History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 9

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

USA > Maine > Penobscot County > History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 9

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THE ABENAKIS.

A general name has been given by many writers-the older, as well as later-to all the Indians east of the Piscataqua, to the country of the Mickmacks, in Nova Scotia. They were called the Wapanchkie (men of the east), or Wabenakies (east-land men), which became in the French Abenaques, and in the English more com- monly Abenakis or Abnakis. McKenney & Hall's great History of the Indian Tribes of North America says that the New England Tribes were formerly known by their red brethren west of the Hudson under the generic ap- pellation of Wabenauki, or Men of the East. Their languages were branches of the Algonquin stock, cog- nate dialects, bearing a distinct resemblance one to the other. All these tribes had undoubtedly a common In- dian origin, and it is equally certain that their separation into distinct communities occurred no very long time before they were visited by the English voyagers and colonists. Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, gives Abenaques and Tarrantines as equivalent terms ; in which he is certainly mistaken. The Abenakis are un- doubtedly closely allied in blood to the Tarratines, or Penobscot Indians; but are well known to have been a separate tribe, with a separate habitat. The statement of Charlevoix is in the later statement as well-that the "Abenaques live in a country from Pentagoet [Pen-

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

obscot] to New England." They inhabited the vast forests that covered the tract west of the Penobscot, even into New Hampshire, and north to Canada, in some part of which the reminant of them now dwell. They were a numerous people, until at least the period of the first Indian war, and were mainly in four tribes-the Sokokis or Sockhigones, the Indians of the Saco; the Anasagunticooks, or Abenakis of the Androsscoggin and the west of the Sagadahoc; the Canibas or Norridge- wocks of the Kennebec-"great numbers of them," says Hubbard, "when the river was first discovered;" and the Wawenocks, between the St. George and Sagadahoc waters. To these many writers now add the Tarratines or Penobscots, the immediate subjects of the Bashaba, or chief sagamore. The permanent villages of the Abena- kis were five in number-two in Canada, and one each on the Saco, the Androscoggin, and the Kennebec. The French missionaries described these centres of population as enclosed with strong, high palisades, surrounding clus- ters of wigwams built of bark supported by bent poles. The natives' dress was "ornamented with a great variety of rings, necklaces, bracelets, belts, etc., made out of shells and stones, worked with great skill. They practiced also agriculture. Their fields of skamgnar [corn] were very luxuriant. As soon as the snows had disappeared, they prepared the land with great care, and at the com- mencement of June they planted the corn, by making holes with fingers or with a stick, and, having dropped eight or nine grains of corn, they covered them with earth. "Their harvest was at the end of August." Their chief characteristics were bravery, preserverance and te- nacity of purpose, amiability and sociability, indisposed to war, but suspicious, and uncompromising in their hostility and pursuit of the war-path when once aroused, fidelity to their engagements, and hospitality. "Their attachment to their family, " says an historian of the East- ern Indians, "was such as we do not read of in other tribes of the Algic people." The French missionaries, traders, and military commanders had great influence over these Indians, and did much to provoke savage aggressions upon the English settlement. They showed, says Bryant & Gay's Popular History of the United States, "the tact and adaptibility which distinguish that nation."

This History says further :

The French studied in every way to appropriate the habits of the In- dians, to hunt, travel, eat, sleep and dress in the native fashion. They were apt learners of the different dialects; the lists of words and the dictionaries compiled by their missionaries can be relied upon. And these devoted men drew savage admiration by their constancy, calm- ness in peril, assiduous efforts to teach and civilize, and their skill in healing, as well as by the impressive solemnity of those novel services of religion, with cross, cup, bell and candle, under the groined arches of the primitive cathedral. But the English possessed over the French one manifest advantage, and that has since been styled " manifest des- tiny," for the current of history undermines and carries away the adroitest policies of the nicest arts of accommodation."

THE ETCHEMINS.

This has been taken as a general name for the tribes that dwell along the banks and about the headwaters of the Penobscot and St. John's rivers, thence eastwardly, according to Hermon Moll's old map of the English

Empire in America, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and southwardly to the Bay of Fundy. The order of the king of France to D'Aulnay, in 1638, to confine his ju- risdiction to the coast of the Etchemins seems, however, to imply that the extent of it was included between the St. John's and the Bay of Fundy. But it is certain that it comprised the Penobscot region. Indeed, Charlevoix would make this their chief district, as it may have been. He says: "The Abenaques, or Canabas, have for their nearest neighbors the Etchemins, or Marechites, about Pentagoet and its environs; and more at the east are the Mickmacks, or Souriquois, the proper inhabitants of Acadia." His name Marechites, as a title for the whole nation, is considerably used by other writers. The name Etchemin is still preserved in a river, and also a town of Canada.

Mr. Williamson adds some interesting facts concerning this people :

Among the Etechemins, marriages are negotiated by the fathers, and solemnized, in modern times, by a Catholic priest. Captain Francis says: "If an Indian is charmed with a squaw, he tells his parents and they talk with hers; and, if all are pleased, he sends her a string of wampum, perhaps 1,000 beads, and presents her with a wedding suit. All meet at the wigwam of her parents; the young couple sit together till married; they and the guests then feast and dance all that night and the next; and then the married pair retire." Early wedlock is encour- aged; and a couple in a fit of matrimonial union will, for the purpose of finding a priest, traverse the woods to Canada. In later times poly- gamy is not known among them, and divorces, which are never very frequent, are by mutual consent.

Captain Francis says, before white people came here, sometimes " Indians have four wives." A sanup [husband] has unlimited control over his wife, having been known to take her life with impunity. A case of this kind occurred in 1785, when one in a paroxysm of rage slew his squaw and hid her body under the ice of the Penobscot, without being, according to report, so much as questioned for his conduct. .

The religious notions of the natives are rude and full of superstition. They believe in a Great Spirit, whom the Abenaques called Tanto or Tantum, and the Etechemins, Sazoos; also in the immortality of the soul and in a paradise far in the west, where he dwells, and where all good men go when they die. To the wicked they suppose he will say, when they knock at the heavenly gates, "Go wander in endless misery; you never shall live here." For plenty, victory, or any other great good, they celebrated feasts with songs and dances to his praise.

They had strong faith in an evil spirit, whose Satanic Majesty they called Mojahondo, supposing he possessed the attributes in general re- vealed of that being in the Scriptures. They believed also in tutelar spirits, or good angels, whom they denominated Mannitou, and they entertained great veneration for their Powows. These, uniting in one person the two offices of priest and physician, were supposed to possess almost miraculous powers.

Their dead were generally buried in a sitting posture. In Pittston, upon the Kennebeck, are two old burying grounds, where skeletons are found in a posture half erect, the head bending over the feet. Relics of human bodies have been discovered in a tumulus near Ossipee pond, which were originally buried with the face downward. In these two places, and in others upon the Kenduskeag and elsewhere, there have been discovered instruments, paints, and ornaments interred-the requisites to help the departed spirits to the "country of souls." The modern manner of burial is borrowed from the Catholics. The corpse, enclosed in a rough coffin, is followed by an irregular procession to the burying-ground; and when interred, a little wooden crucifix is placed at the head of the grave, which is sprinkled with consecrated water and perfumed with flowers or herbs. If a Tarratine dies abroad, he must, if possible, be borne to Oldtown and buried in the common grave- yard.

The female lamentations for the dead are great, and sometimes ex- cessive. The death of a young child, swept away from the arms of its mother, as the two lay sleeping in a summer's day between high and low water mark upon the Penobscot beach, affords a striking instance of savage grief. She burst into loud and excessive lamentations, and

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

mingled her cries with inarticulate jabber, an hour scarcely closing this scene of shrieking and tears.

The three Etechemin tribes have, severally and immemorially, se- lected their sagamores and sachems, or subordinate officers, in form of a general election .* But the candidate, when chosen, is not inducted into his office without the presence and assistance of a delegation from each of the other tribes. This was the case when Francis Joseph Neptune, at Passamaquoddy, and John Aitteon, at Penobscot, were made chiefs of their respective tribes; and the most intelligent credible Indians agree in saying that such is the practice among the Marechites, and has always been the usage among all three of the tribes.

THE TARRATINES.

The Etchemins, according to the historian Williamson, were .in three tribes-the Marechites proper, or Armon- chiquois, the Indians of the St. John's; the Openango, or Quoddy Indians, of the Passamaquoddy, and the Tarratines, or aborigines of the Penobscot, with whom we have mainly to deal. Mr. Parkman, however, and with him, probably, all the later writers, assign these Indians to the Abenaki confederation or stock.

There can be no doubt as to the habitat of the Tar- ratines. All the older, as well as later, writers are one in the view that they dwelt upon the Penobscot river and bay, and the present remnant of Penobscot Indians are undoubtedly descended lineally from the Tarratines. They also claimed dominion over the tracts adjacent to the river, from its sources to the sea. Captain Smith, in his narrative, relates that the Penobscot mountains, or Camden hills, formed a natural fortress, separating the Tarratines from their neighbors, the other Abenaki tribes. The two peoples long lived in amity, although the former cherished an hereditary enmity to the Abergin- eans, or Northern Indians, especially in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which led finally, in 1615-16, to the terrible war between the Tarratines and the rest of the Abenakis, in which the latter was almost extermina- ted, and the Bashaba was slain.

Mr. Williamson says of the Tarratines:

They were a numerous, powerful, and warlike people, more hardy and brave than their western enemies, whom they often plundered and killed, and, according to Hubbard and Price, kept the Sycamores between the Piscataqua and the Mystic in perpetual fear. After the conquests and glory achieved in their battles with the Bashaba and his "allies, they were not, like their enemies, wasted by disease and famine. They retained their valor, animated by success and strengthened by an early use and supply of firearms, with which they were furnished by the French. + Less disturbed than the western tribes in the enjoyment of their possessions, and also more discreet, they were always reluctant to plunge into hostilities against the English.

The Tarratines ever manifested the greatest satisfaction in their intercourse with the French. No fortifications upon the peninsula of Major-biguyduce, or buildings in the vicinity, excited either fear or jealousy in them; for no rising plantations of the French threatened them with a loss of their lands or privileges. A barter of their furs for guns, ammunition, and trinkets, was managed with a freedom and adroitness which won and secured their attachment. Indeed, no for- eigners could vie with Frenchmen, for their religious creeds and rites, to which the natives were superstitiously devoted, their companionable manners and volatile turn, all made the bonds strong and lasting. . .

The Tarratines have probably at different periods shifted the situa- tion of their principal village; at the mouth of the Kenduskeag they had a common resting-place, when the white people first settled in the vicinity-a place to which they were, from habit, strongly attached. Here the mouldering relics of human bodies, also flint spears, stone

implements of labor, and Indian paint dust have been accidentally dis- interred, after a burial for an unknown period of time.

The Tarratines were neutrals in the war of the Revolution. In return Massachusetts protected them and prohibited all trespasses upon their lands, six miles in width on each side of the Penobscot, from the head of the tide upwards. She has since, at different times, made large purchases of their lands, and they are left [1832] the owners of only four townships, a few acres on the east side of the Penobscot, opposite to the mouth of the Kenduskeag, and the islands between Oldtown and Passadumkeag, 28 in number, containing 2,670 acres.

About 40 acres, in 1820, were under cultivation, and the Indians that season raised 410 bushels of corn and 50 bushels of beans, besides potatoes.

Accounts of the former seat of these Indians, three miles above the mouth of the Kenduskeag, and of their later residence at Oldtown, will appear further along in this chapter.

The following useful description of the Penobscot In- dians, as found by the French upon their advent in this region, is from the Novus Arbis of John De Laet, pub- lished in 1633. It will be observed that De Laet, who doubtless refers to Penobscot bay, is sadly astray in his definition of distance from the Kennebec, which is nearer fourteen than four leagues :

Four leagues north from Kennebec, following the direction of the coast, there is a bay containing in its bosom a large number of islands, and near its entrance one of them is called by the French navigators the island of Bacchus, from the great abundance of vines found grow- ing there. The barbarians that inhabit here, are in some respects un- like the other aborigines of New France, differing somewhat from them both in language and manners. They shave their heads from the forehead to the crown, but suffer their hair to grow on the back side, confining it in knots, interweaving feathers of various plumage. They paint their faces, red or black, are well formed, and arm them- selves with spears, clubs, bows and arrows, which, for want of iron they point with the tail of a crustaceous creature called signoc. They cultivate the soil in a different manner from the savages that live east of them, planting maize and beans together, so that the stalks of the former answer the purpose of poles for the vines to run upon. They plant in May and harvest in September. Walnut trees grow here, but inferior ones. Vines are abundant, and it is said by the French that the grapes gathered in July make good wine. The natives also raise pumpkins and tobacco. They have permanent places of abode; their cabins are covered with oak bark, and are defended by palisadoes.

According to Judge Godfrey's essay on the Baron de St. Castine, the Tarratines were a clan of the great Aben_ aki community, receiving the name from the English colonists; perhaps in honor of a brave Huron chief, called Taratouan, upon whom the Jesuit missionaries had relied for protection. The Rev. Father Vetromile, however, in his excellent paper on the Abenakis, in the sixth volume of the Maine Historical Collections, pre- sumes the designation to have been derived from "Ati- ronta," another Indian who rendered much service to the pioneers of France in the New World. By some writers, as by Mr. Gallatin, in his work on the Indian tribes, the Tarratines and the Abenakis were substantially identi- fied. Mr. Parkman, in his Jesuits in North America, says: "The Tarratines of New England writers were the Abenakis, or a portion of them." Mr. Palfrey, the historian of New England, quoting the old writer Hutch- inson, considers the Tarratines as Abenakis. The Rev. Father John G. Shea, in his voluminous work on The Catholic Church in the United States, refers to the con- version to that faith of "the powerful tribe of the Aben- akis, or Tarenteens, as the early English settlers called them." Gorges, however, in a passage concerning the

. Mr. Williamson's foot-note : "They are in modern times called governor, lieutenant-governor, and captains, names borrowed from the English.

+Williamson's foot-note: The Tarratines, for instance, cut out a shallop from Dorchester, with five men in it, whom they killed.

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

enemies of the Bashaba, says the savages called the tribe Tarrantines. Mr. Williamson, making a rapid sum- mary of the old authors, says they "agree that the gener- al name of the natives upon the Penobscot was Tarra- tines." Wood, in New England's Prospect, includes some interesting notices of them. He says:

The country as it is in relation to the Indians, is divided as it were into shires, every severall division being swayde by a severall king, the Indians to the east and northeast bearing the names of Churchers or Tarrenteenes. Take these Indians in their own trimme and naturall disposition, and they be reported to be wise, lofty- spirited, constant in friendship to one another, true in their promises, and more industrious than many other, [and so on, until] some of our English, who to uncloathe them of their beaver coates, clad them with the infection of swearing and drinking, which was never in fashion with them before, it being contrary to their nature to guzzell downe stronge drinke, until our bestial example and dishonest incitation hath brought them to it; and from overflowing cups there hath been a proceeding to revenge, murther, and overflowing of blood.

Governor Sullivan, in his History of the District of Maine, furnishes an important contribution to the histo- ry and philosophy of religion, concerning a somewhat controverted point, in the following :

The fanciful historians have said much respecting the savage's hope of felicity in fine fields beyond the gates of death, when he should meet his ancestors and be happy in a state of immortality. . But from any conversations had with the Indians here, or from anything which can be gathered from those who have been most with them, there is no reason to believe that the Northern savages ever had ideas of that nature.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE TARRATINES.

When they first became known to Europeans, the Tar- ratines dwelt on both sides of the Penobscot, and, with their Abenaki brethren, roamed the region westward to the Saco, if not to the Piscataquis. About one-third of the New England Indians (supposed to number fifty thou- sand in all) were on the soil of Maine. They came pres- ently to be distinguished as Maine Indians; the rest were called the New England Indians, some difference of dia- lect further dividing the two. Samoset, the friendly savage who came suddenly upon the Plymouth colony one warm morning in February, 1621, with the assuring words, in their own tongue, "welcome, Englishmen," is believed to have been a Tarratine, from the island of Monhegan. He was certainly a Maine Indian, and a chief. The Tar- ratines became first known in our historical literature, however, as a tribe at war with the Wawenocks, their next neighbors on the west, whom they practically exter- minated. In 1631 an expedition of one hundred of them took the war-path against the Massachusetts In- dians, who were so afraid of the Eastern savages that they declared they never camped or slept twice together in the same place. In 1669 the dreaded Mohawks-who had doubtless waged frequent war with them through the ages, their parties coming down the Penobscot from the great Canadian woods and waters-completely overcame the Tarratines, plundered, burnt, and devastated their villages. To this day the Penobscots detest and burn with indignation at the very name of Mohawk.

The tribe was not exterminated, however, nor carried into captivity by their conquerors. They remained upon and near the Penobscot in sufficient force to form an im- portant element in the history of early colonization in

the Northeast. The Tarratine and Passamaquoddy In- dians were among the earliest converts made by the Roman Catholic missionaries east of the Mississippi. Before the advent of the Jesuits, says an old writer, "they dyed patiently, both men and women, not knowing of a hell to scare them nor a conscience to terrifie them." They were at first very friendly to the whites, except as they manifested natural indignation at the outrages perpe- trated upon them by Weymouth and other explorers. The Rev. Mr. Hubbard's Narrative of the Indian Wars in New England, written in 1775, says:

Ever since the first settling of any English plantation in those parts about Kennebeck, for the space of about 50 years, the Indians always carried it fair, and held good correspondence with the English, until the news came of Phillip's rebellion and rising against the inhabitants of Plimouth colony in the end of June, 1675, after which time it was apprehended by such as had the examination of the Indians about Ken- nebeck that there was a general surmise amongst them that they would be required to assist the said Philip, although they would not own that they were at all engaged in the quarrel.

When the war with the French ended, in 1699, the Maine Indians, with those of New Hampshire, made a treaty with the English colonies, their sachems ac- knowledging for them allegiance to the English crown.

WARS AND INCIDENTS.

There was no doubt an honest intention, especially at first, on the part of many of the whites in New England, to deal justly with the Indians, and avoid occasions of war with them. The charter of Massachusetts enjoined upon the colonists that they should endeavor to win the natives to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour, and of the Christian faith, "by force of moral example and religious efforts and instruc- tion." Laws were passed that strong liquors, and even cider and beer, were not to be sold to them. Orders were given that any trading-house among the Indians, erected without the license of the General Court, should be destroyed. If the corn-fields and crops of the na- tives were injured by the cattle of the settlers, even by reason of poor fencing, the town to which the owner of the cattle belonged was to be compelled to make good the loss, unless the authorities collected the amount of damage from the owner. The Government undertook the charge of all trade with the Indians in furs, peltry, boats, or other water-craft, and commissioners were ap- pointed by the authorities to determine all matters of controversy among them, even those which a single officer might decide in a case arising between English- men. On the other hand, the sale of fire-arms to the savages was strictly forbidden by royal proclamation as early as 1622. They were, however, abundantly sup- plied by the French, who allied the red man the more strongly to them by the liberal sale or gift of guns and gunpowder.

Friendly relations did not long subsist between the whites and the Indians. Notwithstanding official and legal guards, outrages were occasionally perpetrated by the former upon the latter, even at the outset of their intercourse, when a judicious policy, to say nothing of justice, would have dictated a different course. Five of the Indians of the Penobscot, for example, one of them

General Samuel Veazie.

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

a sagamore, were seized and carried away by the ex- plorer Weymouth in 1605, and long kept in captivity. The Indians soon began reprisals, and resistance to the encroachments of the colonists. One Master Patterson, of the Sagadahoc colony, the earliest upon the soil of Maine, was killed by the Tarratines, almost at once up- on his settlement. This is but one of the many exam- ples that might be adduced.

In the summer of 1631 or 1632, the Tarratines pre- pared for an attack upon Agawam (Ipswich), where the sagamores, having treacherously massacred a number of Tarratine families, were believed to be sheltering them- selves under the wing of the English. Forty canoe- loads of Indians went thither; but their plot was be- trayed to an English youth, who fired an alarm-gun and beat a drum furiously, whereupon they put to sea again without making an attack. The Tarratines, however, afterwards killed some of the Agawam Indians. About one hundred made a midnight attack upon the lodge of a sagamore near that place, and carried off his wife a prisoner to Penobscot.

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 9

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