the change into a Latin ending, would easily give Norumbega. This designation was generally used by the French, until supplanted by Acadia. Norumbega first appears upon the old maps in a chart of New France, prepared by the Italian Jacomo di Gastaldi, about the year 1550. Here the "Terra de Nvrvmbega," ornamented with neat drawings of trees and mountains, and many figures of natives variously engaged, with fishermen and sea animals off the shore, corresponds closely to the later Nova Scotia. Its shore-

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 15

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