History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1, Part 4

Author: Stahl, Jasper Jacob, 1886-
Publication date: 1956
Publisher: Portland, Me., Bond Wheelwright Co
Number of Pages: 648

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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO

New York waged war against the Abnaki groups in Lincoln and Penobscot counties. The widest known range of such activities is perhaps best illustrated by the Iroquois who were familiar with the country as far west as the Black Hills of Dakota from whence they returned with prisoners. The same tribes ranged as far south as South Carolina to attack the Catawba and into Florida against the Creeks.

Our closest Indian neighbors were the Wewenocs. The Med- omak valley was a part of their hunting and camping range, but they were simply one of the many groups who brought death and devastation to the Waldoborough area. They too were mem- bers of the Abnaki Confederacy. Their range was from the eastern shore of the Kennebec through Lincoln County to the Georges River or possibly to the Penobscot. Their name in Abnaki meant · very brave, fearing nothing. Captain John Smith in 1614 described them as follows: "They were active, strong, healthy and very witty. The men had a perfect constitution of body, were of comely proportions, and quite athletic. They would row their canoes faster with five paddles than our own men would our boat with eight oars." In the devastating wars that occurred between the Eastern and Western Indians (1612-1617), the Wewenocs were greatly reduced. As their famous chief, the great Bashaba, does not reappear in history after this date, it may be assumed that he was slain in this war. In 1617 the work of war was followed by a widespread and deadly epidemic which further decimated their numbers. They figured in the Falmouth Treaty of 1749 and other treaties of the period, but by 1727 most of them had removed to the St. Francis. Only a few families remained in Maine, and in 1747 these joined their confederates in exile and from their new base at St. Francis carried on intermittent warfare against the whites in their old homes until the power of the French in America was broken by the fall of Quebec in 1759.

East of the Wewenocs were the Penobscots. In Abnaki this word signifies: it forks on the white rocks. This name applied to the falls at Oldtown. These were the most numerous of the Abnaki Confederacy. In scattered villages they occupied the country on both sides of Penobscot Bay and claimed the entire basin of the river. Their summer seats were near the sea, but during the win- ter and spring they inhabited the territory near the falls where they still reside. The principal village was Oldtown on Indian Is- land. They seem to have been closely associated with the Wewen- ocs. The highest estimate of their numbers runs to about one thou- sand. Still farther eastward were the Malecites, meaning in Abnaki, broken talkers. As early as 1588 they were occupying the St. John

Prediscovery Inhabitants

River valley. They were always close allies of the French and were constant in their hostility to the New England settlers.

All these tribes at one time or another, in groups or singly with other groups, harried the settlements in the present county

70 Mai

691

R.P .- Red Paint

x .Ind Village

Quebec

Sr Lawrer ce Rivei

x Begancour-

St. Francis

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Petei

.....

Kineo

"The Forts

Moosehead Lake Indians (Penabs)

Passamaquoddy Indians

ABNAKI Xx Norumbega

Malecites

Penobscots

R.P

R. P.

Penobscots *

end

Loven

x Ossipee

Sebago L.

Dejepscots 1614

This map shows

the location & distribution

Sokokı

of the Indian Population in

Maine at the time of dis-

Pennacook ×

covery: Also the Canadian Arra to which many of the Maine Indians latti moved

of Lincoln. Fate brought the two races in contact, as well as into conflict, for upwards of a century and a half. There was in con- sequence a reciprocal absorption of cultures. The life of the In- dian was markedly modified; and the white man, too, freely adopted those aspects of savage culture which had definite survival value

Etechmins (++ time of discovery )

ABNA

* Norridge- Wocks

obscots

Kennebec

Canibas

Pequawketx

Saco R.

Chaudiere RIV

Moosehea

Megantic L'

HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO

in his conflict with the wilderness, as well as others which added agreeably to the amenities of his living. Many of the latter became irrevocably integrated with our culture and today are an unques- tioned part of our own mode of living.

The American Indian has been, in the past at least, quite gen- erally misunderstood, and has been allotted a role in our history which in a large measure is undeserved. This is entirely true of the Indians of Maine. In the very earliest period of colonization they were friendly and helpful. They soon learned from experience that this could not continue to be the case. The initial wrongs that led to the long misunderstandings and savage wars were first perpe- trated by white men. In our area the first contact of white men with Indians led to the forcible seizure by Captain George Wey- mouth in 1605 of five savages, including two chiefs, who were taken to England and held there for two years.

Five years later Captain Edward Harlow, cruising along the coast, called at Monhegan, and either there or in the vicinity, ab- ducted three natives who had come on board his ship for purposes of trade. At Cape Cod he kidnapped six more and took them all to England. In 1614 Captain Hunt, one of Captain Smith's captains, seized twenty-seven Indians in Massachusetts, took them to Spain, and was able to sell some of them at about one hundred dollars apiece. Through the intervention of friendly monks the sale of the rest was prevented. Various and sundry other white adventurers abducted the savages where possible and sold them as slaves in the West Indian and Spanish markets. Thus it was that even before the period of settlement the damage had been done, for such acts served to poison the minds of the Indians against the English and to lay the foundations of the hatred which inspired in part the later wars.

Wherever the English settler located, he cleared the land of its forests and in this manner destroyed the haunts of the game which was a substantial part of the Indian's living. The savage was quick to see that the modes of the white man's economy were de- structive of his own; and once this issue was clearly fixed in his mind the Indian merely fought to retain his home, his hunting ground, and the only mode of life he knew and to which he was adapted.

The Indians who hunted, fished, trapped, and summered in the Medomak valley were in reality of a splendid race. They were more gentle in manners and more docile than their western breth- ren. They became our implacable enemies only in the face of long mistreatment. Only after the lapse of decades, when their hatred had been fully aroused, did they resort to torturing prisoners. However, women were always treated kindly. Hunting, fishing, and raising maize and vegetables were the basis of their economy.

Prediscovery Inhabitants

They fertilized their fields with fish - a practice the white man was quick to adopt in the absence of other fertilizers. Their houses or wigwams were conical in form and were covered with birch bark or woven mats or skins. Several families occupied a single dwelling. Their villages were in some cases enclosed with palisades and contained a council house of considerable size, oblong in form and roofed with bark. These council chambers, as well as the smaller abodes, contained a central paved fireplace. In some such villages there was a second large house reserved by the men for purposes of social fellowship. The Indian was essentially a social fellow despite the fact that he is usually pictured in the white man's literature as silent, dignified, and reserved. Such a concep- tion prevails largely because his etiquette required such bearing on ceremonial occasions where he was most frequently seen by white men. In actuality he was fond of talk, of joking and punning, and an ardent lover of games of skill and endurance.

These early possessors and occupants of Maine were not no- madic. Each tribe dwelt within the limits of a certain tract or re- gion which it claimed. Thus the Wewenocs occupied and claimed our area including the coastal region from the Kennebec to the Georges or perhaps to the Penobscot River. Neither individuals nor families possessed vested rights in land. It belonged to the tribe as a whole. Hence it was impossible for a chief, family, or clan legally to sell or give away to aliens any part of the tribal domain. It is doubtful if the Indian ever understood the white man's con- ception of individual land ownership or realized the significance of deeds or treaties which ceded away territory. In most cases they believed they were selling or assigning to the settlers merely the right to use the land as they used it, namely, for hunting, fishing, trapping, or the raising of maize and beans. This basic difference in the conception of land and its uses would alone have been suffi- cient to lock the two races in a conflict, the inevitable solution of which had to come through force.

The annual round of life for the Indian of Maine before the coming of the white man was about as follows: With the advent of spring, he moved from inland toward the coast and settled for a couple of months in the area near the head of tidewater. Here in the spring run of fish at the falls, he caught, smoked, and dried large quantities for winter use. When the run of fish was over, he utilized the cleared spots of meadowland, old camping sites and beaver- dam meadows, to plant his maize, beans, and pumpkins. These crops were cultivated until thoroughly established; and then late in June he left them, moving to the coast, coastal inlets and coastal islands where he camped for the summer months, finding an easy living amid rich supplies of clams, lobsters, mussels, oysters, and deep-sea

HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO

fish. These were consumed in large quantities, and additional sup- plies were dried and cured for winter use. In the early fall, when the plague of flies and gnats in the woods had abated, he would move back to the head of tidewater, harvest his crop of vegetables when it had sufficiently ripened, and then in early autumn would move deep into the inland forest for the fall hunting.

Here the Indians would break up into smaller groups and scatter. In a sheltered spot, deep in the recess of some little valley, a dozen families would set up their winter wigwams. From this point the men of such a group would hunt over tremendous areas. In canoes they would proceed far up the major rivers and follow their tributaries deep into the inland recesses to the Chain of Lakes, across the Height of Land to the bounds of Canada and beyond. The meat from the hunt was smoked, cured, and cached along the line the inland waterways followed; and on the return trip in late autumn, it would be picked up and taken along to the winter home. At such times the game around their homes was left unmolested in order that there might be a supply of fresh meat for midwinter hunting when the range of the hunter would be limited by the cold or deep snow.

The banks of the Medomak afford ample evidence of the presence of the red man and of this economy. Shell beds line the river bank at numerous spots. Only a few need be mentioned here. Those on the shore banks of the Hezekiah Mink farm are typical. They are largely clamshell deposits, ranging to the usual thickness of three feet, and have yielded arrowheads, flint, and flint flakes. Just a bit below, on Trowbridge's Point, the farm owned by Mrs. Russell Cooney, stone tomahawks, arrowheads, and flint flakes have been found in the deposits. Other deposits from which stone arti- facts have been taken are on the old Kuentzel farm now owned by Mark Smith, Brick Yard Point on Dutch Neck,7 and Woltzgrover's Island at Forest Lake. From this latter deposit Elmer Eugley many years ago dug a small stone axe, fabricated by a savage apparently as a plaything for his son. There are many other points along the Medomak which furnish evidence of this mode of life practiced by the Indians of our valley and coastal region. The coming of the white man, who usurped the valley and this coastal area, interfered markedly with this agelong savage economy and was one of the factors which led to a century and a half of cruel and bloody strife.

The presence of these shell heaps in the Medomak and neigh- boring river valleys has been the subject of a good deal of irra- tional speculation. There is, however, no great mystery associated with them in the mind of the anthropologist, even in the case of

"The brick yard and wharf from which brick was shipped three-quarters of a cen- tury ago, when it was owned and worked by Moses Kaler.

Prediscovery Inhabitants

very extensive ones, such as those in the Damariscotta area. These heaps are common throughout the United States. They are in the main deposits of rubbish resulting from the consumption of shell- fish as food. They are not, however, always mere random accumu- lations; for during the period of deposition, and subsequently, the materials have been utilized by the savages for the erection of mounds for residence, for defense and as depositaries for the dead. Deposits covering ten and even twenty acres are not uncommon.

The sites of the few villages mentioned in this chapter do not include all Indian localities in Maine. These villages were small and often temporary in character, as the savage had very little to move, and there was ofttimes ample reason for his not abiding very long in one spot. Those listed also serve to make clear how sparsely populated the state was by its original Indian population. This fact is brought out in still clearer relief when it is recalled that at the time of discovery the Indian population of the United States did not exceed 850,000.8 Their number undoubtedly seemed much larger to the colonists because of their practice of assembling from such great distances in order to carry on their warfare.

The Indians who claimed and roamed the valleys of the Medomak, the Sheepscot, the Damariscotta, and the Georges stoutly resisted the advance of the settlers in six wars before the latter were able to win an enduring peace. The very earliest English settlers in Lincoln County in these earlier wars were repeatedly driven from their homes, and for decades at a time the country was virtually abandoned and lay waste. On the shores of the Medo- mak the Germans and Scotch-Irish were visited by the last two of these struggles only, which will be reviewed in sequence in the later chapters.

8John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in the New York Times, April 3, 1939.

III

THE DISCOVERY OF THE MAINE COASTAL AREA AND ITS EARLY EXPLORERS

By the time the Mayflower sailed, one could find men in any fishing port from Bristol to Bilbao who could tell the bearings of Cape Ann from Cape Cod, and compare the holding ground in any harbor from Narragansett to Passamaquoddy.

SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON

T HE PRINCIPAL FACTS OF OUR LAND area and its earliest occupants have been set forth in outline in the preceding chapters, and with this the prehistorical survey has been completed. At this point the curtain inevitably rises on the earliest scenes in the conquest of a new continent, and the history of our tiny district begins, and begins fittingly, as a phase of world history. Such it is and unde- niably always has been. To speak contrariwise would be to affirm that a part is not a portion of a whole. By the same token local history is world history. That of Waldoborough must, in the nature of things, be simple and obscure; yet there has little hap- pened in it since the time of the discovery of its area by white men that is not a reflection and an effect of those deep causal forces which have been slowly molding the world over the decades and centuries into what it was yesterday and what it is today.

The discovery of the American continent was an accident, and the discovery and exploration of the Maine coastal area was a very early incident in this accident. The earliest discoverers and explorers were not searching for America, nor were they in quest of Muscongus Bay or of the headwaters of the Medomak, nor of any other point along the Atlantic seaboard. As a matter of fact, they were looking for Asia and the Spice Islands of the East when America showed up. Columbus never realized that he had discov- ered America. In his third voyage, when he reached the continent of South America, it was his belief that at last he had found the mainland of Asia. Everyone else thought so too. All through Europe it was noised about that the Genoese Captain had "found that way never before known to the East."1

1Ramusis, Raccolta di Navigazioni, I, 414, quoted by E. P. Cheyney, European Background of American History (New York, 1904).

Early Explorers

In this general belief John Cabot in 1496 applied for letters patent from Henry VII of England to equip an expedition for Cipango (Japan). According to the King's commission, he was "to set up banners and ensigns in every village, isle and mainland, so newly discovered." It is held by many scholars that in 1497 or 1498 a second expedition sailed under the command of Sebastian Cabot; that on this voyage, after making his landfall far in the north, he sailed south from the barren shore of Labrador, discov- ered Newfoundland, and entered Maine waters believing that he was sailing along the mainland of Asia; and that he skirted the coast from 56° to 38º north latitude. His ships were small and since his primary search was for Asiatic lands, he probably sailed close in among the islands to see what the continent was like. In this case he may have navigated the waters of Muscongus Bay and become possibly the discoverer of our area and the first European to sail its waters.

The second generation of explorers learned the truth with reference to the existence of a new world, and thereafter the search became one for a passage leading through to the continent of Asia. Spain and Portugal, at an early date, modestly agreed to divide this newly discovered world between themselves with the sanction of Pope Alexander VI.2 Neither France nor England accepted this twofold jurisdiction, and in 1524 France sent her first adventurer across the Atlantic in the person of the Florentine, Verazanno, who in one ship with fifty men explored northward from Cape Hatteras to Nova Scotia and gave the name of Nouvelle France to the territory. In 1534 he was followed by Jacques Car- tier and Roberval who explored the St. Lawrence and the adjacent region in search of the elusive passage. Verazanno of a certainty was in Maine waters, but how far inland he penetrated, if at all, will never be known. An important factor introduced into our local history as a result of these voyages is that they laid in part the foundation of the later French claim to our district which was persistently asserted for two hundred years, and underlay the In- dian activity and warfare that made the existence of the settlers in this area so precarious during the first six decades of the eighteenth century.

What was the origin of this eagerness to reach the Indies to which we owe the presence of these first Europeans in our area? Stefan Zweig in his biography of Magellan answers the question in these simple words: "It all began with spice."3 This is seemingly a rather small matter, but it looms rather large in world history and is directly reflected in our own. It was during the Crusades

2Father of Cesare Borgia.

3Conqueror of the Seas (New York: MacMillan Co., 1938).

HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO

that medieval Europe had learned what a change in the savor of food could be effected by sugar and spice. The European coarse food and unskillful cookery had been made palatable by the sweets and spices of the East, and hence it came to pass that an insistent demand was set up for such commodities. In the mid-fifteenth century this trade had come to a standstill. Access to its source was blocked by the rise of a new power in the Near East. The fly in this sweet commerce was the Ottoman Turk. By 1453 he had conquered Constantinople and abrogated all the old trade privi- leges of Europe with the Orient. Hence the demand of European markets for eastern products could no longer be met, yet the demand for such commodities had in no sense abated. This con- stituted a real problem for European trade and rendered sugars and spices rare and priceless.

In old American deeds or grants made by some of the original proprietors, including our own, we find the latter exacting one peppercorn as annual rental for the use of land. To the modern this may seem odd and trifling. It does, however, reflect a real value which passed into legal terminology from this fifteenth- century condition. It followed then inevitably from the conditions here outlined that the men, the nation, or the government that could find a new way to the Orient, free from all the checks, trib- utes, and interruptions imposed by the Turk, might claim a trade of indefinite extent and almost unlimited profit. This was the major motive which lay behind the voyages of one hundred and fifty years to the westward, and sent the explorers of Europe to scan our coasts and peer into our inlets, including that of our own Muscongus Bay.

There is probably little point in cataloguing all the voyagers who came to our coast and cruised in the waters of this particular area. They were too numerous and many are unknown, for fishing expeditions to the coast on the part of both the English and the French started shortly after the Cabot voyage of 1497. Spanish vessels, too, were engaged in this business as early as 1517. In 1527 twelve French fishing vessels are known to have been on the coast, and in the next twenty years their number increased in excess of two hundred and fifty. By 1600 England was sending annually more than a hundred fishing vessels to the North Atlantic coast. At first they frequented the Grand Banks, but by the close of the sixteenth century their voyages included Maine waters, and they were thoroughly established on the Maine coast. No section was better suited to fishing than the area between the Kennebec and the Penobscot; and with the lapse of a few more years, we find the headquarters of this activity located in our own area at Mon- hegan and Pemaquid.

Early Explorers

Meanwhile there had been no diminution in either the interest or activities of European states. In 1603 Henry IV of France granted to De Monts a charter of Acadia. This grant included the Waldoborough area and represents the first assignment of this district to any European proprietor. The next year saw Poutrin- court and Champlain cruising in the coastal waters of the state. Naming Monhegan Island La Nef, they passed on leisurely to the eastward and established a settlement at the mouth of the St. Croix River, which was abandoned after the first winter. A new settle- ment was made at Port Royal.

The early French voyagers on this coast, in contrast with the English, treated the Indians kindly and courteously, and even at this time laid the foundations of that close friendship between the two races which a little later was to cost the English settler so dearly. The object of the early French posts was trade, not agri- culture. This was a policy which left the Indian in undisturbed pos- session of his forest. The use to which the French put the land was in harmony with the Indian's economic needs, whereas the English method of clearing and settling land limited the savage in his hunt- ing and deprived him of his fishing privileges. In the absence of any basic economic conflict between the French and Indians throughout the colonial period, alliances between the two were always made with relative ease. The English were never successful in destroying these alliances until the power of both races was broken on the American continent.

The English, ever jealous and suspicious of French explora- tion, were not slow in matching their endeavors. In March 1602 Captain Batholomew Gosnold, in the Concord with thirty-two men, sailed along the great circle instead of by the route previously followed, namely, via the Canaries and the Azores, and made his landfall at 42º north latitude. From thence he sailed southward to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. The only significance of the voyage was that it established the direct route from Europe to Maine waters. The trip was made in seven weeks and the return trip in five weeks. This rather speedy transit attracted much attention inasmuch as it shortened the voyage by about one hun- dred leagues. This was especially the case in the city of Bristol which was destined to become, in the early colonial period, more intimately associated with our history than any other English city.

In view of the interest aroused, a new expedition was shortly projected in the city of Bristol. Among others it commanded the backing of Robert Aldsworth, a young and ambitious merchant of the city, who later became one of the joint proprietors of the Pemaquid Patent. This claim, in the possession of his heirs, later came into conflict with that of General Waldo, relative to the land

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History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1, Part 4

Author: Stahl, Jasper Jacob, 1886- Publication date: 1956 Publisher: Portland, Me., Bond Wheelwright Co Number of Pages: 648

Author: Stahl, Jasper Jacob, 1886-
Publication date: 1956
Publisher: Portland, Me., Bond Wheelwright Co
Number of Pages: 648