Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 5

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

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Thus accredited by the Kennebec Indians as well as by the Cana- dian governor, to negotiate against the Iroquois, the missionary-envoy started about the 20th of November for Boston; he says: " I left Cous- sinoc by land, with the said agent [Winslow], inasmuch as the vessel that was to carry us had some cause for delay in waiting for the In- dians; and fearing to be surprised by the ice, we were therefore obliged to go ten leagues, to embark by sea at Marimiten [Merry- meeting], which the Indians call Nassouac. This was a painful march, especially to the agent, who is already somewhat in years [born in 1597] and who assured me that he would never have undertaken it if he had not given his word to Noel " (Negabamat). They embarked at Tameriskau (Damariscove?) on the 25th, but the winds and storms drove them ashore at Cape Ann, from whence "partly by land and partly by boat," they reached Boston on the 8th of December. The incidents of this embassy were quite fully recorded by Father Druil- lettes, * but it would be apart from the present purpose to recite them all. He was blandly received by the principal personages of Boston,

* * Narrative of a voyage, made for the Abenaquiois mission and information acquired of New England and the magistrates of that republic, for assistance against the Iroquiois. The whole by me, Gabriel Druillettes, of the Society of Jesus."-Trans. from the original MS. by John Gilmary Shea. Coll. New York Hist. Society (2d series), Vol. III, part 1.

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

who, because he was a foreign envoy, did not inflict upon him the execution which one of their laws made the earthly doom of a Jesuit. After receiving many courteous attentions and an audience and din- ner with the governor (Thomas Dudley) and magistrates, he was at last told that in consequence of the character he had assumed as am- bassador of the Kennebec Indians, Boston had no interest in the sub- ject; and he was referred to Plymouth. He then went to Plymouth (December 21-22), and saw the Pilgrim fathers at their homes. The Father says: " The governor of the place John Brentford [William Bradford] received me with courtesy, and appointed the next day for audience, and then invited me to a dinner of fish which he had pre- pared on my account, seeing that it was Friday. I met with much favor at this settlement, for the farmers [lessees of the Plymouth patent], and among others Captain Thomas Willets, spoke to the gov- ernor on behalf of my negotiation. . . The governor .

with all the magistrates, not only consents but presses this affair in favor of the Abenaquois. The whole colony has no trifling interest in it. be- cause by its right of seigniory, it annually takes the sixth part of all that arises from the trade on that river Quinebec; and the governor himself in particular, who with four

other of the most considerable citi- Salvat druillettes Soc. J.yu zens, are as it were, farmers of this

trade, who lose much, losing all hope of the commerce of the Kenne- bec and Quebec, by means of the Abnaquiois, which will soon infalli- bly happen, if the Iroquois continues to kill and hunt to death the Abenaquiois as he has done for some years past."

The sanguine Father returned to Boston, where he wrote to Gov- ernor d'Alliboust his official report, from which the last few preceding lines are copied. He had the faith of the enthusiast that the purpose of his embassy would be accomplished. It was winter and the season when vessels seldom ventured along the coast; consequently his de- parture was delayed a few days, during which time he was the guest of distinguished people, one of whom was John Eliot, the Protestant Indian apostle, at Roxbury, who hospitably invited him to stay at his house all winter. On the 5th of January he embarked on " a vessel clearing for the Kennebec;" bad weather stopped it for a week or more at Marblehead; the envoy improved the time by going up to Salem, to see John Endicott, " who," says the Father, " seeing that I had no money, defrayed my expenses."# On the 24th of January the bark reached Piscataqua, and on the 7th of February anchored at Tameriskau. The next day the missionary reached the Kennebec, up

* Which kind act gives us a rare glimpse into the inner nature of the man who soon after as governor was led by his infuriated zeal for Puritanism, to have Quakers tortured and put to death.

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

which on its frozen and snow covered surface he laboriously tramped to resume his interrupted labors. From the comforts of guest cham- bers and the luxuries of governors' tables, he returned unflinchingly to the squalid huts, and pitiful, uncertain fare of the savages, whom he had been called to serve. In the spring, on his return to Cushnoc with the tribe from the winter hunt at Moosehead, he found John Winslow had returned from Plymouth, bringing the message that " all the magistrates and the two commissioners of Plymouth have given their word, and resolved that they must press the other colonies to join them against the Iroquiois in favor of the Abnaquiois, who are under the protection of the colony of Plymouth." This cheering re- sponse to the Father's visit to Plymouth was supplemented by letters brought to him by Winslow from men in Boston, representing the common opinion to be that " if the republic will not undertake this aid against the Iroquiois . . individuals are ready as volunteers for the expedition." With these hopeful assurances, Father Druillettes, taking affectionate leave of his neophytes, returned in the month of June (1651) to Quebec, and reported in person to his government the apparent result of his embassy.

But so active and malignant was the enemy and so unhappy the outlook, that after a rest of only fifteen days Father Druillettes and Negabamat were sent back to the Kennebec, " Negabamat being com- missioned as before by the Algonquins of the Great River [St. Law- rence], and the Father by both the governor of Canada and the good Abenaquiois catechumens." This last trip of Father Druillettes was exceedingly painful-almost tragical in its beginning and ending-and bitterly disappointing in its political result. He was accompanied by one Frenchman (Jean Guerin) and several Abenakis, who had fol- lowed him to Quebec. In the hope of finding a shorter route than the usual one up the Chaudière to Lake Megantic, the guides took one with which they were not acquainted; " after having rowed and walked for fifteen days by torrents and through many frightful ways," they saw with dismay that they had mistaken the river down which they should have glided, and that instead of being in the country of the Abenakis they were at Madawaska (on the St. John). But a worse feature of their condition was food-famine. The provisions taken for the two weeks' journey to the Kennebec were exhausted; the com- pany were weak from hunger and unable to perform the labor of stemming the current of the river which they must ascend before they could reach the route to their destination. In this dark hour Father Druillettes piously resorted to the resources of his religion; in the solitude of the immense forest he proceeded to offer the sacrifice of the holy mass for relief and deliverance. He had just concluded the ceremony when one of the Indians came running to the spot with the joyful news that the party had killed three moose. The lives of

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

the famishing wanderers were thereby saved. The Father deemed it the visible interposition of God as he did the restoration of his eye- sight seven years before.

After having restored their strength with the miraculously sent moose meat and preserved by the process of smoking enough to last until some could be procured in the ordinary way, the party started to return up river. There were rapids, falls and difficulties number- less; one of the Indians-an Etechemin from the St. John-attributed all of the party's bad luck to the presence of the Black-robe; some of the streams were too low to float the canoes, so the Father prayed for rain-which came and the water rose; but the ill will and persecu- tions of the savage compelled the Father to cast off his luggage in order to lighten the boat, and finally to separate himself from the party and grope his way in loneliness among rocks and windfalls and dismal stretches of swamp; he " rose at break of day and traveled till night without eating; his supper was a little piece of smoked meat hard as wood, or a small fish if he could catch it, and after having said his prayers the earth was his bed, his pillow a log." * At last, after twenty-two or twenty-three days from Quebec, the party reached Nan- rantsouak (Norridgewock). The chief, Oumamanradock, welcomed the Father with a salute of musketry, and embraced him, saying: " I see now that the Great Spirit who rules in heaven has looked upon us with a kind eye since he has sent us our Patriarch again." The chief inquired of the attendants if the Father had been well and well treated on the journey, and when told of the harsh conduct of the Etechemin, he berated the fellow roundly, saying: " If you were one of my sub- jects or of my nation, I would make you feel the grief which you have caused the whole country." The culprit admitted his guilt and con- fessed-" I am a dog to have treated the Black-gown so badly." The record says, " there was no man, woman or child who did not express to the Father the joy that was felt at his return; there were feasts in all the cabins: he was taken possession of and carried away with love." It was probably about this time that "in a great meeting " they " naturalized and admitted the Father to their nation." Subsequently, when he was at the village near Cushnoc, an attache of the trading post, who had entered a wigwam where the priest was conversing, re- ported to Winslow his employer, that the missionary was declaiming against the English. This offended Winslow, but the Indians went to the trading house and declared that the tattler lied-that he did not understand the Abenakis tongue from which he pretended to quote, and in their resentment of the injustice done to their missionary, said: " We have adopted him for our comrade, we love him as the wisest of our captains, . and whoever assails him attacks all the A benaquiois."

* Jesuit Relations for 1652, Chap. VII, p. 23.

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

Father Druillettes' third arrival on the Kennebec caused a round of profound welcome and rejoicing. Friends old and new flocked from all sides to see him; he made a tour of the " twelve or thirteen villages which are ranged partly upon the river Kennebec, and partly upon the coast of Acadia. . . He was everywhere received as an angel from heaven." The warmth of his reception impressed him, and in alluding to it he wrote: " If the years have their winter they have also their spring-time; if these missions have their afflictions, they are not deprived of their joys and consolations. I have felt more than I can express, seeing the gospel-seed which I have sown for four years, which produced in the ground in so many centuries only briars and thorns, bring forth fruit worthy of the table of God. One

captain [chief] broke my heart; he repeated to me often in public and private that he loved his children as himself; ' I have lost two of them since your departure; their death is not my greatest sorrow, but you had not baptized them; that is what distresses me. It is true that I have done for them what you recommended me to do, but I do not know whether I have done well, or if I shall ever see them in heaven; if you had baptized them I would not grieve for them; I would not be sorry for their death, on the contrary I would be consoled; at least if to banish my sorrow you will promise not to think of Quebec for ten years, and will not depart during that time, you will see that we love you.' Besides he led me to the graves of his two children, upon which he had erected two beautiful crosses, painted red, which he came to salute from time to time in sight of the English at Koussinok [Cush- noc], where the cemetery of these good people is, because they hold at this place two great meetings, one in the spring and the other in the autumn."* These children were probably buried in ground that had been consecrated for burial purposes by Father Druillettes during one of his previous visits. Its location was probably near the Mission of the Assumption. Ancient human skeletons were plowed up by the early settlers in the vicinity of Gilley's point, where the chapel must have stood. +

After Father Druillettes had spent several weeks "in instructing the villages that were farther inland and more remote from the English, he took with him Noel Negabamat and went down to New England." This time, besides visiting Boston and Plymouth, they went to the two other colonies (New Haven and Connecticut), implor- ing for their people protection from the Iroquiois; but the fervent de- sire of Plymouth to save the inhabitants of its domain on the Kenne- bec from the Mohawk hatchet was neutralized by Massachusetts' indifference and the reluctance of the other colonies toward disturb-

* Jesuit Relations, 1652, Chap. VII, p. 25.

+ This fact was communicated by the late Mrs. Robert Dennison, an aged lady of North Augusta, who died in the early part of 1892.

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

ing the relations that existed between themselves and the Dutch in the territory that is now the state of New York. So the tremendous and patient labors of the embassy were fruitless. Christian New England would not be aroused to protect the Christianized Indians of the Kennebec. Father Druillettes returned with his companion to the mission field in the depths of the wilderness, where he passed the dreary winter among his neophytes, destitute of every physical com- fort. the menial servant of savages, the target of the jealous jugglers' spite; tramping from village to village at the call of the sick and dying; always preaching by act and word the sublime gospel of divine humanity. At the beginning of March (1652) he departed wearily for Quebec. The hardships of his journey hither were far exceeded by those of his return. The party started on snow-shoes; we are not told their route. The time occupied was more than a month. The supply of food gave out, and some of the Indians died of exhaustion. All of the company expected to perish with hunger and cold. Father Druil- lettes and Negabamat were without food for six days following the fasting season of Lent. Finally they were obliged to boil their moc- casins, and then the Father's gown (camisole) which was made of moose skin; the snow melting, they boiled the braids of their snow- shoes. On such frail broth they kept sufficient strength to finally reach Quebec on Monday after Easter (April 8), " having no more courage or strength than zeal for the salvation of souls can give to skeletons." With a pale, thin face, and worn body, the intrepid, de- vout and half-martyred Druillettes closed his labors with the Indians of the Kennebec .*

V. THE FIRST INDIAN WAR IN MAINE.

English and French irritation in Acadia .- Alienation between the Indians and the English .- Affinity between the Indians and the French .- Philip's War reaches to Maine .- Kennebecs disarmed .- Robinhood makes Treaty of Peace .- Outrageous Affront to the Saco Chief .- War begins at Merrymeet- ing Bay .- Parley at Teconnet .- Hammond's Fort at Woolwich, and Clark & Lake's Fort at Arrowsic, captured .- Dreadful Massacres .- Kennebecs return Captives and ask for Peace .- Treaties of Casco and Portsmouth.

THE history of the Indians on the Kennebec is nearly a blank for a quarter of a century after the retirement of Father Druillettes. The feeble mission of the Capuchins on the Penobscot was broken up by the Huguenot Frenchman, La Tour, in his quarrel with his Catholic

* Father Druillettes was born in France in the year 1593. After his retire- ment from the Kennebec he was constantly with the Montagnais, Kristineaux, Papinachois, and other tribes. In 1661 he ascended the Saguenay, in the attempt to reach Hudson's bay. He went West in 1666 with the celebrated Marquette, and labored at Sault Ste. Mary till 1679, when he returned to Quebec, and there died on the 8th of April, 1681, after a missionary career of nearly forty years.

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

countryman, D'Aulnay, and the semi-Christianized tribes of Maine were left for awhile to revert to their primeval heathenism. The English traders had for twenty-five years been annoyed by the French occupation of the country from the Penobscot eastward, and in 1654, the confederated colonies seized with force and arms all Acadia, dis- possessing the French and sending them home or driving them in their poverty to seek subsistence among the Indians, and frequently adoption into the tribes. The natives had learned to confide in the French and distrust the English. The Kennebecs had found out that the English cared only for their furs; to add to their jealousy they believed that their missionary had been driven away from them. They attributed all of their woes to the Englishmen. Mohawk parties came oftener, spoiling the villages and infesting the hunting grounds. As the hunters could get but few skins, the traders finally ceased coming to Cushnoc. In 1661 the Iroquiois war-whoop echoed along the St. Lawrence from Montreal three hundred miles to the mouth of the Saguenay, carrying dismay to all Canada. A party penetrated to the Kennebec and surprised a village near the outlet of a lake; all the people were massacred, save one old chief whom the murderers led home as a trophy, and afterward tortured to death .* This cruel event may have given origin to the tradition among the Maine Indians in after generations, of an Iroquiois victory on the shores of Moosehead lake. There was no historian to describe for us the Indian battles on the Kennebec; the only record ever made was the one which was deftly woven by dusky fingers into symbolic figures on the sacred wampum belt, that the duty of vengeance might not be forgotten by warriors yet unborn.

Most of the causes that alienated the Kennebec Indians from the English were the same that drove the other tribes of New England into a pitiless war upon the settlements. The French never had war with their Indian subjects, but kept their loyalty by flattery, charity and religious ceremonials. The English used no such arts; Puritan- ism, whatever its triumphs, was a failure with the Indians; it neither converted nor attracted them; it was too metaphysical for their appre- hension-they preferred their Manitous and medicine men. On the contrary, Catholicism with its symbols, and gilded images displayed by disciplined, skillful and enthusiastic priests of philanthropic lives, impressed them strongly, and took the place of their own materialistic heathen superstitions. So the French in their long struggle to hold Acadia had the natives with them. When the irritations and wrongs of half a century of English occupation came to be avenged by the

* Histoire des Abenakis. By Father J. A. Marault. Sorel, Canada, 1866. At the time Father Marault wrote his history he had been for nineteen years a mis- sionary among the Indians at St. Francis, where nearly all of the living descend- ants of the Kennebec tribe reside.

THE INDIANS OF THE KENNEBEC.

Indians there was no bond of religion or humanity to stay the hatchet and scalping knife. The catastrophe of Philip's war (1675-8) had long been portending; its immediate exciting cause was the execution by Plymouth of three of Philip's subjects for having, by Philip's order and according to Indian law, inflicted the punishment of death upon an Indian traitor. Philip, as leader, was suppressed in fourteen months-his head cut off and carried to Plymouth, there to dangle from a gibbet for twenty years; but the cause to which he had called his race to rally did not die with him.

The first victim in what has been named King Philip's war was an Indian who was shot while marauding with his fellows in a settler's pasture, for food (at Swansey, June 24, 1675). His death was avenged the same day by the killing of three white persons. Then followed alarm and consternation throughout the colonies. In a few weeks the trader-settlers on the lower Kennebec were anxiously astir. Captains Lake, Patteshall and Wiswell had been appointed by the general court a committee of safety for " the eastern parts." This committee met at the house of Captain Patteshall (on the island that for many years bore his name, but which is now called Lee's island, in Phipps- burg), and after consulting with the settlers concluded to disarm the natives." A party ascended the river for the purpose, and meeting five Androscoggins and seven Kennebecs, persuaded them to surren- der their guns and knives. During the proceeding, a Kennebec Indian named Sowen struck at Hosea Mallet, a bystander, and would have killed him had not the savage been seized; the other Indians admitted that the assailant deserved death, yet they prayed for his re- lease, offering a ransom of forty beaver skins and hostages for his future good behavior. The proposal was accepted and Sowen was released. The traders then treated the Indians with food and tobacco, and solemnly promised them protection and favor if they would con- tinue peaceable. The principal sagamore in the party was Mahoti- wormet (alias Damarine), called by the English Robinhood, who lived in Nequasset (Woolwich). The next day he assembled as many of his tribe as possible and celebrated the treaty of peace with a great dance. +

* Williamson's History of Maine, Vol. I, p. 519.

t This chief, who was a Wawenoc, had been intimate with the English during his whole life, and never so far as we know became their enemy. He sold in 1639, to Edward Butman and John Brown (who bought Pemaquid of Samoset and another), the territory of the present town of Woolwich (then called Nequas- set); he also sold in 1649, to John Parker, the island of Georgetown (Erascohe- gan), and to John Richards, the island of Arrowsic; also in 1658, to John Parker, 2d, the territory that now makes the town of Phippsburg as far south as " Cock's high head;" and in 1661, to Robert Gutch, the territory now included within the limits of Bath. The memory of Mahotiwormet is preserved by his English nick- name in Robinhood's cove, the long arm of Sheepscot bay that nearly severs the island of Georgetown. Hopegood, the warrior, is said to have been his son.

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

The Indians on the Sheepscot were likewise prevailed upon to yield up their arms, and there seemed to be good reason to hope that Philip's influence might not reach disastrously to the province of Maine. But at this critical hour an incident occurred which neutral- ized all the efforts that had been made to stay the spreading of Philip's conflagration. A chief of the Sacos, named Squando, had suffered an outrage that sank deep into his heart. Two rollicking sailors jocosely threw his little child into the water to see if it could swim instinctively, like an animal. Though the infant was rescued alive it soon died. From that moment the grief stricken father be- came the inveterate enemy of the English; no overtures could reach him, no gifts placate him. He called the neighboring tribes to war councils, and being a chief of great influence, war dances began. Set- tlers from the Merrimac to Pemaquid saw with grave forebodings the changed behavior and increasing insolence of the Indians. The first overt act was by a band of twenty Indians, who sacked the house of Thomas Purchase at the mouth of the Androscoggin, on the 4th or 5th of September (1675). Purchase had lived there and cheated the Indians for fifty years. A few days later (September 12), the first Indian massacre in Maine took place-that of Thomas Wakeley and his family of eight persons at Falmouth on the Presumpscot river.

During the next three months seventy-two other barbarous mur- ders were committed between Casco and the Piscataqua. This series of tragedies was mostly the work of the Sacos and Androscoggins. The traders of Sagadahoc (on the lower Kennebec) were putting forth their utmost endeavors to prevent the terrible contagion from spread- ing to their river. They employed the services of their venerable trading neighbor of Pemaquid, Abraham Shurte, who by his rugged honesty and kind heart, had won the confidence of the Indians. He invited some of the sagamores to Pemaquid; they told him their grievances; they said some of their innocent friends had been treach- erously seized and sold as slaves under the pretext that they were conspirators or manslayers. "Yes," added they, "and your people frightened us away last fall [1675] from our cornfields about Kenne- bec; you have since withholden powder and shot from us, so that we have not been able to kill either fowl or venison, and some of our Indians, too, the last winter, actually perished of hunger." Shurte assured them that all of their wrongs should be righted if they would remain friendly. They gave him a wampum belt to denote their de- sire for peace, and a captive boy to be returned to his family. This parley was soon followed by an invitation to Mr. Shurte to meet the sachems of all the tribes in council, to make a general treaty of peace. The message was borne to Pemaquid by an Indian runner from Teconnet, where the council was to be held. Shurte fearlessly started

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Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 5

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