History of York County, Maine, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 9

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 730

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It appeared from the canvass of votes that five towns ont of the seven had made returns. Five associates were de- clared elected, viz. : Bryan Pendleton, of Saco; Francis Raynes, of York ; Francis Neale, of Falmouth ; Ezekiel Knight, of Wells ; and Roger Plaisted, of Kittery.

The military of Yorkshire were formed into six compan- ies, duly officered, and united into a regiment. Bryan Pendleton, of Saeo, was made major by brevet, and com- manded the battalion at Black Point.

In Kittery, Charles Frost was Captain ; Roger Plaisted, Lieutenant ; and John Gattery, Ensign. In York, Job Alcock, Lieutenant ; and Arthur Bragdon, Ensign. In Wells, John Littlefield, Lieutenant; and Francis Little- field, Jr., Ensign. In Scarborough, Andrew Alger, Lieu- tenant. In Falmouth, George Ingersol, Lieutenant.

In the General Court held in Boston in May, 1669, there were three representatives from Yorkshire, viz. : Charles Frost, from Kittery ; Peter Wyer ( Weare), from York ; and Richard Colicott, from Falmouth and Scarborough.

In 1670 the interior regulations of Yorkshire were com- pleted. Thomas Danforth, an experienced assistant of ten years, was designated to preside in the County Court; and Elias Stilman, of Great Island ; John and Richard Cutts, of' Kittery ; and three or four others in different towns were appointed commissioners as usual, invested with the authority of magistrates, to try small causes, solemnize marriages, administer oaths, and take the acknowledgment of deeds. The Legislature now solemnly enacted that the several towns and inhabitants should be secure in the enjoy- ment of' the same civil and political privileges which were granted to them when they were first brought under the charter.

CHAPTER IX.

INDIANS OF YORK COUNTY.

Distinct Tribes-Two Languages Spoken-Indians East and West of the Saco River-Passaconaway-Remarkable Prediction of Rowles -Wonnolancet-Blind Will-Abenaques-Sokokis-Etechemins- -Squando-Form of Government among the Indian Tribes.

THE Indians within the territory of this county were originally of two distinct races or families, separated from each other by a radical difference of language. The divi- sional line was somewhere between the Saco and the Aga- mentions Rivers. Those on the Saco, and eastward as far as Passamaquoddy, spoke one language, or a language so nearly the same that the different tribes could easily under- stand one another; while those at Agamenticus, Piscat- aqua, and Newichawannock, spoke the language of the Abergenians, or Northern Indians. It was observed by Mr. Goodkin, who was superintendent of Indian affairs, in 1656, that the Piscataqua Indians could not pronounce the L and the R ; as for instance, the word lobster they called nob- sten, whereas the tribes to the eastward sounded these let- ters easily. There was another fact having a very significant bearing on this question. A copy of Mr. Eliot's Indian Bible, printed in 1664, was obtained by Rev. Daniel Little, missionary to the Indians of Penobscot and St. John, since the Revolution, which he carried with him ; but he said not one word of their language could be found in it. On the other hand, in a vocabulary compiled by Mr. Cutter, keeper of a trading-house upon the Saco River, Mr. Little discovered a great similarity of language with that spoken farther eastward.

There were in New Hampshire, and the western part of Maine, four tribes of the Abergenians, existing in a sort of political alliance or confederacy, the most powerful of which were the Pentuckets and Pennacooks, of whom the former, in 1630, were the more numerous people. At Squampscot, now Exeter, there dwelt a chief who was the head of a small inland tribe in that vieinity. Another, or fourth tribe, inhabited the banks and branches of the Pis- cataqua, including the Indian settlement at Cocheco, now Dover. These were commonly called the Newichawan- nocks, although Goodkin calls them the Piscataquas,-of whom Rowles, otherwise named Knolles, was for many years the sagamore. All of them were under political subordination to the celebrated Passaconaway, chief of the Pennacooks, whom they acknowledged to possess a rightful and paramount superiority .*

The dwelling-place of Rowles was on the northerly side of the Piscataqna, not far from Quampagan Falls, in Ber- wick, formerly Kittery. He was a sagamore of some ce- lebrity. In 1643 he conveyed lands in his vicinity to Humphrey Chadbourne, and afterwards to Spencer, the former being the oldest Indian deed in the records of Maine. It is certain that all the Indians upon the river to its mouth were his subjects,; though he was under Passaconaway, his superior lord.

The depredations frequently committed by the Tarra- * Hubbard's New England, p. 32; Mass. Hist. Coll., p. 142 ; Bel- knap's New Hampshire, p. 289.

+ 1 Morse's Geography, p. 310, ed. 1812; Sullivan, p. 143.

INDIANS OF YORK COUNTY.

tines upon the people of these tribes induced the saga- mores to encourage English settlements among them, in expectation of their assistance against the enemy. It is stated by Belknap that the four chieftains, May 17, 1629, joined in a quit-claim to John Wheelwright and his asso- ciates of all the country between the Piscataqua and the Merrimac, below Quampeagan and Amoskeag Falls. The veracity of this transaction has been doubted, but it is cer- tain that the natives lived for many years on terms of friendly intercourse with the settlers. In the first Indian war the sagamores of these tribes resolved to be neutral ; but their conduct was evidently controlled by fear more than by friendship, and, above either, by a presentiment that all quarrels with the English would be ruinous to the Indians.

Passaconaway possessed talents and sagacity, which gave him most exalted rank and influence among his country- men. He was a prophet, or powwow, as well as a civil ruler, and by that claim to the supernatural which has always exerted a potent spell over the savage mind, he swayed and controlled them at his pleasure. He made them believe he could give nature's freshness to the ashes of a burnt leaf, raise a living serpent from the skin of a dead one, and transform himself into a flame. Becoming old, he made a great feast in 1660, to which he invited his tribes, call- ing them his children. He spoke to them as a dying man to dying men, in words which seem almost prophetic. " Hearken," said he, "to the last words of your father and friend. The white men are sons of the morning. The Great Spirit is their father. His sun shines bright above them. Sure as you light the fires, the breath of heaven will turn the flames upon you and destroy you. Listen to my advice. It is the last I shall be allowed to give you. Remember it and live."

Similar presages affected the mind of Rowles. About 1670, when bedridden of age and sickness, he complained of the great neglect with which the English had treated him. At length he sent a message to some of the prin- cipal men of Kittery, now Berwick, to visit him. "Being loaded with years," said he, " I had expected a visit in my infirmities, especially from those who are now tenants on the lands of my fathers. Though all of these plantations are of right my children's, I am forced in this age of evils humbly to request a few acres of land to be marked out for them and recorded, as a public act, in the town-books, so that when I am gone they may not be perishing beggars in the pleasant places of their birth ; for I know a great war will shortly break out between the white men and the In- dians over the whole country. At first the Indians will kill many and prevail, but after three years they will be great sufferers and finally be rooted out and utterly destroyed."*

Wonnolancet, the son of Passaconaway, and Blind Will, the successor of Rowles, heeded the premonitory counsel of the chiefs with sacred respect, and perpetuated peace and amity with the whites. A few facts must here be related of Blind Will, who was a brave ally of the whites in King Philip's war, and was afterwards slain through a mistake

by a company of Mohawks, who had come down the coun- try at the request of Maj. Waldron.

It must be borne in mind that the Mohawks and their associates of the Five Nations, otherwise called the confed- eracy of the Iroquois, inhabiting New York from the Hud- son to Lake Erie, were at this time the most powerful confederation of Indians on the continent, and a terror to all the tribes of New England as far east as the Kennebec River. They had carried their conquests into Canada, subjugating the once powerful nation of the Hurons, and hung like a scythe of death upon the borders of New France, and at its very heart and citadel, which they repeatedly besieged. They had conquered and placed under tribute the tribes on Long Island and on the Connecticut, had subdued the Eries and Neutral Nation in Western New York, driven the Adirondacs from their mountain fastnesses across the St. Lawrence, conquered the Andastes of the Susquehanna, the Delawares on the bay and river of that name, and had carried their victorious arms into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Smith, in his " History of New York," says that all the surrounding tribes had been conquered by them, and acknowledged their subjection by paying them tribute.

The Mohawks, the most eastern of the Five Nations, were the neighbors of the New England Indians on the west, and their friendship for the English and great repu- tation as fighting men induced Maj. Waldron to invoke their powerful aid against the Tarratines of the Penobscot, who were pushing their depredations as far west as New Hampshire. Accordingly, in 1677, two messengers-Majs. Pinchon and Richards-were sent to the country of the Mo- hawks to secure their assistance. They were kindly re- ceived, and secured the promise of aid. About the middle of March some parties of them came down the country, and the first alarm was given at Amoskeag Falls, where the son of Wonnolancet, being out hunting, discovered fifteen Indians on the other side, who called to him in a language which he did not understand, upon which he fled, and they fired several shots at him without effect. Presently they were discovered in a woods near Cocheco. Maj. Waldron sent out eight of his Indians, whereof Blind Will was one, to make further discoveries. They were all surprised to- gether by a company of Mohawks; two or three escaped, the others being killed or taken prisoners. Will was dragged away by his hair, and, being wounded, perished in the woods on a neck of land formed by the confluence of the Cocheco and Isinglass Rivers, which still bears the name of Blind Will's Neck .; This was evidently a mis- take on the part of the Mohawks, supposing that the friendly Indians sent out by Maj. Waldron, merely for the purpose of inspection, were a band of the enemy.

The Indians of the Saco and eastward, except the Mick- macks, of Nova Scotia, were undoubtedly all of one race or tribe,-the Abenaques, or Men of the East, and the Ete- chemins, or Eastland People. Williamson says, --

"They were all without doubt descendants of the same original stock, and for an unknown period after the discovery of America the tribes were probably members of the same political family, differing little in language, looks, habits, or ideas of confederate union."

* The facts of this prediction, attested by Maj. Waldron, Capt. Frost, and Joshua Moody, are published in the Supplement to King Philip's War, p. 82.

+ 1 Belknap's Hist. N. H., p .. 128.

HISTORY OF YORK COUNTY, MAINE.

It would appear from the testimony of Captain Francis, of the Penobscot tribe, who is admitted to have been excel- lent authority on the subject, that the migration of the tribes was castward from the Saco River, where the oldest of them had their ancient seat. He assured Mr. William- son that all the tribes between the Saco and the St. John, both inclusive, were brothers; that the oldest lived on the Saco; that each tribe was younger as we pass eastward, like the sons of the same father; though the one at Pas- samaquoddy was the youngest of all, proceeding from those upon the rivers St. John and Penobscot.

" Always," he says, " I could understand these brothers well when they speak, but when the Mickmacks, or the Alyonquins, or Canada Indians speak, I cannot tell all what they say."#

The Abenaques were divided into four tribes, viz., the Sokokis, or Sacoes, sometimes called Sockhigones, who lived on the Saco River; the Anasagunticooks, who held dominion upon the Androscoggin; the Canibas, or Kenabes, who had their villages upon the Kennebec; and the Wawe- nocks, who inhabited the country eastward of the Kenne- bec, to and including the St. George's River.

The Sokokis, or Saco Indians, were a numerous people till the first Indian war. The immediate residence of their sagamores was upon Indian Island, just above the lower falls. Two of them, Fluellen and Captain Sunday, con- veyed lands, but when their successor, Squando, died, the glory seemed to depart from the tribe, and it gradually wasted away. In 1615 there were two branches of the tribe, and two principal villages ; one was within the great bend of the river at Pequawket, or Fryeburg, the other fifteen or twenty miles below on the banks of the Great Ossipee. Here, before King Philip's war, they employed English engineers and carpenters and built a strong fort of timber, fourteen feet in height, with flankers, intending it as a protection against the Mohawks.

No people ever defended their native country with more valor and obstinacy than did the Sokokis theirs, especially in Lovell's war. A number of them, relinquishing the French interest in 1744 for the ranks of the English, at the siege of Louisbourg distinguished themselves among the bravest soldiers. Afterwards they could muster only about a dozen fighting men, and before the capture of Que- bec the tribe had become extinct.

The Anasagunticooks, or Amarascogins, as they are called by Mather, Hubbard, and others, were originally a numerous and powerful tribe, inhabiting the country upon the waters of the Androscoggin, from its source to Merry- meeting Bay, and on the west side of the Kennebec to the sea. At Pejepscot, or Brunswick Falls, they had their usual encampments, or place of resort. This was one of the great trails or passes between the eastern and western tribes, where the savages met in council to plan expeditions against the English.}

The Anasagunticooks were a warlike people. A short distance above the Great Falls they had a fort, which was destroyed by the English in 1690. " No tribe," says Wil- liamson, " was less interfered with in their fishing and fowl-

# Drake's Book of the Indians, iii. p. 173.

+ La Hontan ; Gorges, p. 85; Ilubbard's Indian Wars, p. 389. ¿ Sullivan, p. 178.

ing, and yet none were more uniformly and bitterly hostile towards the colonists." There were two reasons for this : the first was that the early European explorers, particularly the Portuguese and the English, had been treacherous towards them, decoying them into their vessels and kidnap- ping their chiefs, and taking them away to foreign countries to dispose of them for slaves ;§ and, in the second place, they were under the influence of the French, who taught them to hate and distrust the English. The venal and mercenary character of some of the early traders also de- stroyed their confidence, and they wreaked their first re- venge upon those of that class nearest to them. Tarumkin, Warumbo, and Hogkins, their sagamores, were brave men, but their tribe wasted away during the wars, and in 1744 they were able to muster only sixty fighting men. Wa- rumbo and five other sagamores sold the lands between Sagadahock and Maquoit to the sea, and the islands, July 7,1683.|

These Indians were the earliest whom the French drew off to the St. François settlements in Canada. When the Revolution commenced there were only about forty of the tribe, who made the shores, the ponds, and the islands of the Androscoggin their principal home. Philip Will, who afterwards became a chief of this tribe, was in the siege of Louisbourg at the age of fourteen, and was taken prisoner by the French. Remaining with the remnant of his tribe, he was brought up in the family of Mr Crocker, where he was taught to read and write the English language, and arithmetic. He was six feet three inches in height and well proportioued. The tribe made him chief, and for many years he was instrumental in preventing their utter extinction."

The Pejepscot Indians were in all probability a sub-tribe of the Anasagunticooks. They had customary places of resort, if not permanent places of residence,-at Brunswick Falls, at Magquoit, and at Mare Point. It is now consid- ered probable, from the remains and relics found there, that the latter was the place of one of their villages in the six- teenth century.

The plague which broke out among them about the year 1616 so reduced them that they uumbered only fifteen bun- dred warriors. They were still further reduced in numbers by war and other causes, so that there were, according to one authority, Nov. 25, 1726, only five Indians in the tribe over sixteen years of age. John Hegon was their sachem at this time. Twenty-five years later there were one hun- dred and sixty warriors in the tribe. This was a large in- crease in number, yet it shows how weak the tribe had become.

The settlement of the region occupied by this tribe, sub- sequent to the time of King Philip's war, presents continual scenes of carnage and destruction, midnight massacres and

¿ Casper Cortereal, the Portuguese navigator, in 1500, enticed fifty- seven of the natives (men and boys) on board his ship, and luring them below deck, closed the hatchways upon them, and carried them aff to sell them as slaves in Spain. Weymouth, the captain of the " Archangel," in 1605, kidnapped in a similar manner five natives, all men of rank, and took them to England. One of them, Squantum, after his return, was the first Indian who visited the Pilgrims on their arrival at Plymouth .- See Life of Miles Standish.

|| Kennebec Claims, p. 7.

" HIntchinson, p. 266.

INDIANS OF YORK COUNTY.

conflagrations, until the tribe itself became extinct. The language of the Abenaque nation has been carefully studied by many competent students, but the difficulties in the way of thoroughly understanding the different dialects are so great that much uncertainty still exists, both as to the cor- rect pronunciation and derivation, and also as to the mean- ing of very many of the names formerly applied to locali- ties.

The Canibas had their residence on the Kennebec River, where, Hubbard says, " were great numbers of them when the river was first discovered." The tribe consisted of two or three branches : for while Monquine, Kennebis, Abbaga- dusett, between 1648 and 1655, in the capacity of chief sagamores, conveyed to the English all the lands ( ten miles in width ) on each side of the river from Swan Island to Wessarunsett River, Elderumken, another sagamore, made conveyances on Stevens and Muddy Rivers in 1670, and Essemenosque certified, in 1653, that the region of Tecon- net belonged to him and the wife of Watchogo. The principal residence of the Kennebis, the head chief, and of his predecessors of the same rank and title, was on Swan Island in a most delightful situation, and that of Abbaga- dusett between a river of his name and the Kennebec on the northern borders of Merrymceting Bay. The terri- tories which the tribe claimed extended from the sources of the Kennebec to Merrymeeting Bay, and included the islands on the eastern side of the Sagadahock to the sea.

While Jeffreys, Charlevoix, La Houtan, and others, call this tribe the Canibas, the name of Norridgewocks is given them by Mather, Douglass, and most modern English writers, evidently from the name of their famous village. This was the residence of the French missionaries, who early taught the tribe the forms of worship and doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion. The derivation of the name Norridgewock has been given as follows : " Norridge" (falls) and " wock" (smooth water), i.e., little falls and in- tervals of smooth water above and below .* This old village of the Indians was a very pleasant site opposite the mouth of Sandy River. It was the general and almost the only resort of the tribe immediately after their ranks became thinned, aud a spot consecrated to them by every sacred and endearing association.

The Wawenocks inhabited the country east of the Kenne- bec, to and including the St. George's River. Capt. Smith, while in the harbor of the latter river in 1608, was urged by the natives to pay court to the great Bashaba, the ruling prince or superior chief. The early colonists, also, at the mouth of the Kennebec, were urged by the natives to pay their respects to this great chief. Moxus, Wegunganet, Wivourna, and succeeding sagamores, sold lands to the English at Woolwich, Damariscotta, and other places in that quarter.

The habitation of the Bashaba was near Pemaquid. But subsequently to his death the principal headquarters of the tribe was on the westerly side of the Sheepscot River, near the lower falls. From this circumstance Hubbard speaks of them as the " Sheepscot Indians." Broken and wasted by the disasters of the great war, in which the Bashaba was

slain, they were never afterwards either powerful or numer- ous. In 1747 there were ouly two or three families re- maining, and in a few years after, all of them were induced by the French to join the St. François settlement in Canada. They were a brave, active people. Capt. Francis said the name Wawenock's siguified " very brave, fearing nothing." According to Capt. Smith, they were strong, beautiful, and very witty. The meu had a perfect constitution of body, were of comely proportions, and quite athletic. They would row their canoes faster, he says, with five paddles than his own men could their boats with eight oars. They had no beards, he says, and thought ours counterfeits. Their women, though of lesser stature, were fleshy and well formed, all habited in skins like the men. This tribe was always in alliance with the Cunibas, unchanging in peace and in war, and appear in this character until their last treaty with the English.

The other divisions of the aboriginal people of Maine- the Etechemins, inhabiting the eastern portion of the State- we can only briefly mention. The geographical territory of the tribes of this division is placed by Hermon Moll, upon his map of the English Empire in America, along the banks and at the heads of the rivers Penobscot and St. John, eastwardly to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and south- wardly to the Bay of Fundy. The charter of Nova Scotia, to Sir William Alexander, 1620, mentions the Bay of Fundy as dividing " the Etechemins on the north from the Souri- quois, or Mickmacks, on the south." This great tribe or nation of Indians was divided into the Tarratines, the native inhabitants of the Penobscot ; the Openagoes, or Quoddy Indians, who had their residence at the Schoodic and Passamaquoddy Bay; and the Marechites, who inhabited the great river St. John, called by them the Ouygondy.

Of the Tarratines, Williamson says,-

"They were a numerous, powerful, and warlike people, more hardy and brave than their western enemies, whom they often plundered and killed."

According to Hubbard and Prince, they kept the saga- mores between the Piscataqua and the Mystic in perpetual fear. After the conquest and glory achieved in their bat- tles 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, and hence were neutral, and were sup- plied with provisions by Massachusetts during the first Indian war.t

SQUANDO.

This chief, whom Mather calls " a strange enthusiastical sagamore," was a sachem of the Sokokis or Saco tribe. Hubbard says he was " the chief actor, or rather the be- ginner," of the eastern war of 1675. The provocation which excited him to hostility-the upsetting of a canoe in which were his wife and child by some sailors on the

* Capt. Francis, quoted by Williamson, p. 467.

t Massachusetts Records, pp. 50-66.

HISTORY OF YORK COUNTY, MAINE.

Saco River, to see if young Indian children could swim naturally like wild animals, which Squando resented as a great indignity, and to which he attributed the death of the child soon after-is related in the history of the war, farther on. But probably that was only the occasion, not the cause, of his ill-will, for he claimed to have a special revelation that the Great Spirit had left the English people to be destroyed by the Indians. Squando possessed great strength of mind, and was very grave in his manner and impressive in his address. In the spiritual devotions of the Indians he was a leader and an enthusiast, claiming to have direct intercourse with the spirits of the invisible world, who imparted to him a knowledge of future events. " An angel of light," said he, " has commanded me to worship the Great Spirit, and to forbear hunting and labor- ing on the Sabbath."

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History of York County, Maine, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 9

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck Number of Pages: 730

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, Everts & Peck
Number of Pages: 730