USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 2
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That was Captain Carman's story: that with twenty men and seven small cannon and some rusty muskets, he had beaten off a pirate ship twice' his size, three times as many cannon, and ten times as many men - and the Captain and a few of his men had licked fifty fierce pirates in hand to hand fighting. It was a good story, and Captain Carman stuck to it. It undoubtedly travelled home with Captain Vines to Winter Harbor, as Biddeford was then called. And it probably set the folks here to telling other stories of the sea. But no one wrote those stories down.
An English ship, such as was sailed by Captain Richard Vines - the founder of Biddeford
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Vines carried his seal engraved on a finger ring. The design on the seal is known as a Merchant's Mark - or "Mystery Mark", because the exact meaning is not known. The design is a form of the cross, and its use by European merchants has been traced back to the Crusade s.
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About two years after hearing that pirate sea story, Richard Vines gave up his home here, going to the island of Barbados in the West Indies where he raised cotton, sugar and tobacco - and where he died in 1651. While he lived here his principal business seems to have been as a trader in lumber and beaver skins, and he travelled a good deal - to the north of Maine on trading voyages, and to Boston to sell the goods he had obtained in trading with the northern Indians and with the French settlement in Acadie : the same Acadie or Acadia that about a hundred years later was the home of Evangeline. It is interesting that the
title of Captain which Richard Vines bore did not mean that he was a sailor.
In those days a very sharp distinction was made between the title of "master" (what we would now call a ship's captain) and that of "captain. " Captain then meant exclusively a military man, and the title was given only to soldiers and explorers. As soldier, explorer and fur-trader, Richard Vines could undoubtedly have told many stories that today we would be glad to hear. But he was not a boaster nor a braggart, and in his modesty never saw fit to write of his experience s. He did
things, but he didn't talk about them. He was probably the most influential man in the early settlement here, and the most respected.
It was not until fifteen years after Vines left that another man came here to occupy as high a position in the community. This was William Phillips who in 1659 purchased the land here that had formerly been owned by Richard Vines. The next year, 1660, Phillips moved here from Boston and built his home on the hill near the present Peirson's Lane. He was a mon of wealth; his home was undoubtedly large and well-built for that time. He bought land from the Indians until he owned almost all of the territory now covered by Sanford, Alfred, Waterborough, Hollis and Limington, as well as all of Biddeford above Moore 's Brook. He was a major of militia; his daughter Elizabeth married Captain John Alden (who was the son of the famous John Alden and Priscilla in the old Miles Standish story) and Captain John built a sawmill for Major Phillips on the riverbank where the Pepperell Mills now stand. If Captain John Alden did not live here, he certainly often visited here at the Phillips' home. And it is a very fair assumption that the life at the Phillips' home was very similar to the life at the Josselyn home at Black Point (now Scarboro) of which we have an interesting record written by John Josselyn.
Josselyn came back to Maine from England in 1663, three years after Major Phillips established his home here. This time Josselyn stayed eight years and his report of his experiences makes an interesting and amusing picture of life on this coast after the settlement was well established. It proves once more how very different (and how much more enjoyable) the life here was from that of the extreme Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. For instance, Josselyn describes a winter pastime :
"In the depth of winter they (the settlers) lay a sledg-load of Cods-heads on the other side of a paled fence
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(a picket fence) when the moon shines. And about nine or ten of the clock the Foxes come to it, sometimes two or three or half a dozen or more; these they shoot, and by the time they have cased (skinned) them, there will be as many foxes as before. So they continue shooting and killing ... Foxes as long as the moon shineth: I have known half a score kill 'd in one night. "
Wolves were hunted here then. The first livestock was largely goats on which the wolves preyed heavily. For that reason wolves were hunted down without mercy. "In 1664," says Josselyn, "we found a wolf asleep in a small dry swamp under an Oak; a great mastiff which we had with us seized upon him and held him till we had put a rope about his neck, by which we brought him home, and tying him to a stake we baited (teased) him with smaller Dogs and had excellent sport till his hinder-leg being (finally) broken, they knockt out his brains.
"Sometime before this we had an excellent course (race ) after a single wolf upon the hard sand by the seaside at low water for a mile or two. At last we lost our dogs, it being twilight, and went beyond them, for a mastiff had seized upon the wolf (which had) gotten into the sea, and there held him till one went in and led him out - the mastiff keeping her hold till they had tied his (the wolf's) legs, and so we carried him home like a Calf, upon a staff
between two men." Afterwards they killed the wolf, and then Josselyn made a comment which could only have come to him from some goodwife on this coast: "The Fangs of a wolf, " said Josselyn, "hung about children's necks, keep them from frightning, and are very good to rub their gums with when they are breeding (cutting) of teeth."
Another story of Josselyn's of this same time, gives another glimpse of the life here. He says that one Fall evening "certain Indiens coming to our house clad in Deerskin coats, desired leave to lodge all night in our kitchen, it being a very rainy season. " Given permission, the Indians slept that night on the kitchen floor - some in the middle and others under the long kitchen table. When the Josselyns arose next morning the Indians had gone, and the chickens were then called from the yard into the kitchen because, as Josselyn naively explains, "they had their breakfast usually in cold weather in the kitchen. " So the corn for
the chickens was thrown under the kitchen table to keep the chickens out of the way of the busy servants in the kitchen. And everything went on as usual in the Josselyn home that morning until the chickens began to act queerly. "In the afternoon they began to hong the wing; in the night the sickest dropt dead from the perch, and the next day most of them died. We could not guess at the cause but thought the Indians had either bewitched or poisoned them. " But finally it was discovered that hairs shed by the Indians'
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"Deerskin coats" were to blame. The chickens gobbling up the corn under the kitchen table had taken the loose hairs along with it. The crops of the dead chickens had "as much Deers hair as Corn; they that picked up none of the hair, lived and did well. "
And that gives a striking picture of life in the kitchen of a wealthy settler, a magistrate and deputy governor of Maine, whose home was no pioneer log hut but rather a comfortable clapboarded house large enough to be then called a mansion anywhere in New England. Incidentally John Josselyn gives another glimpse of the give-and-take relations between the early settlers and the Indians. The Indians learned much from the white men; the white men also learned much from the Indians - as in this magical recipe for what is still a great garden pest in Maine. Says Josselyn:
"There is also a dark worm of the bigness of an Oaten- straw, and an inch long, that in the spring lye at the root of Corn and Garden plants all day, and in the night creep out and devour them. These in some years destroy abundance of Indian Corn and Garden plants, and they have but one way to be rid of them which the English have learnt of the Indians; and because it is somewhat strange I shall tell you how it is. They go into a field or garden with a birch dish, and spudling the earth about the roots, for they lye not deep, they gather their dish full which may contain about a quart or three pints (of worms). Then they carrie the dish into the Sea, and within a day or two if you go into your field you may look your eyes out sooner than find any of them. "
And that was the Indian cure for cutworms, used by the early settlers of Biddeford three centuries ago!'
No picture exists of the house that Major william Phillips built on what is now Pierson's Lane. But it is very probable that it resembled this house, built in another New England settlement at the very same time. The overhanging second floor was not the mark of a fort or garrison house, but was an architectural style common in English houses, and brought to this country from England by the early settlers.
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3. The Indian Wars
During the time of Captain Richard Vines there was never any trouble with the Indians of the Saco Valley, although there was a report in Boston in 1634 that a white man from here had been killed by Indians while trading with them. But who that white man was, is not known - and Boston heard many such stories that proved untrue. As Governor Winthrop once wrote: "Indeed, it was so usual to have false news brought from all parts, that we were very doubtful of the most probable reports. " Perhaps that remark applies to another Boston report,of 1642, as well. which report or rumor ran that Indians had been robbing the houses of the white men here and had "taken away their powder and guns. " On the whole it is very clear that for forty-five years after the settlement was founded by Vines, there was absolute peace with the Indians. Which is in bright contrast to the fact that the partner of Vines, John Oldham, was killed by Indians in Rhode Island in 1636 and that Massachusetts and Connecticut had a bloody Indian war (the Pequot War) in 1637.
The good relations with the Indians, established by Vines, continued for fifteen years after Major William Phillips came. In fact Phillips seems to have gone out of his way to be friendly. Although the settlement had already been established for a full generation, Phillips was careful to May of 1664 to purchase from an Indian chief all title that was claimed by the Indians to the land between the Saco and Kennebunk rivers, and stretching from the sea to Salmon Falls - a distance of twenty miles. In the deed still on record at Alfred, the Indian chief describes himself as "Mogg Hegone of Sacoe River, sunn ( son) and heyre (heir) to Walter Higgon, Sagamore of the sayd River but now deceased. " This was the famous Mogg whom the poet Whittier later wrote about in his story-poem called "Mogg Megone" (though he took great liberties with actual history in his writing) and the same chief for whom the great rock at the foot of Cataract Falls in Saco was long known as "the rock of Mogg Megone. " Major Phillips dealt with other Indians also. From a chief named Fluellen he bought (in 1661) a piece of land eight miles square (and covering some 38,000 acres) taking in the present Sanford, Alfred and Waterborough - a district once known as Phillipstown. From
still another Indian named Hobinowill he bought the land from Salmon Falls to the Ossippee River now occupied by parts of Hollis and Limington- the latter town, by the way, being long known as Phillipsburg. Major Phillips also bought what he thought was a silver mine when, in 1664, he purchased from an Indian chief named Meeksombe three rocky hills on the west side of the Saco River near what were called the "great falls" which in turn were thirty miles or more above the falls at Biddeford. This Indian named Meeksombe was better known by the white men as Captain Sunday, though why he was called that is not known, and
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the three rocky hills were known as Sunday's Rocks for a full hundred years. An old document describes them as "chiefly white but mixed with Izinglass" and it was the shining mica or isinglass that made the men of Major Phillips' day think there was silver "in them thar hills. " In fact, so sure was Major Phillips that he sold portions of his "silver mine" to friends in Boston. And the McArthur Library has a copy of a deed made in 1673 in which a "one sixteenth Part of the Silver Mines" was sold by Phillips with "the consent of Bridget his wife." The old deed begins solemnly:
"To all Christian People to whom this present Deed of Sale shall come, Major William Phillips of Winter Harbor in the Province of Mayne in New England in America, sendeth Greeting in our Lord God everlasting.
It is the first recorded mining speculation in Biddeford history. But before the "mine" could be worked (and found to have no silver) an Indian war had struck.
This war, known to history as King Philip's War, began in Massachusetts in June of 1675. At first the Indians here refused to join the Massachusetts Indians in attacking the white men. And it was not until September of that year, that trouble began here. One of Biddeford's oldest legends explains that trouble. It is the legend of Squando's Curse.
Squando is one of the most tantalizing figures in our Indian history. He is described as "the Sagamore (or Chief) of the Saco Indians" and is said to have been a frequent visitor in the homes of the white men here. He is also said to have been a grave and dignified man and among the Indians he was regarded as a powerful "powow" or magician. Just when he became chief of his tribe is not known but it could not have been long before the outbreak of the war. One significant thing is that in all the land purchases made by Major Phillips of the Indians between 1660 and 1670, the name of Squando does not appear. In the war itself he appears as the most cruel and savage of the Indian leaders, and yet in at least one instance he showed a very kindly disposition toward the white men. In this instance Squando came across a young white girl who had been captured by Indians farther north in Maine, and personally took the girl from the Indians and delivered her safe and unharmed to the nearest white settlement. He appears abruptly in our history, and disappears just as abruptly. And no white man of the time seems to have known him well enough, or been sufficiently interested, to really study him. All accounts agree that he was suddenly changed from friendship to bitter enemity by something that happened on the Saco River in
the spring or summer of 1675. The place of the happening must have been just below Factory Island, which was then known as Indian Island because it was an Indian camping ground each spring and summer. The first version of the happening appeared in a book published in Boston in 1677 - so that the legend is probably the oldest Biddeford legend in print. This is the way it was told in 1677, barely two years after the happening:
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"The chief actor, or rather the beginner of all the mischiefs, is one Squando, the Sagamore of Saco Indians, whose squaw, as was said, was abused by a rude and indiscreet act of some English seamen, the last summer, 1675, who either overset the canoe wherein the said squaw and her child were sailing in a river thereabouts, or else to try whether the children of the Indians (as they had heard) could swim as naturally as any other creature, wittingly cast her child into the water. But the squaw immediately diving into the water after it, fetched it up from the bottom of the river - yet it falling out within a while after (that) the said child died (which it might have done if no such affront had been offered) the said Squando, father of the child, hath been so provoked thereat that he hath ever since set himself to do all the mischief he can to the English in those parts, and was never as yet since that time truly willing to be reconciled, although he is said to have sent home some that were taken captive the last year."
It is very likely that there was some such happening, because it was an early belief with the white men that Indians swam as naturally as animals, and without being taught. John Josselyn, in fact, makes the direct statement that "they (the Indians) can swim naturally, striking their pawes under their throat like a dog, and not spreading their Arms as we do." By which he meant, of course, that the Indians swam "doggy fashion" while the white men used the breast stroke. Such incidents also may have happened elsewhere, for a similar story of this same war is a part of the folklore of New Hampshire and told in connection with the legends of the Piscataqua River. But the Biddeford legend has one feature not shared by the New Hampshire story. Which is that Squando not only began a war, but as a great powow or magician he laid a curse on the Saco River that each year the River would claim three white lives (by drowning) until all the white men were driven from the banks of the Saco River. And people still speak each summer of the Saco's three yearly drownings, and watch to see if the curse hold true.
But whatever the cause that made the local Indians and Squando join in King Philip's war, the fact remains that there had been enough warning signs that summer to let Major Phillips fortify his home. The probable appearance of his home before the war, is shown on page 12. In fortifying it, he most probably erected a palisade of stout planks or logs around it, with the corners built cut into what were called "flankers", sc that the Indians could not creep up under the palisade and take shelter. Across the river, near where the railroad crosses Common street in Saco, stood the home cf John Bonythen and to that home there came one day a friendly Indian who warned Captain John that strange Indians had come from the west and were persuading the local Indians to an attack. Evidently Major Phillips had made a thorough job of fortifying his house , because Bonython left his
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own home at once (though he was supposed to have fortified it) and crossed the river with his family to take shelter with Major Phillips. It was well he did, because just a day or two later - on a Saturday morning, September 18th, 1675 - the people in the Phillips' house saw flames and smoke shoot up on the other side of the river and knew then that the Indians had come and had set fire to the Bonython house . From the hill on Peirson's Lane they would have had an excellent view, and it was a valuable warning. For other Indians had gotten undetected "across the river and within half an hour would have taken the Phillips' home by surprise if it had not been for the warning given by the burning Bonython house. This is the way the story of the attack was told within a year after it occurred. It appears in the same book with the Squando story, printed in Boston in 1677.
"Upon the eighteenth of September, about 11 o'clock those at Major Phillips' garrison saw Capt. Bonython's house on fire, which by the good providence of God was to them as the firing a beacon giving them notice to look to themselves, their enemies being now come; otherwise they might, to their great disadvantage, have been too suddenly surprised. For within half an hour after, they (the Indians) were upon them.
"A sentinel placed in a chamber (on the second floor) gave notice that he saw an Indian by the fence near a cornfield. Major Phillips, not willing to believe till he might see with his own eyes, ran hastily upstairs, and another of his men coming after him cried, "Major, what do you mean? Do you intend to be killed?" at which words he (the Major) turned from the window out of which he was locking (and probably leaning) just as a bullet struck him on the shoulder, grazing it but without breaking the bone. The Indians upon the shot, thinking he had been slain, gave a great shout. "
With the shout the Indians began to show themselves all around the house, and the white men saw that they were entirely surrounded. "Whereupon they instantly fired on the enemy from all quarters, and from the flankers of the fortification, so as they wounded the Captain of the Indians who, presently leaving the assault, retired three or four miles from the place where he soon after died (as the white men later learned)." In the house itself "one of the best men was soon after disabled from any further service, by a wound he received in one of the vollies made by the assailants; but that did not in the least daunt the rest of the defenders, who continued still to fire upon the enemy. This dispute lasted about an hour, after which the enemy dispairing to take the house by assault, thought upon a device how to burn it. "
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It is interesting to recall how desperate must have seemed the situation just then. There were fifty people crowded into the Phillips' home but only ten were "able hands" and another five were so aged or so young that their help was very limited. And outside, and all around, were nearly one hundred Indians - with no other white men nearer than those at the Pool, and those not daring to leave the Pool for fear of Indian ambush. The Indiens, incidentally, must have been very sure of themselves and very well acquainted with the isolation of the defenders. Major Phillips' had evidently been building a little separate settlement around the Peirson Lane district for the old book records that the Indians' next step was to burn "the house of one of his tenants," and then his sawmill (that had been built and operated by his son-in-law, Captain John Alden) which stood somewhere on the riverbank nearby. In setting these fires the Indians were "hoping to draw them ( the white men) out of the garrison to put out the fire, but missing their purpose in that, they called out: "You English cowardly dogs, come out and quench the fire. "" All thot Saturday afternoon the Indians continued their shooting and taunting. "The besieged hoped for relief from the (other) towns but none came, the Major .
still encouraging his men to hold out which they manfully did all that night, when they were alarmed almost every half hour. Betweenwhiles they could hear their axes and other instruments, knocking about the mills. Those within the house conceived they (the Indians) were preparing some engine wherewith to burn the house , which really was the case. About four o'clock in the morning, at the sitting of the moon, he (the Major) saw a cart with four wheels, having a barricado built in the fore part to keep off shot, and filled with combustible matter (birch rinds, straw, powder) and with poles 20 feet long ready to fire the house. He ( the Major) bid them let the Indians drive it within pistol shot, before they made any shot against them; his men were a little discouraged at the sight of this engine, but he bid them be of good courage and use means, putting their trust in God who he was confident would relieve them."
The Indians apparently had built the cart somewhere in the vicinity of the present Liberty Square. The white men watched while the Indians began to push the cart nearer, sheltered by the barricade or shield they had built on the front of the cart. A small brook then ran down the hill near the Phillips' house and the cart in crossing it, made unwieldy by the barricade, caught one wheel in the mud and twisted sideways so that the Indians behind the cart and shield were exposed. Instantly the white men "fired upon them out of the right flanker, and having so fair a shot upon them, and not being above pistol shot from the place, they killed 6 of the enemy and wounded 15 - as they found afterwards." This mishap discouraged the Indians and "at sunrise those within the house espied 40 of them marching away, but how many more were in the company they could not tell. "
After it seemed certain that the Indians had gone, Major
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Phillips sent a message to the settlers at Winter Harbor, asking for help. But Sunday passed, and Monday, and no help came. The powder and shot for the heavy muskets was almost exhausted, and the people in the garrison told Major Phillips that they would not stay any longer. So on Tuesday morning, all the fifty people (of whom about fifteen were men and boys) made their way cautiously down to the Pool. And about two weeks later, the Indians reappeared and burned all houses on both sides of the River down to its mouth. Only the houses at Winter Harbor were left.
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