Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 2

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790

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In general the river banks along the Kennebec are high, the soil rocky or clayey, there being but few sections of alluvial soil along its banks, and these of small extent. The surface in Rome, Vienna, Mt. Vernon and Fayette is broken, the soils rocky and strong. In Wins- low the soil bordering the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers is a fine, deep loam; while the eastern part of the town is ledgy. In Litchfield and West Gardiner are quite extensive tracts of light, plains land.

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

Wayne abounds in large extents of blowing sands, soil largely com- posed of fine sand, not containing sufficient clay or aluminous matter to give them cohesion, and for years hundreds of acres of these shift- ing sands have been moved by the winds, covering up other hundreds of acres of valuable land. Her soils comprise specimens of almost everything. In the main they are strong rather than deep; in many sections ledgy, in some very rocky, in a few porous and light. In places, glacial deposits have formed kames," horse backs, or ridges of sand. In others, fields buried in bowlders show where were ancient moraines of the glacial period.

" Int all the regions which in some former age were overrun by glaciers, there are found certain curious ridges of sand, gravel or pebbles, often in places where no ordinary stream could have flowed. Because of their remarkable shapes and situations they have always attracted attention wherever they are found, and hence they have re- ceived many local names. They are known as kames in Scotland, eskars in Ireland, aasar in Sweden, and in Maine they are called horse- backs, whalebacks, hogbacks, ridges, turnpikes, windrows and sad- dles. A kame often spreads out into a very broad ridge or plain, also into a series of ridges connected by cross ridges called plains or kame- plains. They frequently contain conical or rounded depressions called sinks, hoppers, pounds, kettles, bowls, punch-bowls, potash kettles, and one at Bryant's pond is known as the 'Basin.' The gravel stones and pebbles in these formations are more or less washed and rounded, like those found on the sea beach or in the beds of rapid streams. The large pebbles are called cobble stones in the Middle states and pumple stones in the East. Often there are gaps in these ridges, but when mapped they are plainly seen to be arranged in lines or systems like the hills in a row of corn."

One of these kames forms both sand hills and plains in Wayne; marked bluffs or hills of sand in Monmouth; and in Litchfield it forms what is known as " The Plains." Professor Stone mentions one kame as " the eastern Kennebec system, that extends through Mayfield, Skowhegan, Augusta, South Gardiner and beyond." There is no trace of it in Gardiner but a singular sugar-loaf shaped hill at South Gardi- ner. This was noticedt by Reverend Mr. Bailey, of Pownalboro, over a hundred years ago, and also a similar one across the river, a short distance below. He thought they were the work of human hands. Professor Stone's theory is that these kames are the old beds of rivers which ran on the surface of the ice in the glacial period, and formed by their deposits these varions phenomena. His theory, I think, is generally adopted as the only one which accounts for them.

In Wayne and Monmouth in some places these sands are shifted by the wind, and beds of simply barren sand occur. At Augusta and

* The Kame theory was developed by George H. Stone, while a professor at Kents Hill Seminary.

+ Prof. George H. Stone, in Maine Farmer.

# Vide Frontier Missionary.

GENERAL VIEW.

Gardiner, along the river banks; in Winthrop and in other towns marine fossil shells of living species are found, some of which species are not now found so far south.

A scallop-Pecten Islandicus, a shell common to Newfoundland-has been found at Gardiner. I once bored through 72 feet of clay in Gardiner and struck what was undoubtedly river gravel. The line of these fossil shells is as much as 150 feet above the present level of the sea. These clay hills in many places have deep valleys between, doubtless eroded in glacial times. In all these river towns there are also high granite hills and bluffs, with the exception of Waterville, where the lower Silurian slates outcrop. The oldest and newest formations lie side by side, with no intermediate ones.

Kennebec county has several kinds of minerals, of which a few may be mentioned. Litchfield, which is quite a place of pilgrimage for mineralogists, contains sodalite, cancrinite, elæolite, zircon, spodu- mene, muscovite, pyrrhotite, hydronephelite, pyrite, arsenopyrite, lepidomelane, muscovite, jasper. Hydronephelite is a new mineral recently determined by F. W. Clarke, curator of the mineralogical department of the National Museum, Washington. The deep blue sodalite and brilliant yellow cancrinite of Litchfield and hydronephe- lite have never been found anywhere else in equally as fine specimens. A gold mine was opened a few years ago on the east side of Oak hill, in Litchfield, but it did not enrich its owners, although it is laid down on the atlas before mentioned.

Monmouth produces actinolite, apatite, elæolite, zircon, staurolite, plumose mica, beryl, rulite. Pittston contains fine specimens of graphite and pyrrhotite. Several attempts at mining gold have been made there, and favorable assays published. In Waterville are found fine specimens of crystallized pyrite. Winthrop shows fine specimens of staurolite, pyrite, hornblende, garnet and copperas. Crystallized quartz, small garnets, tourmaline and traces of iron are common throughout the county.

Dana, in his System of Mineralogy, says "gold has been found at Albion." This is doubtless an error into which the elder Dana was led by Professor Cleaveland, of Brunswick, who was inveigled into investing by some crooks in a bogus gold mine in Albion.

The original forest was largely of pine. as the gigantic stumps attest. Our forests are composed of the various species of pine, hem- · lock, spruce, fir, hackmatack and cedar; birch, beech, oak, hornbeam, ash, elm, poplar, willow, cherry and basswood-in fact of about all the trees and shrubs of Maine. Her forests are her crowning glory, both when their leafage is coming out and in autumn, when their gorgeous coloring is the despair of the artist and the wonder of the world; for no other part of the earth claims to approach the beauty of the Maine

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

woods. The man who has never stood, some lovely October day, on Oak hill, Monmouth ridge, Pease's hill, or some other hilltop over- looking our beautiful ponds, the mountains towering on our northern horizon; with the clear blue sky above him, and around hundreds of forest-clad hills, with all the gorgeous colorings of the rainbow-yes, with hundreds of tints and shades of colors-has yet to learn what it is to live, and what a lovely world this is. As the sun sinks slowly in the west, and gradually, gently and reluctantly draws the mantle of night over the earth, as though he hated to leave so much beauty, then one knows what a sunset is. Talk of skies! As Bryant says:

The sunny Italy may boast The beauteous tints that flush her skies, And lovely round the Grecian coast May thy blue pillars rise ! I only know how fair they stand Above my own beloved land.

Our ponds and streams have economic as well as esthetic excel- lence. Our ponds teem with good fish, while each week in the spring- time a new migratory fish makes its appearance. The purity of water in the Kennebec makes its fish, like its ice, the best of their kind. In winter the lower Kennebec swarms with smelts that used to come in millions to Gardiner and Hallowell -- and would now if legally pro- tected; alewives come in early spring; then the shad, the mackerel,. the striped bass; then cod, cusk, haddock, halibut and hake, all the year. Twenty years ago one could hardly look at the river in June without seeing the sturgeon jumping, but three years of fishing by a German company almost exterminated them. " Kennebec Salmon," always named on the bills in city restaurants, had been practically extinct for years, until recently some efforts have been made toward re-stocking the river.

In several of the inland ponds are smelts. In Belgrade pond is a variety so large that naturalists have given it a special name. Lamprey and eels are plenty in the Cobbossee-the latter taken by tons-but the natives seldom eat them.

Thus it would seem that nature has in every way made generous provision, in the valley of the Kennebec, for the welfare and happi- ness of man. Of course man here does not live forever, but it is a proportionately cheerful and pleasant place to die in. Skillful physi- cians and careful nurses smooth his pillow and ease his pains, till the grim messenger is almost tired of waiting; and when the inevitable is passed, genial and liberal clergymen will do the very best that can be done for him, and elegant undertakers will make his last ride the most expensive one he ever had; and when all is done a monument of Kennebec granite will rear its lordly head above his peaceful grave, and "after life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

CHAPTER II.

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

BY CAPT. CHARLES E. NASH. Copyright 1892.

I. THEIR FIRST WHITE VISITORS.

DuMont and Champlain .- The Popham Colony .- Captain Gilbert's trip up the River .- Sebenoa the Sagamore .- Visit to the Indian Village .- Erection of. the Cross of Discovery .- Visit of Biencourt and Father Biard .- Interviews with the Indians .- First Ceremony of the Mass on the Coast of Maine .- The French Mission at St. Sauveur (Mt. Desert) destroyed with Bloodshed .- The Contest for Acadia begun .- Captain John Smith .- Samoset and Captain Leverett .- First Sale of Land by Indians.

T HE story of the aborigines of Maine blends inseparably with the history of the struggle that lasted for a century and a half be- tween France and England for supremacy in the New World. In the first decade of the 17th century, Henry IV of France and James I of England, grasped simultaneously as jewels for their respective crowns, the greater part of North America. Spain, the patron and the beneficiary of Columbus, had enjoyed exclusively for three gener- ations the wealth of the western hemisphere, whose productions of " barbaric pearl or gold " had spoiled the Spaniard to the point of sur- feit and effeminacy, and made him look lightly on all territory that was destitute of the glittering ores. Northward from Florida the latitudes were open to any nation that could maintain itself against the jealousy of its rivals. The mosses of an hundred years had gath- ered on Columbus' tomb before the impulse of his mighty achieve- ment aroused the statesmen of central Europe to schemes of empire on the continent to which he had shown the way across a chartless ocean. France took the initiative. Henry vaguely lined out as his own in 1603, by royal patent, the most of the territory of the present United States. James asserted a like claim to the same vast tract, with con- siderably enlarged boundaries. Frenchmen broke ground for coloni- zation at Passamaquoddy in 1604. Englishmen followed at the mouth of the Kennebec in 1607. Neither colony was successful, but the two begin the history of New France and New England, and introduce to

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

us the Indians who inhabited the land in the shadow of the untrimmed forest. The claim of France to Acadia, whose western bound was de- fined by the Kennebec (where DuMont and Champlain raised the fleur-de lis in 1605), and the counter-claim of the English to the Penob- scot (or actually to the St. George, where Weymouth erected his cross of discovery the same year), made the territory of future Maine from its earliest occupation by the whites the prolific source of interna- tional irritation and intrigue; and the theater of a series of sanguin- ary conflicts that ended only when New France was expunged from the map of America by the fall of Quebec in 1759. Ancient Acadia passed nine times between France and England in the period of 127 years. In this eventful contest-the issue of which left North America to the English people -- the uncivilized red men in their native wilds were prominent participants-the dupes and victims of the one side and the other-until the tribes were decimated and one by one extinguished. It is our present task to study the history of the famous tribe that dwelt in the valley of the Kennebec.

On Wednesday, the 23d day of September, 1607, Captain Gilbert and nineteen men embarked in a shallop from the new fort of the Popham colony, at the mouth of the Kennebec, " to goe for the head of the river; they sayled all this daye, and the 24th the like untill six of the clock in the afternoone, when they landed on the river's side, where they found a champion land [camping ground], and very fer- tile, where they remayned all that night; in the morning they de- parted from thence and sayled up the river and came to a flatt low island where ys a great cataract or downfall of water, which runneth by both sides of this island very shold and swift. . . They haled their boat with a strong rope through this downfall perforce, and went neare a league further up, and here they lay all night; and in the first of the night there called certain savages on the further side of the river unto them in broken English; they answered them againe and parled [talked] long with them, when towards morning they departed. In the morning there came a canoa unto them, and in her a sagamo and four salvages, some of those which spoke to them the night be- fore. The sagamo called his name Sebenoa, and told us how he was lord of the river Sachadehoc. They entertayned him friendly, and took him into their boat and presented him with some triffling things, which he accepted; howbeyt, he desired some one of our men to be put into his canoa as a pawne of his safety, whereupon Captain Gil- bert sent in a man of his, when presently the canoa rowed away from them with all the speed they could make up the river. They followed with the shallop, having great care that the sagamo should not leape overbourde. The canoa quickly rowed from them and landed, and the men made to their howses, being neere a league on the

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

the land from the river's side, and carried our man with them. The- shallop making good waye, at length came to another downfall, which was soe shallow and soe swift, that by no means could they pass any further, for which, Captain Gilbert, with nine others, landed and tooke their fare, the savage sagamo, with them, and went in search after those other salvages, whose howses, the sagamo told Captain Gilbert, were not farr off; and after a good tedious march, they came indeed at length unto those salvages' howses wheere [they] found neere fifty able men very strong and tall, such as their like before they had not seene; all newly painted and armed with their bowes and arrowes. Howbeyt, after that the sagamo had talked with them, they delivered back againe the man, and used all the rest very friendly, as did ours the like by them, who showed them their comodities of beads, knives, and some copper, of which they seemed very fond; and by waye of trade, made shew that they would come downe to the boat and there bring such things as they had to exchange them for ours. Soe Cap- tain Gilbert departed from them, and within half an howre after lie had gotten to his boat, there came three canoas down unto them, and in them sixteen salvages, and brought with them some tobacco and certayne small skynnes, which were of no value; which Captain Gil- bert perceaving, and that they had nothing else wherewith to trade, he caused all his men to come abourd, and as he would have put from the shore; the salvages perceiving so much, subtilely devised how they might put out the fier in the shallop, by which means they sawe they should be free from the danger of our men's pieces [firelocks], and to perform the same, one of the salvages came into the shallop and taking the fier-brand which one of our company held in his hand thereby to light the matches, as if he would light a pipe of tobacco, as sone as he had gotten yt into his hand he presently threw it into the water and leapt out of the shallop. Captain Gilbert seeing that, suddenly commanded his men to betake them to their musketts and the targettiers too, from the head of the boat, and bade one of the men before, with his target [shield] on his arme, to stepp on the shore for more fier; the salvages resisted him and would not suffer him to take any, and some others holding fast the boat roap that the shallop could not put off. Captain Gilbert caused the musquettiers to present [aim] their peeces, the which, the salvages seeing, presently let go the boat rope and betook them to their bowes and arrowes, and ran into the bushes, nocking their arrowes, but did not shoot, neither did ours at them. So the shallop departed from them to the further side of the river, where one of the canoas came unto them, and would have ex- cused the fault of the others. Captain Gilbert made show as if he were still friends, and entertayned them kindly and soe left them, re- turning to the place where he had lodged the night before, and there

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

came to an anchor for the night. Here they sett up a crosse, and then returned homeward." *

This graphic and artless account of the earliest recorded visit by white men to the region above Merrymeeting bay, was apparently copied with but few changes from Captain Gilbert's log-book, made by the scribe of the Popham colony, who probably was one of the party. The facts and circumstances lead irresistibly to the conclusion that the Kennebec (and not the Androscoggin) was the river which the colonists explored. +The camping place at the close of the second day after leaving the fort may have been the plateau where now the village of Randolph stands, or that other one two miles above in Chelsea, nearly opposite Loudon hill, in Hallowell. The boatmen encountered the next day, a few miles above their camping place, " a flat low island in the midst of a great downfall of water." This felicitously described the Kennebec at the place where the Augusta dam now stands, before the peculiar features of the spot were obliter- ated by the building of that structure (1835-7). The rapid and island are unmistakable features of identification. The island has disap- peared by the building of the dam and the rapid has become an arti- ficial cascade for the uses of civilized industry, yet the transformation of the river at this place since that early day, has scarcely been greater than in many other places along its course.

The next camping place was about a league above the island, where first the natives accosted them, shyly, hallooing in shibboleth through the darkness. The place was probably the intervale that is now divided into portions of several farms, near Gilley's point, where there are still many vestiges of Indian encampments. The next morn- ing, after exchanging hostages, the explorers continued their journey until their boat grounded on shallows. This may have been in the swift water since that day known as Bacon's rips, in the course of which the river has a natural fall of about thirteen feet. The farthest point reached by Gilbert in his wood-tramp was a wigwam village about a league from the river, within the limits of the present town of Vassalboro, or of Sidney. Night found the party reunited at the last camping place. There, the next morning (Sunday, September 27), they performed the ceremony of taking possession of the country

* Historie of Travaile into Virginia, by William Strachey, Gent. Maine His- torical Society's Collections, Vol. III, pp. 304-307.

t The Androscoggin theory was first advanced by able students of Maine history, but it meets many obstacles in Strachey's account. The Kennebec theory meets with but few difficulties and harmonizes rationally with the record. See Remarks on Waymouth's Voyage, by John McKeen, Vol. V, Me. Hist. Soc. Coll. Rev. William S. Bartlett, same series, Vol. III, p. 304. Dr. William B. Lapham in Daily Kennebec Journal, December, 1889. For description of the "flat low island," see North's History of Augusta, pages 450-453.

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

for their king, by erecting in his name the cross of Christianity at the place where they had twice lodged. Then leaving the sacred emblem standing as the official vestige of their visit, they departed. It would be interesting to know precisely the spot where the cross was planted, and how long it remained as an object of awe to the savages. We never hear more of Sebenoa; he was the first in the long line of Ken- nebec chiefs whose names have been preserved in the white man's annals; his dust, with that of his bedizened warriors who posed so grandly before their visitors, has long mingled with the mold of the forest where he reigned, but his peaceful welcome to the white strangers who earliest set foot on the soil of the capital of Maine, in- vests his name with a charm that will preserve it while the language of the race that has supplanted his own is spoken or read.

Captain Popham died before the winter had passed; and in the spring, leaving the dismantled fort to be his sepulcher, the homesick colonists fled back to England. Father Pierre Biard, a Jesuit mis- sionary, visited the Sagadahoc (Kennebec) three years later (October, 1611): he accompanied an expedition under Biencourt, then vice- admiral of New France, on a cruise from the eastward along the coast to the western boundary of Acadia, in quest of food for the French colony at Port Royal (now Annapolis). The Father says his own rea- sons for the journey were, first, " to act as spiritual adviser [chaplain] to Sieur de Biencourt and his crew, and, second, to become acquainted with and learn the disposition of the natives to receive the gospel." He gives a few interesting glimpses of scenes on the lower Kennebec 281 years ago. The vessel entered the river by way of Seguin, and the party eagerly landed to inspect the vacant fort, which they thought was poorly located, and which Father Biard intimates, with a half- secular chuckle, redoubtable Frenchmen could have easily taken. He says the departed Popham colonists treated the natives with cruelty, and were driven away in retaliation. This was the boastful statement of the Indians themselves to the willing ears of the French, who were fain to believe it; but the testimony is too biased and shadowy to be accepted as true.

After a delay of three days at Popham's fort, by reason of adverse winds, Biencourt abandoned his purpose of sailing further westward, and turned the prow of his vessel up the river; after going with the tide about nine miles, a party of Indians came into view; they be- longed either to the later named Kennebec or Androscoggin tribe; Biard calls them Armouchiqnoys; he says: "There were twenty-four people, all warriors, in six canoes; they went through a thousand an- tics before coming up to us; you would have rightly likened them to a flock of birds, which wishes to enter a hemp-field, but fears the scare- crow. This amused us very much, for our people needed time to arm

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

themselves and cover the ship. In short, they came and went, they reconnoitered, they looked sharply at our muskets, our cannon, our numbers, our everything; and the night coming on, they lodged on the other bank of the river, if not beyond the range, at least beyond the sighting of our cannon. All that night there was nothing but haranguing, singing, dancing; for such is the life of these people when they assemble together. But since we presumed that probably their songs and dance were invocations to the devil, and in order to thwart this accursed tyrant, I made our people sing a few church hymns, such as the Salve Regina, the Ave Mari's Stella and others; but being once in train, and getting to the end of their spiritual songs, they fell to singing such others as they knew, and when these gave out they took to mimicking the dancing and singing of the Armouchiquoys on the other side of the water; and as Frenchmen are naturally good mimics, they did it so well that the natives stopped to listen; at which our people stopped, too; and then the Indians began again. You would have laughed to see them, for they were like two choirs answering each other in concert, and you would hardly have known the real Armouchiquoys from the sham ones." *

Biencourt had impressed into his service at the river St. John two Maoulin (Etechemin) savages, as interpreters on his journey. He caused them to be taught a smattering of the French language, and then used them as a means of conversation between himself and their fellow-savages along his route. At that time the tribes of New England spoke a common tongue, which was varied and enlarged by local dialects. Biencourt's Etechemin captives from the St. John could talk readily with the natives of the Sagadahoc. On the morn- ing after the singing and dancing, the Frenchmen resumed their journey up the river; the Indians, in a rabble, accompanied them, and were soon coaxed to terms of familiarity. They told the strangers that if they wanted some piousquemin (corn) they need not go further up the river, but by turning to the right, through an arm of the river that was pointed out, they could in a few hours reach the tent of the great sachem Meteourmite, whom they themselves would do the honor to visit at the same time; Biencourt cautiously followed their guideship; he passed his vessel through the strait that is now spanned by a highway bridge between Woolwich and Arrowsic, and entered what Biard calls a lake, but what is now named Pleasant cove (or Nequasset bay); here he found the water shallow, and he hesitated about venturing further: but Meteourmite, having been informed of the approach of the ship, was hastening to meet it; he urged the Frenchmen to proceed, which they did. Presently their vessel be- · came subject to the sport of the dangerous currents of the Hellgates.

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Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 2

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York, Blake Number of Pages: 1790

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790