USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Prouts Neck > Old Prouts Neck > Part 2
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In 1660 the Protectorate of Oliver Crom- well in England came to an end and Charles, » the Merry Monarch, came to his own again.
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The heir of Sir Ferdinando promptly re- newed the Gorges claim to Maine, and Massachusetts was ordered to withdraw. Instead of obeying she argued the justice of her claim, and the old rivalry between Roy- alist and Puritan was revived. The man- sion at Ferry Rock still remained, with its mahogany furniture, imported from England, with its ample rooms where Dame Margaret presided, and its wide fireplace which had witnessed the consumption of many bump- ers of home-brewed ale and West India rum. Under changed conditions the master, Henry Jocelyn, Governor, Judge, Commis- sioner, and loyal gentleman in all those posi- tions, could not hold his own in a business way. The population increased, but the newcomers were unruly and the tenantry had got the New England feeling of inde- pendence. The people of the new town were organizing themselves without recog- nizing the proprietorship.
In 1666 he mortgaged his patent, with its lands, dwelling house, outhouses, fish houses
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THE OCCUPATION OF HENRY JOCELYN
and stages, not forgetting to include his seignioral rights and privileges, to Joshua Scottow, a merchant of Boston who had be- come interested in Maine timber lands, for the sum of three hundred nine pounds nine- teen shillings and ten pence, and in 1671, for the further sum of one hundred and eighty pounds, he confirmed and transferred to Scottow all of his right and interest in the whole property and appurtenances. Jocelyn, with his wife, went to the Pemaquid settlement. He showed his regard for the old home by occasional visits and acted sometimes as manager for the new owner, and once at least was commander of the garrison in the time of Indian hostilities. He was appointed to a governmental office at Pemaquid, which he filled with honorable distinction until the time of his decease at an advanced age.
For about fifty years Henry Jocelyn was almost continuously in public official posi- tions, and it is a matter of common remarkª that, all in all, he may, with the possible
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exception of George Cleeve, be regarded as the most prominent individual in early colo- nial Maine.
THE BATHING BEACH
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IV.
THE GENERAL SITUATION.
REFERENCES made to Maine in the
annals of the early voyagers indicate that it was regarded as the most desirable position on the Atlantic coast. This is shown by the fact that Sir Ferdinando Gorges, to whom was given first choice, made it his selection for a province of his own. Through the influence of Robert, Earl of Warwick, President of the Plymouth Council, his nephew, Thomas Cammock, was evidently given his option of locations, and he had for a couple of years previous been making himself acquainted with the vicinity. No section, not even Pemaquid or York, had qualities more prominently attrac- tive than those of the Cammock grant.
The reason of the quest for Maine be- comes apparent when we consider its valu-" able assets, which were for those times more
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important than appears to us. Cured fish found a market everywhere, and it was said that more fish were taken off this coast than anywhere else, the banks of Newfoundland not excepted. One writer at that time de- clared that the Maine fisheries produced more of net income than the Spanish gold mines. The fur trade was a bonanza of profit. Skins of otter, sable, beaver and silver fox could be obtained in exchange for things worth but few pence. The lumber from the giant pines was of world-renowned pre-eminence. The English navy got its masts almost wholly from Maine, and prices for masts were exceedingly high. The de- velopment of the sugar industry in the West Indies made great demand for material for sugar boxes and barrels for molasses and rum. The navigable rivers made the inte- rior land accessible. Water power for mills
existed everywhere. It was products from Maine that enabled the Plymouth Pilgrim Fathers to pay off the debts which they had incurred. Safe harbors made shelter and
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THE GENERAL SITUATION
ready intercourse along the whole coast available. As to accessibility, Maine, with its secure roadsteads for ships and its varie- gated coast reaching toward England, was regarded as the first objective for mariners. Monhegan Island was a common meeting place. 1766779
For the ships of the time the little harbors of Garrison Cove and at the river mouth were ample. Hay from the marshes, though poor in quality, furnished support for cattle without the trouble of cultivation. Wild fowl abounded in numbers unlimited and the forests furnished all kinds of game. The soil, as compared with the coast lands of other colonies, was of superior fertility.
The old highway route or trail from Port- land, then Casco, swung down through Cape Elizabeth, crossing the Spurwink River at Boaden's ferry. In Scarborough it was called the King's Highway and extended across the Black Point plains directly past the Jocelyn homestead to the Scarborough River, where the ferry was sufficient for
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men and horses. There were, of course, no wheeled vehicles. After crossing the ferry, it followed southerly along the coast just above high water mark, because "the expedi- tion of ye beach is daly hindered by observ- ance of ye tide," and, passing Old Orchard, went to Saco River ferry, and thence contin- ued its winding way to Portsmouth and Boston.
It was, at the time, an uncomfortable com- pliment to the quality of the place that there were so many claimants seeking it, and it was this fact which made the occupation of homesteads uncertain. There was the Gorges Palatinate Patent, upon which Cam- mock relied, and the Rigby-Lygonia con- veyance, which had superseded the Gorges title by parliamentary decision, and which, in turn, was now contested in the English Chancery Court. Massachusetts not only claimed it, but had actual possession, which proved to be, in effect, more than nine points of law. Besides these three, there was the dilatory King Charles himself, who, when
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THE GENERAL SITUATION
not occupied with troubles with his subjects, or with the alluring fascinations of the femi- nine beauties of his Court, desired to wipe off the slate all the conflicting titles and cre- ate here, instead, a new organization of reli- able aristocratic quality, with authority to suppress the dangerous political heresies that had been from the beginning set on foot in America and had been tolerated there too long.
John Fiske, in his Beginnings of New England, in recounting the story of the Massachusetts colony, tells of the naming of Beacon Hill in Boston. He says that when it was heard that Maine, the Royalist and Church of England province, was, with an army of its own, to have control of all of New England, the Massachusetts people determined to fight for their religion and their liberties, and that on the highest hill in Boston material was gathered for a beacon fire, to give the alarm in case of invasion from that source, and in this way Beacon Hill got its name.
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At the time of the Jocelyn transfer it is estimated that there was a population of about three hundred in this vicinity-as many as the Plymouth colony had ten years after its inception. It was, however, some- what irregular as a community. A consid- erable proportion were sailors and fishermen. Jocelyn had made conveyances to some very substantial people who were loyal to him, but the tenantry had not much of personal regard for the general residents nor of home feeling for the place. The town, under its Massachusetts incorporation, had meetings as early as 1669, but the records were appar- ently kept on loose papers, and give but lit- tle information further than the marks of the "creturs" that were pastured on the com- mons. People were, however, eager to join the settlement, and most of the new inhabi- tants made their own choice of locations, with the idea that he who first staked out a claim had prior right of possession. The Dunstan settlement had increased to a cop- siderable number of people. They had es-
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الحارات
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THE GENERAL SITUATION
tablished themselves by virtue of an Indian deed. On Blue Point Hill there was a sub- stantial so-called "combination" of planters and fishermen. Those occupants appear to have had no title at all, but they had a com- munity organization and did considerable of business, with Seavey's Landing and Jones' Creek, in the rear of Pine Point, for seaports.
It is not known that there were any houses in this part of the town above the Nonsuch River. There was not much encroachment, except by lumbermen, upon the old haunts of the red men, yet the Indians had become well acquainted with the Canadian French, who had never abandoned their claim to Maine, and many of the natives had grown suspicious and sullen and aloof from the English. Generally speaking, the masses of the people at the time of the conveyance of Jocelyn to Scottow, after nearly forty years of occupation, had ceased to regard them- selves as Englishmen away from their own country, and had become Americans in feel- ing and in action. The roast beef and home
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life of old England had to them lost their traditional attraction. The New England atmosphere had in it too much of individual independence to foster the growth of aristo- cratic traditions, and the republicanism of Massachusetts Bay had set the popular pace even upon the Cammock Patent. Town meetings in feudal Maine were an innova- tion, and voting qualifications were question- able, but the townsmen readily adapted them- selves to the system, and class distinctions relapsed largely into innocuous desuetude. The summers were of course delightful as well as busy. The little houses were com- fortable. The food supplies from farms, sup- plemented with venison and game obtained from the forests and the easy products of the seashore, were wholesome and abundant. With candles and fuel galore, the winters were times of pleasure as well as of activity. Probably they got as much of happiness and contentment out of life as do those of the feverish and more cultivated times in which we live.
GARRISON COVE AT FULL TIDE
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V. SCOTTOW AND THE INDIAN WARS.
A T the time 1671, when Jocelyn made his conveyance, the Massachusetts colony, which had been ordered by the Commission- ers of Charles II to withdraw from Maine, had, after three dilatory years, resumed its authority and management and was then in control. New inhabitants had established themselves, mostly by agrarian law, which meant individual option. They chose town officers and sent representatives to the General Court at Boston. The title was evidently based upon Massachusetts right rather than upon that of Gorges or Rigby, though holdings acquired from them had been in general terms affirmed. Black Point was said to have fifty dwellings, the greater part of which must have been located within the Cammock patent. No one, it was said, could "enjoy with certainty what he hath 4
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labored upon and possessed," though Gov- ernor Godfrey declared that "the Province of Maine is of more consarnment to his majestie than all New England besides."
While Maine, by reason of the contention of rival claimants, had no really stable inhab- itants, Massachusetts was well developed, with an established and orderly population of more than thirty thousand, and Boston was a commercial town of some five thousand. Joshua Scottow, the new proprietor, was a prosperous and well-to-do merchant of Boston. He already had a farm of two hundred acres above Dunstan, purchased of Abraham Jocelyn, brother of Henry, which included the conspicuous hill which still bears his name. This farm he must have acquired for its timber, as there were no resident settlers so far inland. He is repre- sented as having large interests in lumber and vessels, as trading in beaver and furs, and as having so many workmen in his employ that in this year 1671 he had special license from the County Court "to sell wynes
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and liqquors in small quantities to fishermen and others." He did not for some time reside upon his Cammock's Neck lands, but employed Henry Jocelyn as manager there. No mention is made of his having occupied the mansion at Ferry Rock. He erected, probably under the supervision of Jocelyn, a house fronting upon Garrison Cove, on the westerly side of the Neck, the location of the old Libby residence, now owned by the estate of Charles E. Morgan. This was a few years later called Scottow's garrison, and also Jocelyn's garrison. The living spring, which still flows underneath the steep banks in front, was a valuable asset. He had come from England prior to 1639 and was some- thing of a military man, and had been for a dozen years a member of the Boston Artil- lery, of which company he was commissioned ensign or lieutenant in 1657.
Scottow was, under his conveyance, in the nature of an absentee landlord, though the English tenantry system of landholding was quite ignored. He appears never to have
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been well acquainted with the people, and even when he came among them to reside, was not of the popular stamp. His pub- lished books show him to have been dis- tinctly Puritan in religious belief.
For about four years his business was ex- tensive and prosperous, and he had a consid- erable number of vessels and crews engaged in fishing. The shore along the landing on the Scarborough River was called the flake yards. The number of inhabitants increased. They dwelt evidently in comfort and con- tentment in their homes scattered about the patent, though there is no evidence of any house upon the Neck except that of the pro- prietor himself. Then, almost without warn- ing, came widespread hostility among the Indians. That this was quite unexpected is indicated by the fact that the white men had no defensive military organization whatever.
It is only within comparatively recent times that Indian characteristics and tribal relations among themselves have been well understood. In France there was union
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of church and state. The devoted Jesuit fathers who went from their French homes to America upon their missions were repre- sentatives both of the Church and the King. Wherever they went they were required to send annually written reports to the home government. These reports, or "relations," were preserved, and Francis Parkman spent long years of laborious research among their writings and the official French reports, and from them produced his striking histories of New France and of Indian policies, together with an account of their intercourse with the Canadian French and the attacks made upon the English colonies.
The vast tract of wilderness between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean was divided irregularly between two great aggregations or families of tribes, distin- guished by radical difference of their lan- guages. Those in the East were the various clans of the Algonquins. In the West, mainly in New York, were the powerful Iroquois groups of the Five Nations. The
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life business of all was war. Their hatred of each other was hereditary and deadly. The French courted and obtained the friendship of the Algonquins. Of these the Abenaki or Easterners were residents of Maine. It is a common error to say that the French understood and were upon friendly terms with the natives. This is true so far as regards the eastern Algonquins, but the good relations with and the friendship of these allies brought upon them the impla- cable vengeance of the Iroquois, and the troubles of the French with the Indians were even more serious than those of the English.
Scarborough was a favorite haunt of the aborigines. The seashore and the marshes were resorts of multitudes of wild fowl. Fish abounded in the rivers and streams and along the coast. The clams especially furnished food, both in summer and in winter. At Winnock's or Plummer's Neck and at other places are great shell heaps, showing that this was, for generations uncounted, a winter
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home for the natives. They lived in groups or tribes, supposed to have originated from common ancestors, but did not recognize authority derived from descent. The chiefs and sachems were leaders, selected generally for their physical prowess and mental capac- ity, and were deposed and changed at will. This fact was not well understood by Euro- peans and was a cause of frequent mistakes, as it was commonly assumed that a chief was a prince who might himself make agreements binding upon his people. Marriage was not known, but they assorted themselves in pairs and were generally faithful to each other. To the children both father and mother were devoted. The various groups had re- gional locations upon which no one was allowed to trespass without permission. The Indian mind had no conception of individ- ual ownership of land more than of water or air. The white man's deed of conveyance, therefore, was without meaning for them other than as a permit to share the occupa- tion without objection.
سحر الحب
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At the first coming of the random pioneers the Indians regarded them with rather cau- tious and suspicious friendship. They were pleased to barter their furs and products for the goods and wares of civilized people. Beads and ornamental trinkets were much desired, being far superior to their labori- ously wrought ornaments. Strange to say, most of them had an almost ungovernable passion for liquor. Firearms and iron tools soon took the place of bows and arrows and stone implements. On the whole there was for more than forty years an era of good feel- ing between the races. The better class of whites knew that it was politic to keep on good terms with the aboriginal occupants ; yet there were quite often bad and drunken men who made trouble.
Various reasons are given for the out- break of hostilities, but the real cause is ap- parent. There existed here in lesser degree the same condition of affairs that impelled the southern Indians in King Philip's War to attempt to drive away the encroaching
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English. The white men were coming in ever increasing numbers. They were leav- ing the coast and advancing into the interior. They were taking up large tracts of land which they called farms, and were claiming to hold those lands for themselves to the exclusion of the natives. The deer and the game were diminishing. The splendid for- ests, intensely venerated and loved, were fall- ing before the settler's axe. The ancient heritage of the red man was being occupied under paper deeds upon which deluded sachems had placed their totems or marks. They were bright enough to see that all this meant ruin or death to the Indian. They could not move west, for there their deadly foes, the ferocious and mighty Mohawks, awaited them with scalping knife and tor- ture. The old relations had been for the most part friendly, but some untoward events had recently happened.
There was, about this time, a disturb- ance to the eastward, where several Indians were killed upon slight provocation. Mogg
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Heigon, the Mogg Megone of Whittier's fanciful poem, was a capable and influential chieftain. His principal residence was at "The Arrowpoint Cape" southwest of Saco River. He spoke English freely and was a friend of Henry Jocelyn. He had been in- duced to affix his totem mark "for a som of money" to a deed to William Phillips, and found that he had surrendered the whole of the present town of Kennebunk, the heritage of his people, and had left them and himself homeless.
More even than that was the fatal event that alienated the friendship of Squando, the Sagamore of Saco. Squando was an influ- ential chief and a praying Indian, and had always been faithful to the white men. The story is told that at the critical period when King Philip's emissaries were abroad, some drunken fellows at Saco Falls, seeing an Indian squaw in a canoe with her baby, thought they would prove the report that an Indian could swim naturally. They upset the canoe and the baby sank. The mother
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rescued her child but soon after it died. These victims of brutal folly proved to be Squando's wife and his only baby boy. As a result the friendly chief became an enraged and bitter enemy. Some of the Indians told their intimate white friends that trouble was impending. The Boston authorities noti- fied the Scarborough people of danger, but, except to fit up a few houses with loopholes for garrisons, nothing was done.
In the early autumn of 1675 the blow fell with the stealthy suddenness characteristic of Indian warfare. It was no organized at- tack, for they knew nothing of organization. A roving band found Robert Nichols, an old man, with his wife, in their house near Fox- well's Brook and killed both of them and burned the house. A month later an attack was made upon the Alger garrison at. Duns- tan. Andrew Alger was killed and his brother Arthur mortally wounded. That place seems then to have been wholly aban- doned. The people gathered about Scot-, tow's garrison at Garrison Cove, on the
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westerly side of the Neck, facing Pine Point.
The following year, 1676, the chieftain, Mogg Heigon, assembled a large band of warriors for an attack upon the Black Point settlement. Falmouth had fallen and all the Scarborough inhabitants withdrew in panic, abandoning the whole place to the exultant Indians. Mogg, with his forces, passed on and went elsewhere for winter quarters. Thereupon a considerable part of the white people returned and again occu- pied the Scottow garrison, which had not been destroyed. In May, 1677, Mogg, hav- ing learned that a large part of the settlers had come back, gathered his red army and in military fashion beseiged the fort. In a direct frontal charge, a thing quite unusual in Indian warfare, Mogg, the brave leader, was killed. This ended the attack and his followers retreated, having first secretly buried him and his slain warriors on a sandy ridge near The Willows hotel. For more than two centuries these dead men, seated in a circle around their chief, kept their vigil
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until their well-preserved skeletons, acciden- tally discovered, were removed by the re- morseless white men.
Within a few days after the siege was raised, a company of Massachusetts soldiers, under command of Captain Benjamin Swett and Lieutenant James Richardson, sent at the instance of Scottow, arrived for aggres- sive war, with headquarters at the Prouts Neck fort. Unknown to them, about a month after the death of Mogg, a force of some five hundred Indians had gathered, apparently to avenge the killing of the great chief. The English force, with some friendly Indian allies, were skillfully decoyed from the fortification and led into an ambush at Moor's Brook, near the present Black Point schoolhouse. This was one of the most bloody of Indian battles. Swett and Rich- ardson were killed with forty of the English, being nearly half of the force. The sur- vivors succeeded in gaining the shelter of the garrison. In 1678 a dubious peace was made with the Indians, the white people
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agreeing to pay tribute to them. The three years' war, so called, came to a halt rather than to a conclusion. The French, by fur- nishing arms and supplies, kept the natives aggressive and hostile.
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VI.
TROUBLES IN PEACE AND TROUBLES IN WAR.
D URING the years when the Black Point settlement was experiencing consider- able of prosperity together with much of the opposite, history was in the making across the sea in such fashion that its reflex waves affected this little peninsula. In 1677, while the savage war was raging, the slow moving English Chief Justices rendered their deci- sion that the judgment of the Parliamentary Commission in 1646, sustaining the validity of the Lygonia-Rigby patent, was errone- ous and that the palatinate grant to Gorges conveyed the only legal title. All that had grown up under Massachusetts direction, therefore, was unauthorized and void. Fur- thermore King Charles, in his sluggish fash- ion, had determined that he would have Maine erected into a real aristocratic duke-
GRA POEST AC إلى الله اعلى
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dom, and that he would bestow it upon his favorite illegitimate son by Lucy Walters, whom he had made Duke of Monmouth.
It was not, however, in the book of fate for Monmouth to erect a ducal castle upon the Neck, or elsewhere in Maine. The impecunious heir of Sir Ferdinando found that he had come into possession of a battle ground rather than a province, and the thrifty Puritans of Massachusetts Bay "hasted away" and for the sum of twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling purchased the Palatinate with all its lands, authorities and emolu- ments. Massachusetts had more than held her own, but His Majesty bitterly resented what he considered an affront. Proceedings were set on foot to annul the charter of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The declared object for her purchase was not to acquire the territory, valuable as it was, but to pre- vent the establishment of a royal province with powers of overlordship; and this sug- gested the fact that the example of "the generall town meeting" and individual owner-
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