USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 3
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Game birds were equally plentiful in this wilderness. The passenger pigeons, which had their range in this region and bred in central Quebec and Nova Scotia,6 were seasonally present in flocks that defy description. Some idea of the number of these pigeons can be gathered from later observers who studied them within their natural ranges. As late as 1813 Audubon recorded a flight of these birds that literally filled the heavens. He stated that "the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse." This single flight that he records lasted for three days. Another observer early in the nineteenth century, Alexander Wilson, estimated a flock which he saw to contain more than 2,200,000,000 birds. The wild turkey, too, abounded along the Maine coast and fattened on the rich supply of acorns. Capt. John Smith reported "great flocks of turkies" in New England, while Thomas Morton (1632) in Massa- chusetts wrote: "Turkies there are which divers times in great flocks have sallied by our doors." The ruffed grouse abounded so numerously in the great forests that in an earlier day the damage they inflicted on budding fruit trees was counteracted in some towns in New England by a bounty of twenty-five cents per bird. Bobwhite was likewise no stranger in these parts, and his cheery whistle echoed from the small brush and cover of the areas of southern Maine.
The land, also, left with those who first beheld it an impres- sion of fruitfulness. James Rosier of the Weymouth expedition
5Colls. Mass. Hist. Soc., Ser. 3, VIII, 20.
6F. M. Chapman, Birds of Eastern North America (New York: D. Appleton & Co.).
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Prediscovery Days
(1605) seems to have been our first summer tourist to leave be- hind him any record of his impressions. From his Relation we offer a brief account from a day's tramp in a neighboring river valley, where conditions may be taken as typical of those in our own:
The wood she bearith is not shrubbish fit only for fewell, but goodly tall Firre, Spruce, Birch, Beech, Oke, which in many places is not so thicke, but may with small labour be made feeding ground, being plen- tifull like the outward Islands with fresh water, which streameth down in many places. ... Many of our Company who had been travellers in sundry countries, and in the most famous Rivers, yet affirmed them not comparable to this they now beheld.
În this march we passed over very good ground, pleasand and fer- tile, fit for pasture, for the space of some three miles, having but little wood, and that Oke, like stands left in our pastures in England, good and great, fit timber for any use. ... The soil is black bearing sundry herbs, grass and strawberries bigger than ours in England. In many places are low thicks like our Coppices of small young wood. And surely it did all ressemble a stately Park, wherein appear some old trees with high withered tops, and others flourishing with living green boughs. Upon the hills grow notable high timber trees, masts for ships of 400 tons: and at the bottom of every hill, a little run of fresh water, but the furtherst and last we passed, ran with a great stream able to drive a mill.7
In 1603 Capt. Martin Pring explored the area between the Saco and Piscataqua rivers and reported as follows:
Passing up the river we saw certain cottages [wigwams] together, abandonned by the savages and not far off we beheld their gardens and one among the rest of an acre of ground; and in the same was some to- bacco, pumpkins, cucumbers and such like; and some of the people had maize or Indian wheat among them. In the fields were found wild peas, strawberries very fair and big, gooseberries, raspberries, hurts and other wild fruits. ... And as the land is full of God's good blessings, so is the sea replenished with great abundance of excellent fish, or cod sufficient to laden many ships which we found on the coast in the month of June. Seals to make oil withal, mullets, turbots, mackerel, herring, crabs, lob- sters, oysters and muscles with ragged pearls in them.
This plenitude of fish deserves special mention as it was one of the major factors which drew the first white men to this area and the one which for many decades thereafter formed one of its principal sources of wealth. In fact, James Truslow Adams has observed that "our commerce smelt as strongly of fish as our the- ology did of brimstone."8 The shores of the coast and the clay flats of the rivers were everywhere full of clams, while lobsters were almost as common. I recall my grandfather, Jacob Keene, telling that when he was a young man in the first quarter of the
"Rosier's Relation of Weymouth's Voyage to the Coast of Maine, printed for the Georges Society (Portland, Me., 1887).
8Founding of New England, I, 11.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
last century he would put on his rubber boots, take a bushel basket and short gaff, go to the shore at low tide, and return in twenty minutes with a bushel of lobsters. Numerous shell heaps along the rivers attest to the prevalence of the oyster. Purchas, in his Pilgrims (1625), records that the Popham colonists found "oysters nine inches in length" and that they were told that these were by no means the largest. In the winter there were frostfish, smelts, and flounders. In the spring alewives and smelts crowded the head- waters of the rivers. A little later came salmon and sturgeon, while mackerel, herring, shad, and porgies thronged the inlets and tide- waters. So abundant were the alewives and herring that the Indians and early settlers used them for fertilizer. One alewife to a hill of corn seems to have been the formula usually followed. A single fertilizing was sufficient to insure the fertility of the soil for three years.
The deeper coastal waters were filled with haddock, hake, and pollock which swarmed on the feeding grounds in the cold waters of the Labrador current, extending from Cape Cod to Newfoundland. It was to the cod, however, that this area owed its early European notoriety. Capt. John Smith himself, coming in 1614 to take whales, found a better profit in cod, of which he secured 60,000 in one month. This fish was much sought as a food in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, largely on account of the demand in the Catholic countries of Europe. No- where along the coast was it found in greater abundance than in the Muscongus area. This is attested by the statement of Capt. John Smith, cited by Purchas as follows: "All these ships till this last yeare, have been fished within a square of two or three leagues and not one of them would venture any further." John Pory, in a letter to the Governor of Virginia from Damariscove Island in 1622, quotes a report from the mate of the Sparrow to the effect that "a man cannot cast out a hooke at anie ledge at sea in that distance, but he shall draw up goodlie fish at pleasure." Further- more, in a dispatch by the Milanese Ambassador in London to the Duke of Milan December 18, 1497, he comments on Cabot's voy- age as follows: "They affirm that there the sea is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets, but with fishing baskets, a stone being placed in the basket to sink it in the water." They say "that they can bring so many fish that this kingdom will have no more business with Islanda and that from that country there will be a very great trade in the fish which they call stock-fish [cod]." Brerton, in his account of Gosnold's voyage, affirms:
We had pestered our ships so much with cod fish that we threw numbers of them overboard again; and surely I am persuaded that in the months of March, April and May there is upon this coast better
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Prediscovery Days
fishing and in as great plenty as in Newfoundland; for the sculles of mackerel, herring, cod and other fish that we daily saw as we went and came from the shore were wonderful; and besides these places where we took these cod (and might in a few days have laden our ship) were within seven fathoms water and within less than a league of the shore.
These comments, it should be noted, were all made with reference to Maine waters, and some of them directly concerned our par- ticular area.
Little more need be said in reference to the Muscongus re- gion and what it was like in the days before its discovery and exploration. That men found it an attractive place to settle is beyond question. Driven out repeatedly by the Indians, they re- turned again and again to hew their homes from this rich and fas- cinating wilderness.
II
THE PREDISCOVERY INHABITANTS OF THE WALDOBOROUGH AREA
Vainly the silent, stone-tipped arrows flitter from the forest at twilight. The flash and roar of musketry replied. Manitou and Jehovah wrestled in the valleys together - and the tas- seled Corn-God lost.
HERVEY ALLEN
HERE IS AN ABUNDANCE of archeological evidence pointing to the fact that the North American continent has been the home of human beings for unnumbered centuries, though their numbers have been relatively small and widely scattered. In few contin- ental districts have more ancient human artifacts been discovered than in the State of Maine, chiefly in the area between the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers. Here, unquestionably, man was at home in times which reach back deep into the prehistoric past.
Contrary to general belief, the earliest inhabitants of this district, of which we have any knowledge, were not the Indians but an historically obscure race known today as the Red Paint People. They occupied portions of Maine thousands of years ago and, in their culture at least, were not related to the Indians who were living here at the time of discovery by white men. In fact, knowledge of these people is very recent. It goes no further back than to the closing decades of the last century. By the year 1892 there were only three sites of Red Paint culture in Maine which had been excavated. One of these was near Bucksport; one was on Lake Alamoosook near Orland, and a third was at Ellsworth. All were within a radius of seventeen miles. Sporadic explorations and discoveries were made up to 1912 when the work took a more systematic turn. In June of that year, an archeological survey of the state was begun which continued until 1920.1 In this period three hundred historic and prehistoric sites, occupying an area of ninety-four by seventy miles, were mapped out. Nineteen of these
1Warren K. Moorehead, Field Director, "Archeological Survey of New England," and by the same author : "Prehistoric Cultures in the State of Maine," XIX Con- gress of Americanists (Washington, D.C., 1915).
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Prediscovery Inhabitants
sites by 1920 had yielded Red Paint remains and had averaged about five objects to a grave. Since 1920, further investigations have in- cluded in the range of this culture an area extending westward to the Kennebec valley, with the most extensive remains of all lo- cated near the forks of that river. Hence, at the present time, we may conclude that this culture occupied mainly the regions of the Kennebec and Penobscot river valleys with all the territory lying between them.
The evidence clearly shows that this culture was contiguous and that it occupied all the lesser valleys between these two main rivers, including that of the Medomak. It is unfortunate that some of the known cemeteries nearest to our area have been worked by careless and unpracticed hands. The Hart's Falls Cemetery above Warren was ransacked in this manner, as was the one on the Tarr estate in Union, although at the latter place eight or ten graves were later found undisturbed. The Red Paint site on the western border of Waldoboro, at Pemaquid Pond, three quarters of the way down from its head, was partially obliterated in excavations made about twenty-five years ago. Some of the artifacts from this cemetery have found their way into the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. The valley of the Medomak and the general area with its many ponds was included in the original survey. Although none of the newer sites marked yielded Red Paint arti- facts, beyond doubt they are there. The final proof simply awaits the local archeologist who is curious, patient, and knows where to look and to dig.
All the remains of this Red Paint culture have been found in sand or gravel deposits, never in clay. Sand was preferred, as the digging with primitive tools was much easier, and the bodies laid in it were better preserved from moisture. No burial exceeds a depth of five feet; in fact, most of them are from two to three and one half feet in depth. The tools found in these Red Paint graves differ so markedly from the stone tools used by any of the North American Indians that we can only infer that these were a distinct people with a culture of their own.
The artifacts found in these graves fall into eight distinct classes: 1. the plummet, 2. the gouge, 3. the adz blade, 4. spears or daggers of soft stone, 5. long slender perforated pendants, 6. small crescents (problematical forms), 7. iron pyrites, 8. small hammer stones or paint grinders. These tools are of exquisite workmanship and represent a skill in flaking never achieved by the American Indians. The tools are usually found in a mass of red ochre. Some graves are so old that even gouges and plummets offer evidence of disintegration, while others produce gouges as sharp and thin as it is possible to work stone. Only a few graves, notably in the Lan-
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
caster Cemetery at Winslow, have yielded fragments of human bones.
The other distinguishing and remarkable feature of this an- cient civilization and the one from which the people derive their present name is the presence in each grave of a large quantity of powdered hematite or red ochre. The quantity ranges from a few quarts to as much as a bushel to a grave. The only extensive de- posits of this material in the state are those near the Katahdin Iron Works in central Maine, and from this source, scholars agree gen- erally, the supply was drawn. That these people should have gone so far and transported with so much trouble a commodity which had no economic use unquestionably lends to this substance a high religious and ritualistic significance. This material was transported in the main by water from the Katahdin region to the coastal area, but even this involved long portages and overland lugs before it was available for final use. Each clan may have maintained a com- mon store administered by a priest or chieftain, or each family may have held its own supply against the hour of its need. The emphasis laid upon the use of this red ochre may or may not ex- plain the fact that all the remains left by these people are found near waters navigable for small boats, usually on river banks or ponds or lake sides. In fact, some are so close to streams that eroded banks have revealed their presence through the discolora- tion of the soil by the ochre.
In the discussions of this culture, little explanation has been offered why red ochre is found in practically all graves. A prob- able answer is not difficult, and perhaps becomes apparent when this civilization is compared with the stone age cultures in Europe in the late Pleistocene. In this latter period, 30,000 years ago, it was the general practice of Cro-Magnon man to bury his dead together with his crude utensils and ornaments.2 Another unique character- istic of their burials is that the bodies were usually covered with red or yellow ochre. This practice is one that has been generally employed by various ancient peoples in other parts of the world. In a word, this custom is indicative of a simple belief in a life in the beyond, in which the dead person would have use for his tools, and the red ochre was evidently a very potent instrumen- tality in achieving and insuring his immortality. Such a belief goes back to the very primitive periods in our social evolution, many thousands of years ago, when man first observed the causal rela- tionship existing between blood and life. In observing the death by violence of the game he killed or even of some of his own kind sorely or mortally stricken, he noted that as blood ebbed in great quantities life weakened and receded. If the flow of blood was
2Fay-Cooper Cole, The Long Road (Baltimore, 1933), p. 19.
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Prediscovery Inhabitants
checked, life returned and with it in the course of time strength and vigor. On the other hand, if too much was lost, death became inevitable. In this manner blood became associated in his mind with life. In seeking a crude answer as to the reason, it was the red element in the blood to which he ascribed its peculiar potency. By a simple act of mental transference, redness became a life-giving quality and "red things" became "life givers."3 For this reason the red carnelian enjoyed a high repute among primitive peoples. Like- wise, in the case of the ochre, its redness was life giving and hence a potent factor in insuring for the deceased a vigorous life in the world beyond. This I believe is, in brief, the answer which An- thropology offers in explanation of the significance and symbolism of red ochre in the graves of these ancient men of Maine who occupied the Waldoborough area as a part of their habitat.
The origin of these Red Paint People is a mystery on which the evidence casts no light, but it is known that mankind has ex- isted on the earth for certainly more than a million years. In this tremendous span of time, man has wandered in slow migrations across the face of the entire earth. In this connection, it should be remembered that Cro-Magnon man reached the Atlantic shores of Europe from Asia, and the Red Paint folk, wandering in the reverse direction, may have reached the Pacific shores and crossed a land bridge to the American continent, as did the Indian millen- niums later. Without question these speculations seem bold, but they are in harmony with such meager evidence as we possess in reference to the slow migrations, or rather movements, of men over the face of the whole earth during the many millenniums of the Pleistocene Period.
The extinction of the Red Paint civilization is likewise highly problematical, but here again we should, in passing, mention the most probable solution of this ethnic mystery. It is known that the Indians in Maine came from the west, for the folklore of the Abnaki contain tales of this migration.4 In this case, it is entirely conceivable that the Red Paint People were first conquered by the savages, possibly massacred, hunted down and wiped out, and the few remnants absorbed in the Indian tribes. In such an event they would adopt the dominant culture, and their own, in the course of a few generations, would gradually disappear. This has been the fate of many an ancient race, the details of whose his- tory, like those of the Red Paint, have been swallowed up by time.
At the time of the arrival of the white man in this area, the Indian was already here and had been living a settled life for a very considerable period of time. In the year 1600 there were several
$G. Elliott Smith, Human History, (New York, 1929), Chap. I.
4Fannie H. Eckstrom, Maine, A History, 1, 45.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
thousand Indians living on the Maine coast and in the interior of the state.5 For one hundred and fifty bloody and fearsome years in this area, their history was closely integrated with that of the early settlers. From the early 1620's until after the fall of Quebec in 1759, the white man traded with the Indian, purchased and stole his lands, fought him, lived with him as captives, and adopted those aspects of his culture best suited for adjusting himself to the hard life of the wilderness.
The Indian was a tireless traveller; in the hunt and on the warpath he traversed wide areas. This was a fact which compelled the early settlers on the Medomak and in other coastal settlements to deal not only with their nearest savage neighbors but with most of the Indians of Maine and of large portions of eastern Canada as well.
The present area of Maine was occupied by the Abnaki at the time of the earliest voyages of discovery, and had been for many centuries prior to this period.6 This tribe, with all its local divisions in this area, was racially of the Algonquin family which covered all of the eastern and central United States with the ex- ception of the two alien racial islands, the Sioux and the Iroquois or Five Nations. At the time of white exploration, coastal Maine and the coastal river valleys were sparsely populated by the nu- merous subdivisions of this race. Many of them, as they were displaced by the whites, migrated to Canada and were first set- tled near Quebec. Eventually, in 1700, they removed to St. Francis where they joined the Abnaki who were also exiles from Maine. The St. Francis Indians were, from the first, the bitterest foes of the Maine settlers, and, in fact, of all New England settlers. Their settlement was at the junction of the St. Francis and St. Lawrence rivers; and from this point they repeatedly crossed the Maine wil- derness and waged cruel and relentless warfare against the colo- nists occupying their former homes in the coastal regions of Maine, until they were virtually destroyed by Major Robert Rogers in 1759. The descendants of the few survivors of this massacre still reside in this same locality.
Of those Indians more immediately adjacent to the Medo- mak valley, first in order were the Pejepscots who were located at Brunswick near the mouth of the Androscoggin River. Just north of them in the valley of this river were the Arasaguntacooks. Their village, located near the present Lewiston, had the same name. They bore a reputation for courage and ruthlessness in war-
5W. K. Moorehead, Archeology of Maine, (Andover Press, 1922).
"The nomenclature and factual material of this chapter on the Maine Indians is derived from Frederick W. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, 2 vols., Bull. 30, Bur. of Am. Ethnology, (Washington, D.C., 1911). This is a compilation of leading American scholars and is the most reliable au- thority on Indian ethnology.
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Prediscovery Inhabitants
fare, and participated in all the wars against the settlers. Their town was burned by the English in 1690. They later joined the St. Francis on the St. Lawrence and continued the wars against the Maine settlers until their new home too was destroyed.
East of the Arasaguntacooks, in the valley of the Kennebec, was one of the two larger divisions of the Abnaki, the word mean- ing people of the eastland or morning land. They were known to the Puritans in Massachusetts as Tarateens until their removal to St. Francis, when this name was applied to the Penobscot tribe. The Abnaki, ignoring the ethnic range of this race, were the In- dians of the Kennebec. There were the Canibas of the lower Kenne- bec, located above Merrymeeting Bay, and the more numerous and important Norridgewocks of the upper valley. This latter name means: people of the still water between rapids, and it was the typical tribe of the Abnaki Confederacy. Its territory embraced the major part of the valley. The principal village was on the left bank just below the rapids near the present town of Norridgewock. It was the seat of the mission of the famous Jesuit, Father Rasles, who began his work there in 1688. So warmly did he attach this tribe to the French that it became the center for most of the agi- tation and warfare against the coastal colonists. In 1724 the village was attacked and destroyed by the long-suffering English. The mission was burned; Father Rasles was killed while fighting val- iantly, and the Indians were dispersed. They fled in groups to the Penobscots, the Passamaquoddies and to the St. Francis. A number later returned to their old home but were again attacked in 1749. It was not until the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 that the last remnant withdrew to the St. Francis in order to join these in their warfare against the Maine settlers.
In considering the Indian wars and the attacks on settlers and settlements, we are prone to think of these forays as having been made by those Indians occupying lands not far removed. This was in no sense the case. The Indians were great travellers in peace, and in war they moved long distances to strike their deadly blows. The distance they would travel to trade may be inferred from an Indian conference at St. Georges, August 3, 1751. Here Colonel Louis, a Penobscot chief, complained that prices in the local truck house were higher than at Albany on the Hudson where some of his tribe went to trade. Likewise in war the savage ranged great distances. The Maine Indians waged war against the Massa- chusetts settlements and King Philip's warriors followed the war- path into Maine. For years the settlers at Pemaquid, Damariscotta, Broad Bay, and St. Georges sustained attacks by the St. Francis Indians from Canada as well as by those from the Penobscot and St. John valleys. In prediscovery days the Mohawks from central
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