USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Bristol > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Maine > York County > York > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 3
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
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HISTORY OF YORK
deep." In 1737 it snowed on April 15 "all day." In 1740 "a foot of snow" fell April I and on April 20 "snow (was) still on the ground." On April 1, 1741 the "fences were covered with snow." On April 3, 1757 there was a snow- storm. On April 15, 1763 "a vast body of snow yet on the ground." On April 1, 1768 there was "a great storm of snow." On April 5, 1775 there was a snowstorm. On April 3, 1781 "a great snow storm." On April 24, 1785 the "snow 3 feet deep in the woods." On April 3, 1786 "a severe snow storm," and on the eighth John Bradbury wrote in his diary, "Went to Mill with a hand sled on the snow it being 2 or 3 feet deep and very difficult walking."
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CHAPTER II THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
The territory now comprised within the ancient bounds of York, and now held by fee simple titles in severalty, was once the possession of nomadic tribes of an uncivilized race known ethnologically as the Red Indian. They belonged to one of the great families called the Algon- quians, who roamed over the entire eastern half of this continent, from the snowbound forests of Canada to the Everglades of Florida, and from the rocky coast of Maine to the canyons of the Colorado. They were the people made familiar to us in song and legend, pictured in the immortal tales of Sprague and Cooper, and in the intrigu- ing rhythm of Longfellow's epic poem. This great family division consisted of many stibs, all speaking the family tongue with local dialectal variations. In this general region of Maine they were known as the Abenakis,1 and also Tarratines in the eastern part of the state. There were no definite territorial limits to their habitat which can be accurately set down on the map. Whether there was a local tribe which bore a distinctive name and were recognized as permanent occupants of this immediate area is unknown. Gookin, in his "History of the Indians of New England," speaks of the "Accomintas," which from its resemblance to the aboriginal name of our river, would seem to imply that there was such an individual local tribe, as he was then dealing with those who inhab- ited this part of Maine .? The connection of this local stib with the soil and its relationship to the time of the coming of the white man is of some historical interest. When the Gulf of Maine began to be well known to the French and English explorers, at the commencement of the century in which the first colony settled at the mouth of the Kenne- bec, the Indian tribes of New England were entering upon an era which promised to be productive of a more stable organization than any we have known. Each of the Algon-
1 Derived from Waban, meaning "dawn," and Aki, meaning "land." The dawn and or East.
2 I Mass. Hist. Coll. i.
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HISTORY OF YORK
quian divisions, speaking a different dialect, was under a capable leader wielding great power over a wide area. The outlook was promising that they would form a feder- ation which would be able to meet and cope successfully
figure des sauvages admouriscois
ALGONQUIAN INDIANS, 1612
From plate LXXXI "Carte Geographique de la Nouvelle Franse" by Champlain. Engraved by David Pelletier, in France.1
with the Mohawks (or Iroquois), who were undertaking to subdue this territory. Then came the whites, tribal wars and the great plague: three unsettling influences which swept away the population, severed occupational bounds, and planted an alien civilization amongst them against which their weapons and agriculture of the stone age could not maintain itself. Within a few years all the
1 As this was engraved or drawn in France it accounts for the fanciful picture of our Maine Indians without much clothing. The climate necessitated the wearing of heavy skins in winter and probably only breech clouts in summer. The squaw holds an ear of corn in her left hand and a squash in her right. The plant between them is a bean.
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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
great chiefs, except Passaconaway of the Merrimac region, fell before these ruthless enemies, and the larger tribal organization, based upon dialects, lost its unity in so-called local tribes which were scarcely more than isolated villages.1
The disastrous effect of the coming of the Europeans upon the lives of the aborigines will appear as this history develops the relations between these two peoples. The tribal war which added its weight to the causes which helped the downfall of the local Indians occurred about the time of the arrival of the Popham Colony, or a few years before. At that time the conspicuous chiefs of New England, Massasoit in the Narragansett country, Passa- conaway controlling the New Hampshire region, Sasanoa, a great Sagamore, over the Abenakis of southern Maine,2 Bessabes, called "the Bashaba" by the English, over the Etechemins inhabiting eastern Maine, and Membertou, the bearded Micmac chieftain, were names to conjure with among the Indians of New England. Of these Sasanoa was the great war-lord over the tribes living east of the Piscataqua, and as such is a part of the aboriginal history of this town. The cause of this war between the Micmacs and the Abenakis, which has been told in a long French poem by Lescarbot who wrote from personal knowledge of the chief actors, was due to a disagreement between them in 1605, arising from trading with the whites. The Micmacs felt sorely aggrieved and came westward to wreak vengeance upon those who had taken advantage of them in bartering. The Micmac chief Membertou, with four hundred of his bravest warriors, made a surprise attack upon the Indians of Sawohkatuck (Saco), and in the battle in the spring of 1607, Sasanoa was killed with hundreds of his subjects.3 When Capt. John Smith arrived on this coast in 1616 the name and fame of Sasanou was still fresh and he recorded that our towering hill was then known as "the greate mountaine of Sasanow." The war bonnet of this Sagamore fell to his successor, Pememem,
1 These generalizations are taken from an unpublished manuscript prepared by Mrs. Fanny Hardy Eckstorm on the Maine Indians, by her kind permission. Her knowledge of this subject is derived from a lifelong association with the remnants of the tribes that once held sway on the Penobscot, and from many years of research among the original French and English accounts of their explorations on this coast.
2 Thayer, Voyage to Sagadahoc (Gorges Society), 23, 30.
3 Histoire de la Nouvelle France, ii, chapter 17; comp. Champlain, Voyages, Ganong editor, ii, 457.
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HISTORY OF YORK
of whom nothing is known except the name. The third disaster which befell the local Indians finished the debacle of the aborigines hereabouts. A devastating epidemic dis- ease raged among them, as well as elsewhere in New England, during the years 1616 and 1617, and contem- poraneous accounts practically agree that it decimated them. The nature of it is uncertain, but that it was not the smallpox seems reasonable from the testimony of Josselyn, who visited Maine in 1638. He wrote that they were smitten, "first by the plague, afterwards, when the English came, by the small pox."1 Evidently it was an imported disease, and it is not improbable that it was yellow fever, brought by some voyagers, as it has existed as far north as this latitude as late as the Revolution.
AN INDIAN PLANTING FIELD
The Indians stated that their bodies turned a yellow color.2 "At our first discovery of those coasts," wrote Gorges, "we found it very populous, the inhabitants stout and warlike."3 Only stragglers remained to tell the tale. When Levett visited the river of Agamenticus in 1624 he has told us that there were cleared spaces and planting fields cul- tivated by the Indians (probably along the meadows on the east side of the stream), but it is certain from the lack of references to their presence that York was practically
1 Two Voyages, 123.
2 There have been epidemics of this disease in New York and Portsmouth.
3 Briefe Narration, 62.
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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
uninhabited by them at the time of the first settlement.
Neither have they left upon the soil of the town many traces of their occupancy in the matter of Indian place names of which York is almost lacking; nor are there to be found shell heaps or other material evidences of con- gregation hereabouts for their feasts or tribal councils. Thomas Gorges in 1640 in a letter to Winthrop speaks of "our Indians," when he sent a sample of woven material, "which supplies the want of hempe." It was used by the natives in making snowshoes, nets and bags. Whether this indicates an encampment of natives making their usual settlement in York or to the Indians of the Province, can- not be determined. This is the only local contemporary reference to them after the settlement of the whites.
Of their traditional origin the Indians of this region carried a folklore identical with all the Amerindian fami- lies. Their theology was pantheistic, and besides belief in a supernatural Being who ruled all things for good or evil they had lesser gods which controlled the various activities of Nature. The myths and traditions which made up their religion had a common origin and are closely correlated to the folklore of other races in distant lands and of widely separated stock. In the Amerindian lore the All Powerful Being who ruled their lives was called Mich-a-bo, the name for the Great White Hare, and around the central fire of their encampments the story-tellers never had a wearied audience in relating the story of Michabo and his prowess. He was recognized as the founder of all earthly things and had his abode in the heavens. To this abode, representing to them the Happy Hunting Grounds, they all expected to go and when asked whither this place was they would point with their finger towards the White Mountains. They carried a well-defined tradition of a flood and the local Indians told John Josselyn, an early visitor to our coast, "this story which they have received from father to son time out of mind that a great while ago their country was drowned and all the people and other creatures in it, only one Powaw and his webb (squaw) foreseeing the flood fled to the White Mountains carrying a hare along with them and so escaped. After a while the Powaw sent the hare away who, not returning, emboldened thereby they descended and lived many years after and had many chil- dren from whom the country was filled again with Indi-
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HISTORY OF YORK
ans." The allusions in this to the well-known Biblical story of the Deluge will be apparent without further com- ment.
These constant references to the hare in their folklore has its analogue in the Brer Rabbit stories of the Negroes which are constructed on the same foundation. It may seem strange that such an insignificant creature as a rabbit or hare should have received this apotheosis. He entered into their daily lives in their hunts, in their ceremonies, and he peopled their dreams with visions of conquests over enemies. "Indeed," said the Jesuit Breboeuf, dis- gusted with such trivialities, "without his aid they think they could not boil a pot." It was not an animal worship as the name Michabo in all its different local forms seems to emphasize that idea. Brinton, however, in his "Myths of the New World" shows that this name being a com- pound of two words "Michi" meaning great and "abos" a hare has a deeper significance which admits of a differ- ent interpretation and, as he says, the initial syllable of the last half of the name meaning white from which is derived their words for the east, the dawn, the light and morning. "Beyond a doubt this is the compound in the name Michabo which therefore means the Great Light, the Spirit of Light, the Dawn and, in the literal sense of the word, the Great White One."
In appearance, as described by the early voyagers who visited this region, they were generally tall and handsome- limbed, black-eyed with straight black hair worn long, tied up in a knot on the back of the head, but the men had no hair on their faces. The exposed portions of their bodies were painted in as brilliant colors as could be obtained from natural sources in this country, and it was noted by them that the women when young were comely with regu- lar features, generally plump of body and their natural complexion variegated by dyes. All had very white teeth, short and even. In demeanor the women were modest "considering their savage breeding and indeed do shame our English rustics whose rudeness in many things exceed- eth theirs" (Josselyn).
The ease of childbirth with their women is of tradi- tional knowledge and was accomplished without help from others and in an incredibly short time. The future young warrior (if a man child) was immediately wrapped in a
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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
beaver skin, laced down to a board and, swinging him over her shoulders with a leathern strap pendant from her forehead, squaw and papoose were soon trudging back to the wigwam or following the caravan.
The native Indian was not always the solemn and stodgy personality depicted for us in the writings of Sprague and Cooper, occupying his leisure in delivering ponderous speeches to the braves but, like all other human beings, he had his times of relaxation. In the spring when the fish rise to the bait plentifully they held feasts where they exercised themselves in games, ceremonial dances, juggling and all manner of revels. They had a game of football which they played on the shore, the goals being sometimes a mile apart, with a ball no bigger than the ordinary hand ball which they kicked with their naked feet, and a contemporary observer praises their sports- manship which did not yield to quarreling or foul play but the goal being won friends they were at the football and friends they must meet at the kettle. (Wood, New England Prospect, 73-75; Williams Key, Chs. xi, xxvii, Smith, True Travels, i, 133.)
They had no settled habitations, removing from one place to another according to the requirements of food supplies. They lived for the most part on the seashore where their spring and summer encampments were pitched, and in winter they went inland to the forests to hunt deer and beaver. Their homes, which they called wigwams, were built with poles driven into the ground in the form of a circle but sometimes square, the tops of which were bound together, leaving a hole for the smoke to ascend. The outside was covered with bark of trees and the inside lined with mats made of rushes, sometimes painted or dyed various colors. Mats and skins were spread around the walls for beds which were often raised from the ground by poles. Inside of these wigwams they cooked their food by a fireplace composed of flat stones. We can understand why Roger Williams described these huts as "filthy, smoky holes." Their dress consisted of the skins of all available animals which they dressed after their own method with the hair left on. They wore the hair side inwards in winter and outwards in summer, bound around their waists with a girdle of snakeskin.
The chance arrival of a European vessel might leave
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HISTORY OF YORK
for their use the discarded apparel of ship's officers. This fortune fell to a local chieftain as will be seen in a later chapter. Their daily life was either a feast or a famine. When luck favored their hunters they gorged themselves as long as the spoils of the chase lasted, after which they would sleep for hours until the next kettleful was boiled.
AN INDIAN CAMP
When all was devoured they satisfied their needs with corn which they pounded into a coarse meal, making it serve as a frugal repast until fortune should again favor their larders. If Michabo did not favor them "as some- times falleth out," said Josselyn, "they make use of Sir Francis Drake's remedy for hunger - go to sleep."
Ordinarily they were a long-lived race, even reaching a hundred years of age. Their ages they reckoned by moons. All forms of numerical expression were natural as they were based on the natural decimal system using their fingers to express ten and, if more, doubling in the same manner. Journeys or like business were reckoned by "sleeps."
Intellectually they had a negligible culture. Their art was crude and their music barbarous, both vocal and in- strumental, which they used at marriages and feasts. The language of the Amerindian philologically was of the agglutinated type of speech, "which delighteth greatly in compounding of words." The name of our river, Agamen- ticus, discussed elsewhere, is a good example of this char- acteristic of their language. The speech of the Indians of this locality was nearer the dialect of the Massachusetts
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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
tribes than that of the Eastern Abenakis, as the surviving place-names indicate this association of forms. The wide range of this aboriginal tongue gave rein to endless dia- lects, which tended to a confusion of speech and the absence of written records completed the difficulty of coordination. An early student of Algonquian, Rev. Experience Mayhew (1673-1758), the Indian missionary, stated that the publication of the Bible in the Natick dialect, by Eliot, materially helped to a better under- standing of their dialectal forms between the Massachu- setts tribes.
Of the language in general it may be said that the artic- ulate sounds employed by the Indians lacked several of the consonants employed in the English language, such as b, f, g, l, r, and x. Their vowel sounds were like our own, but y was not a part of their speech. The intonations of them were peculiar to his mode of articulation. The sound of o and oo was made with the lips closed, through the nose. Nouns were not varied by genders or cases but by number (singular or plural), whether animate or inanimate, pres- ent or past, great or small, and it should be understood that the Indian had his own conceptions of qualities and characteristics of things and localities that were good or convenient to him in his life. A "good" harbor for his canoes was a shallow, landlocked cove or bay that would be unfitted for the larger craft of the white man. As a study in comparative philology it is a fascinating diver- sion, but the so-called eloquence of the Indian is one of the sentimental fables of imaginative writers. "Lo, the poor Indian, " was simple and direct in his speech and pro- fuse with his nasal grunts.
William Wood, in his "New England's Prospect," published in 1634, probably written shortly before that year, gives the earliest comment on the Indians of this région :
The Tarrenteens saving that they eate not mans flesh are little lesse salvage and cruell than these Canniballs: Our Indians doe feare them as their deadly enemies; for so many of them as they meete they kill. About 2 years ago, our Indians being busie about their accus- tomed huntings, not suspecting them so neere their own liberties, were on the suddaine surprized by them, some being slaine, the rest escaping to their English Asylum, whither they durst not pursue them; their Sagamore was wounded by. an arrow, but presently cured by English Chirurgery. These Indians are the more insolent by reason
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HISTORY OF YORK
they have guns which they dayly trade for with the French (who will sell his eyes, they say for beaver:) but these doe them more credit than service; for having guns they want powder, or if they have that they want shot, something or other being alwayes wanting, so that they use them for little but to salute coasting boates that come to trade, who no sooner can anchor in any harbor; but they present them with a vollie of shot, asking for sacke and strong liquors, which they soe much love since the English used to trade it with them, that they will scarce trade for anything else, lashing out into exces- sive abuse, first taught by the example of 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 strong drinke or use so much as to sippe of strong-waters untill our bestiall example and dishonest incitation hath brought them to it; from which I am sure sprung many evil consequents, as desorder, quarrels, wrongs, Unconscionable and forcive wresting of beaver and wampompeage; and from over-flowing Cups there hath beene a proceeding to revenge, murther and over-flowing of blood. Take these Indians in their owne trimme and naturall disposition and they be reported to be wise, lofty, spirited, constant in friendship to one another; true in their promise and more industrious than many others. (Part 2, ch. ii, pp. 67-8.)
The Abenakis were not a warlike tribe as compared to the Indian of the prairies. They followed the peaceful pursuit of fishing like all coastal tribes. Polygamy was practiced by their chiefs. It is related that an Indian asked a missionary how many gods the English did worship, and, being answered "one god," the inquirer reckoned up about thirty-seven principal gods he had and "shall I," said he, "throw away these thirty-seven gods for one?"1 Evidently the incredulous native considered the subject from a mathematical standpoint and thought the showing was distinctly unfavorable for the whites.
The Indian had his evil as well as his good spirit - Abbamocko or Cheepie was the name of this antithesis to Michabo. He was the one who smote them with incurable diseases and defeated all their plans. In their terror at these manifestations of his power they turned to their medicine men to exorcise this evil spirit, and this character was one of the necessary accompaniments of what may be termed their spiritual life. If these conjurers failed to lay Cheepie and the diseased fell a victim to his wiles; when death overtook them "they dye patiently, both men and
1 Letter Mayhew to Whitfield, Sept. 7, 1650 ("Light Appearing," etc., p. 4).
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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
women," said a contemporary writer, "not knowing of a hell to scare them nor a conscience to terrify them."
The last phase in the life description of this race which inhabited York, before the coming of the whites, takes us to the disposal of their remains and respecting this a quo- tation from Josselyn furnishes the final picture:
They dig a Pit and set the deceased therein upon his breech upright and throwing in the earth, cover it with sode and bind them down with sticks, driving in two stakes at each end. Their mournings are somewhat like the howlings of the Irish, seldom at the grave, but in the Wigwam where the party dyed, blaming the Devil for his hard- heartedness, and concluding with rude prayers to him to afflict them no further.
It may not be inappropriate in this connection to hold a post-mortem examination over the remains of an arti- ficial Indian whose name has been taken in vain in our local annals. I refer to Aspenquid of whose life, death and burial many mythical tales involving illimitable credulity have been preserved and, strange to say, multiplied in quantity in the centuries succeeding his alleged regretted demise. The legend is more or less familiar to the people of this town, but for the purposes of record it may be con- densed. Called "Saint" Aspinquid and described as an Indian "apostle," converted to Christianity about 1630, he spent the remaining fifty years of his life in preaching to sixty-six different tribes of Indians "from the Atlantic to the California Sea." He died in 1682 and we are sol- emnly told that he was buried with great pomp and cere- mony on top of Mt. Agamenticus, whither came Indians even from the "California Sea" bringing with them buf- faloes, moose, wolves, wild cats, minks, porcupines and rattlesnakes, not forgetting 501 fishes, making a total of 6,721 animals for sacrificial rites in honor of this "good Indian"- perhaps the first of his kind to be so classed. If we can survive the humor of this great event we may be prepared to hear that a tombstone was erected on the spot with an epitaph, inscribed in the Indian language, closing with these sententious aphorisms:
Present, useful; absent, wanted; Living, desired; died, lamented.
The author of this history regrets to deprive the people of York of the ashes of this picturesque figment, but the necessity of historical requirements demands that his
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HISTORY OF YORK
ghost be laid, and the real truth, less romantic, be sub- stituted. As far as known this legend was first given a local setting by the late Judge William Pitt Preble in 1858, when he published a sketch of his family and its York ancestry. The plain fact is that the cult of "Saint" Aspenquid belongs to Nova Scotia, where it had its birth as a festival in that Province before 1800, and has no more connection with York than with any other part of the country. It is not even a part of the old Indian tradi- tions, and the Jesuit Fathers who had more to do with the Christianizing of the Indians of North America than other missionaries, from the earliest times, do not mention his name in the yearly "Relations." The following is from Akin's "History of Halifax, Nova Scotia":
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