USA > Maine > Hancock County > Mount Desert > Mount Desert : a history > Part 5
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William Hubbard came to New England with his father in 1635, was graduated at Harvard in 1642, prepared for the min- istry, and was settled at Ipswich as colleague with the Rev. Thomas Cobbet in 1656. For nearly fifty years he was a faithful pastor and chronicler of the events of his day. He died at Ipswich, September 14, 1704, at the age of eighty-three. As the colleague of young Cobbet's father, Mr. Hubbard was personally conversant with all the facts of Cobbet's captivity, and his book was published only a few months after the captive's return, so that we are well assured that the account is authentic.
2 This treaty was the first of many similar agreements made between the Massachusetts authorities and the eastern Indians. Mugg, called by the English " Madockawando's prime minister," was a cunning, reckless savage, who had lived in the English set- tlements and could act as an interpreter. He was killed in the raid of 1677.
8 Madockawando was for thirty years or more the master- spirit among the Penobscots, the tribe which most frequented Mount Desert. He is repeatedly mentioned by all the contem- porary writers, the English depicting him as a " diabolical mis- creant," the French as a great chief and faithful ally. With his death in 1698 the decline of his tribe began. He was succeeded by Wenamovet, whose name first appears on the treaty of 1693,
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should cease and that the English captives and vessels and goods held by the eastern Indians should be returned. Mugg hastened to Penob- scot with this covenant and the prisoners were delivered by Madockawando on the 25th of De- cember, 1676, " amongst which prisoners," says Mr. Hubbard, " there was, by a more remarkable Providence than ordinary, added unto them, Mr. Thomas Cobbet, Son of that Reverend and worthy Minister of the Gospel, Mr. Thomas Cobbet, Pas- tor of the Church at Ipswich, who had all the Time of his Son's Captivity, together with his Friends, wrestled with God in their daily Prayers for his Release."
This Thomas Cobbet, the Indian captive, is the only white man known to have set foot on Mount Desert in the seventy years that followed the abandonment of Saint Sauveur. Throughout the years 1675 and 1676, when King Philip's War desolated New England, the frontier settlements had been harried by the Indians. The settlers had been murdered or carried into captivity and the scattered villages pillaged and burnt. One Walter Gendal had been driven from his house and, coming to Portsmouth, he induced some young men to accompany him in a "ketch," or pinnace of about thirty tons, belonging to Mr.
and who was busy in all the border fighting until 1726, when he signed a treaty with Governor Dummer that was followed by an unusually long peace.
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James Fryer, a leading merchant of Portsmouth, to see if some of his goods could not be rescued and brought away. So in October, 1676, Gen- dal, with James Fryer, son of the merchant, John Abbot, skipper of the ketch, Thomas Cobbet, Jr., and six others sailed away from Portsmouth on this errand.1 Cobbet, the son of the Ipswich minister, was a youth who had been for some years in the employ of Mr. Fryer, and had shown such " faithfulness, dexterity, and courage " that young Fryer " would not venture unless his friend would go along with him." The adventurers were surprised by the Indians as they lay at anchor, in October, at Richmond's Island. The wind was blowing right into the roadstead, so that they could hardly hope to beat out against it, and the Indians " annoyed them so fast with their shot that not a man of them was able to look above deck." Young Fryer, " venturing too much in view of the enemy," was badly wounded, and the rest, after defending themselves "with much courage and resolution, ... were brought to the sad choice of falling into the hands of one of these three bad masters, the Fire, the water, or the barbarous Heathen, to whom at last they thought it best to yield." 2
When the Indians came to share the prisoners amongst them, Cobbet " fell into the Hands of one of the ruggeddest Fellows, by whom within a 1 Hubbard, ii, 33. 2 Hubbard, ii, 174.
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few Days after his Surprizal, he was carryed first from Black-point, to Shipscot River in the Ketch, which the Indians made them to sayl for them, into the said River, from thence he was forced to travel with his Pateroon four or five Miles over- land to Daminiscottee, where he was compelled to row, or paddle in a Canoo about fifty five Miles farther to Penobscot, and there taking leave of all his English Friends and Acquaintance at least for the Winter, he was put to paddle a Canoo up fifty or sixty Miles farther Eastward, to an Island called Mount Desart, where his Pet- eroon used to keep his Winter Station, and to
appoint his hunting Voyages ; and in that Desart- like Condition was the poor young Man forced to continue nine Weeks in the Service of a Salvage Miscreant, who sometimes would tyranize over him, because he would not understand his Lan- guage, and for Want thereof, might occasion him to miss of his Game, or the like. whatever Sickness he was obnoxious unto, by Change of Dyet, or other Account, he could expect no other Allowance than the Wigwam will afford. If Joseph be in the Prison, so long as God is with him there, he shall be preserved and in due Time remembred.
" After the End of the nine Weeks, the Indian whom he was to serve, had spent all his Powder, whereupon on the sudden he took up a Resolu- tion to send his young Man down to Penobscot
-
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to Mounsier Casteen to procure more Powder to kill Moose and Dear, which it seems is all their Way of Living at Mount Desart. The Indian was certainly over ruled by Divine Providence sending his Captive down thither ; for a few Days before, as it seems, after the Indians in that Place had been Powawing together, he told him, that there were two English Vessels then come into Pemmaquid, or Penobscot, which proved so indeed : yet was it not minded by him surely, when he sent his Captive thither for Powder, for it proved the means of his Escape, which his Pateroon might easily have conjectured, if it had not been hid from him. As soon as he arrived at Penobscot, he met with Mugg, who presently saluted him by the name of Mr. Cobbet, and taking him by the Hand told him, he had been at his Fathers House, (which was November the first or second before, as he passed through Ipswitch to Boston) and had promised to send him Home, so soon as he returned. Madockawando taking Notice of what Mugg was speaking that Way, although he were willing that he should be released according to Agreement, (his Pateroon being one of the Sag- amores Subjects, though during the Hunting Voyage of the Winter, he lived at such a Dis- tance from him) began to demand something for Satisfaction, in a Way of Ransome, not un- derstanding before that his Father was a great Preachman, as they use to call it: Reply was
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made to him, that he should have something in lieu of Ransome, viz. a fine Coat, which they had for him aboard the Vessel ; the which the Sagamore desired to see, before he would abso- lutely grant his Release : But upon sight of the said Coat, he seemed very well satisfied, and gave him free Liberty to return Home." 1
Of Cobbet's companions captured with him at Richmond's Island, Gendal was sent to Ports- mouth to gather a ransom, and upon his return, Mugg, the Indian leader, carried the wounded Fryer to Portsmouth, where, early in November, he died of his wound. Mugg went on to Boston to negotiate the treaty already mentioned and returned to Penobscot in the vessels sent to bring home the captives who were to be restored under the terms of that agreement. Abbot went with the Indians in the captured pinnace to the Sheep- scot River. Thence, after a while, they sailed for the Penobscot, the Indians intending to go up the river and cross to Canada to get more powder and shot. They encountered an Autumn gale and as Abbot " found ways in his steering to make the
1 Hubbard, ii, 197. For this story of Cobbet's captivity see also the Narrative of New England Deliverances, a letter written in 1677 by the Rev. Thomas Cobbet, Sen., to the Rev. Increase Mather, in which the minister of Ipswich concludes that his son's "redemption may be found among the special answers to New England's prayers. (New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. vii, 216.) The story is also briefly told in S. G. Drake's Book of the Indians, p. 106. Felt's History of Ipswich contains sketches of Rev. Thomas Cobbet (p. 225) and of Rev. William Hubbard (p. 228).
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danger seem more than it really was," the ten In- dians in the ketch got frightened. Eight of them went ashore at Cape Newagen, and the other two at Damiscove Island. Abbot, thus left alone, chose " to cast himself upon the Providence of God in the Waters than to trust himself any longer with the perfidious savages on the dry land " - so "he came safe to the Isles of Shoals before the evening of the next day, February 19, 1677." 1
The next glimpse we have of Mount Desert in the contemporary records is of more signi- ficance in the island's story. Hardly had Sir Edmund Andros 2 established himself in the New England governorship than he made, in the early spring of 1688, a journey eastward to inspect
1 Hubbard, ii, 211.
2 Sir Edmund Andros was born in London, December 6, 1637. His family had long been prominent in the island of Guernsey. He first came to America in 1666 as an officer in the army. From 1674 to 1681 he was governor of New York and in the latter year was knighted. When the Duke of York succeeded to the throne as James the Second, Andros was appointed governor of New England and arrived in Boston on the 20th of December, 1686. He had a tumultuous career in Boston, and upon the arrival of the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange, Andros was seized and imprisoned April 18, 1689. In February, 1690, he was sent home to England, and two years later was appointed governor of Virginia, where for six years he had a popular ad- ministration. He was governor of Guernsey 1704 to 1706, and died in London, February 27, 1714. See Memoir of Andros printed as an Introduction to the Prince Society's edition of the Andros Tracts, and Palfrey's History of New England, ii, 352.
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the frontiers. He went by land from Boston to Portsmouth and then by sea to Pemaquid, where he went aboard the frigate Rose and sailed up Penobscot Bay. At Pentagoet he spoiled the fortified house of the Baron de St. Castin, an act wholly unprovoked and the signal for bloody vengeance wreaked by Castin's Indian allies on the defenseless people at Salmon Falls and Casco.1 Andros caused a census to be made of all the white people living between the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers and it was evidently his purpose to claim for his government all the territory west of the St. Croix.
The record of this census is preserved among the Hutchinson papers in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is printed in the Collections of the Society, third series, i, 82. The document is dated May 11, 1688, and is headed, "Names of Inhabitants between the River Penobscot and St. Croix."
The list is as follows : -
At Penobscot.
St. Castine and Renne his servant.
At Agemogin Reach.
Charles St. Robin's son. La Flower and wife. St. Robin's daughter.
1 In the Prince Society's edition of the Hutchinson Papers, ii, 304, is a letter from Edmund Randolph dated Boston, June 21, 1688, describing this exploit. See, also, Parkman's Frontenac, and Drake's Border Wars of New England, p. 10.
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Pettit Pleasure by Mount Desert.
. Lowrey, wife and child. Hind's wife and four chil- dren. - English.
In Winskeage Bay, on the eastern side of Mount Desert.
Cadolick and wife. At Machias.
Martell, who pretends grant for the river from Quebeck.
Jno. Bretoon, wife and child of Jersey Latin, wife and three children, English
his servants.
At Pessimaquody, near St. Croix.
St. Robin, wife and son, with like grant from Quebeck. Letrell, Jno. Minn's wife and four children - Lam- bert and Jolly Cure his servants.
At St. Croix.
Lorzy, and Lena his servant. Grant from Quebeck. St. Castin and St. Aubin are the well-known names of the French Acadian leaders, but the name of "Cadolick" on the " eastern side of Mount Desert " may give us pause. There is on record at Quebec a deed 1 or " concession " dated July 23, 1688, granting Mount Desert, the neigh- boring island, and a considerable tract on the mainland about " la rivière Donaquet," to the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, said to be then living in "La Cadie." This grant was confirmed by King Louis XIV on May 25, 1689. From the Andros census we are led to assume that Cadillac was actually living on this grant in 1688.
1 See the New England Magazine, March, 1903.
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Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was a native of Languedoc and was born about 1658. His father, Jean de la Mothe, Seigneur de Cadillac, was one of the lesser nobility and a member of the Parlia- ment of Toulouse. His letters and writings show that he had a good education and that he entered the army at an early age, serving as a cadet in the regiment of Dampierre and as a lieutenant in the regiment of Clairembault in 1677. In 1683 he first visited New France and lived for a time at Port Royal. Five years later he married, at Quebec, Marie Thérèse Guyon, daughter of Denis Guyon and Elizabeth Boucher, and apparently went at once with her to settle on or at least to explore his grant at Mount Desert. In 1689 he was at the court of Louis XIV, and while he was absent Port Royal was surrendered to Sir William Phips and his property there destroyed. The next year Cadillac returned to Canada with the fol- lowing introduction to the governor, Count Fron- tenac : -
" Sieur Lamothe Cadillac, a gentleman of Aca- dia, having been ordered to embark for the ser- vice of the King on the Embuscade, which vessel brought him to France, his majesty being informed that during his absence his habitation was ruined, hopes that Frontenac, the new governor of Can- ada, will find it convenient to give him employ- ment as he may find proper for his service and that he will assist him if he can."
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He at once won Frontenac's favor and was always afterwards a sturdy partisan of the gov- ernor's policies. His sprightly, sharp-witted let- ters to the minister in Paris are. entertaining reading and a capital source of information about the life in Canada at the end of the seventeenth century. .
In 1692 Cadillac went again to France to give counsel concerning the proposed expedition against Boston and New York, and he drew up a report or " Mémoire " describing the coast be- tween the Saint Croix and the Hudson and the people living there.1 This memoir is very inter- esting, but the localities described are not easily identified. Cadillac's spelling of the English names is original. He mentions Cambrigge, Martinvigners (Martha's Vineyard), Rodeillant (Rhode Island), Mananthe (Manhattan), and simi- lar curious places.2 The account of Mount Desert is as follows : -
1 For a translation of this memoir see Collections of the Maine Historical Society, vi, 279.
2 If the French made bad work of the English names, the English usually made worse of the French names. Numerous discoveries of unsuspected identity constantly surprise the reader of the contemporary chronicles and reports. Colonel Church always wrote the name of a French officer with whom he had dealings "Sharkee." That was the best he could do with the sound of the name Chartier de Lotbiniere. The most extraor- dinary case I have found is that of the officer called by the French " Le Capitan Cendre " and clearly by the historical facts to be identified with the Scotchman Alexander Glen. This apparently impossible identification is explained when we discover that Cap-
BEAR ISLAND
CADILLAC'S HARBOR
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" From Majais (Machias) to Monts Deserts it is twenty leagues. This is an island which is twelve leagues in circumference, and very high and mountainous. It serves as an excellent land- mark for ships from Europe, bound either for Port Royal or Boston." Then follow nine lines of unintelligible description of the country of "Donaquet," which is apparently the mainland about Union and Jordan's rivers, and then, " The harbor of Monts Deserts or Monts Coupes is very good and very beautiful. There is no sea inside, and vessels lie, as it were, in a box. There are four entrances. The northeast one is the best; it has nine fathoms of water. In the eastern one, there are fourteen or fifteen ; in the southeast one, there are three and a half, but in the channel there is a rock which is sometimes covered by the tide. In the western entrance there are three fathoms and a half, but to enter safely you must steer west or southwest. Good masts may be got here and the English formerly used to come here for them. Four leagues north- west and southeast of the Monts Deserts, there is a rock which is not covered at high water " (Mount Desert Rock).
This blind description apparently applies to the waters inside of the Cranberry Isles, though
tain Glen was commonly called by his comrades by the familiar Scotch nickname "Captain Sandy," which naturally became on French lips le Capitan Cendre.
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to make "four entrances" one has to divide the Eastern Way into two passages on either side of Bunker's Ledge.
From 1694 to 1697 Cadillac commanded the fort and trading post at Michillimackinac, and is spoken of in the governor's report as " a man of very distinguished merit." In 1701, after a visit to France to forward his plans, he led the expe- dition which founded the settlement which has since grown into the city of Detroit. In this work he was engaged for six years, and it is interesting to note that when he signed his reports or official letters he always gave himself the title of " Sei- gneur de Donaquet et Monts Deserts."1 From 1712 to 1717 Cadillac had a strenuous experience as governor of Louisiana. He died at Castle Tur- rain, October 16, 1730. It was his curious fate to be identified with the early history of at least eight of the States of the Union. Parkman says of him : " He was amply gifted with the kind of intelligence that consists in quick observation,
1 In 1702, when Madame de Cadillac joined her husband at Detroit, there appear to have been five children living, for Cadil- lac's letters show that a son, Artaine, was already at Detroit, another son, Jasquay, came with the mother, and three daughters were left at the Ursuline Convent at Quebec. The births of other children are mentioned in Ste. Anne's Church Records, and one of them, Joseph, afterwards became a distinguished lawyer in Paris. Though all the sons married and had children, none of the grandsons lived. A granddaughter, Marie Therese Cadillac, married her cousin, Bartholemy de Gregoire, and appears later in this history.
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sharpened by an inveterate spirit of sarcasm, was energetic, enterprising, well-instructed, and a bold and sometimes visionary schemer, with a restless spirit, a nimble and biting wit, a Gascon impetu- osity of temperament, and as much devotion as an officer of the king was forced to profess, cou- pled with small love of priests and an aversion to Jesuits." 1
It was probably Cadillac's report about Mount Desert that for several succeeding years made the island the rendezvous for French expeditions against New England. The archives at Paris 2 show that in the summer of 1692 two French ships, Le Pole and L'Envieux, sailed from Quebec com- missioned to capture the English post at Pema- quid and to harry the New England fishermen. The allied Indians were meanwhile notified to rally at Mount Desert and join the ships there. The Sieur d'Iberville 3 commanded the expedition and
1 Cadillac's services in and for New France, with many quo- tations from his letters, are set forth in Parkman's Frontenac, pp. 324, 403, 405; and Half Century of Conflict, pp. 20-29, 298-302. See, also, Farmer's History of Detroit, Sheldon's Early History of Michigan, and numerous reprints of his letters in Margry's Re- lations et Mémoires Inédits and New York Col. Docs. ix, 671.
2 New York Col. Docs. ix, 554.
8 Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville was the third son of Charles Le Moyne, Sieur de Longueil, leader of the Canadian noblesse. The father and his twelve stalwart sons were for a century active in all the affairs of New France, and half a continent bears wit- ness to their adventurous hardihood. Nine of the sons were dis- tinguished in history and three were killed in battle. Of these Le Moynes it is written : " For dauntless enterprise, persistent
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the governor, Frontenac, in reporting to the home office in Paris condemned him for delaying so long at Mount Desert as to permit of warriors reaching Pemaquid. When the French and In- dians arrived there they found an English man- of-war at anchor off the fort and did not venture to attack.1 The next year too found Mount De- sert a rallying place, and in 1696 Iberville's suc- cessful expedition against Pemaquid again made its final start from this natural landmark. The
effort, and unextinguishable determination, for all the rugged essentials of primitive virility, these adventurers loom up in the dawn of American settlement with the gigantic proportions of their Homeric ancestors." Iberville was trained in the French navy, and his sagacity, courage, and great personal force soon approved him for high command. He first, however, appears in history as a leader in the expedition against the Hudson Bay Company's posts in the northwest, a " buccaneer exploit " that was fully successful. In 1692 he was captain of a frigate in the unsuccessful attempt at Pemaquid, and four years later com- manded the expedition that captured that post. Thence he sailed to Newfoundland, took and burnt St. John and destroyed the English settlements. The next summer he returned by sea to the Hudson Bay region, where he had also been in 1694 and "triumphed over storms, icebergs, the British fleet, and the forts." In 1698-99 Iberville led the expedition for the founding of Louisiana, and with his brother Bienville established New Orleans. He left Louisiana finally in 1702. Four years later he conducted a naval expedition against the English in the West Indies and died at Havana, July 9, 1706. Iberville's journals and reports are printed in Margry's Relations et Mémoires, vol. iv. His career is told by Parkman, Frontenac, pp. 132, 388-392; Half Century of Conflict, i, 290-295; and in Grace King's life of his brother, Bienville.
1 Parkman, Frontenac, pp. 357, 358; New York Col. Docs. ix, 538, with other references to the original sources in Parkman.
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primeval solitude was turned into a scene of unwonted activity by the presence of the ships of war and the transports lying at anchor, while the spruce-clad shores were fringed with the rude shelters of the Indian allies.
The island next emerges into the light of his- tory when we read in the Massachusetts Records the instructions issued by the governor to stout Benjamin Church,1 who five times led the yeo- men of New England against the marauding
1 Colonel Benjamin Church was born at Duxbury in 1639. He was the most famous of the Indian fighters in King Philip's War and in the warfare on the eastern border that ensued; an active, hardy leader, thoroughly acquainted with Indian ways and haunts, not too lenient, but a man of good judgment and of a generous, hospitable disposition which procured him both author- ity and esteem. He was killed by a fall from his horse, January 17, 1717, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and was buried at Little Compton, R. I. His Memoirs, Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, written out by his son, Thomas Church, were first printed in Boston in 1716. The book is now a very rare volume.
A second edition of the narrative was published at Newport in 1772, edited by Dr. Ezra Stiles, later president of Yale Col- lege. A reprint of this edition, with an introduction, index, and copious notes, was edited by Mr. Samuel G. Drake in 1825. Of this edition there have been many reprints. Finally in 1865- 1867, Dr. Henry M. Dexter edited and issued a reprint in two vol- umes of the original edition of 1716 with facsimiles, a memoir of Church and many valuable notes. This is the standard edi- tion of this invaluable contemporaneous account of the Indian wars. The first volume contains the record of King Philip's War, 1675-1677, the second volume, to which references are made in this chapter, contains the journal of the Five Expedi- tions against the Eastern Indians, 1689-1704.
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eastern Indians. His first expedition, in 1689, went as far as the Kennebec. In 1690 he went to Saco and Brunswick, in 1692 as far as Isles- boro' in Penobscot Bay. The orders for his fourth expedition bear date August 12, 1696, and are signed by Governor William Stoughton. Church's report says : " In the time Maj. Church lay at Boston, the News came of Pemaquid Fort being taken, it came by a Shallop that brought some prisoners to Boston, who gave accounts also that there was a French Ship at Mount De- sart, who had taken a ship of ours ; so the dis- course was that they would send the Man of War, with other Forces to take the said French Ship and retake ours. But in the meantime Maj. Church and his Forces being ready, im- barked, and on the 15th day of August set sail for Piscataqua, where more men were to join them, (but before they left Boston, Maj. Church discoursed with the Captain of the Man of War, who promised him, if he went to Mount Desart in pursuit of the said French Ship, that he would call for him and his Forces at Piscataqua, expect- ing that the French and Indians might not be far from the said French Ship, so that he might have an opportunity to fight them while he was engaged with the French Ship.)"1
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