USA > Maine > The beginnings of colonial Maine, 1602-1658 > Part 12
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1 "In this manner England vindicated her claim to Maine and Acadia". Bancroft, History of the United States, I, 113.
2 Brown, Genesis of the United States, II, 816.
3 Concerning the legal points involved in such cases, see A Digest of International Law by John Bassett Moore, I, 258, and following. Chief Justice Marshall, in 1828, Johnson vs. McIntosh, said : "On the discovery of this immense continent the nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. . . . The potentates of the Old World found no difficulty in convincing them- selves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the New, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence. But, as they were nearly all in pursuit of the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle which all should acknowledge as the law by which the rights of acquisition, which they all asserted, should
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THE FRENCH COLONY AT MOUNT DESERT.
be regulated as between themselves. This principle was that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be con- summated by possession. The exclusion of all other Europeans necessarily gave to the nation making the discovery the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives, and establishing settlements upon it". Moore, Digest, etc., I, 258, 259.
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CHAPTER VIII.
VOYAGES BY CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH AND OTHERS.
N OTWITHSTANDING Strachey's explicit statement assert- ing the complete collapse of the Sagadahoc colony at the mouth of the Kennebec-a statement abundantly con- firmed by other contemporary writers-attempts have been made to give apparent support to vague surmisings that some of the colonists remained in the country.1 "However first originated", these statements "have been elaborated and promulgated by vari- ous persons, have been supported by sundry considerations with insistence and repetition. They have assumed a place in history and literature, have been frequently set before the public eye in the newspapers and been enforced on occasion in historical or public assemblies. It is believed they are quite widely diffused among reading people, and have been accepted partially, or fully, by many persons interested in the history of the locality, or the state".2
Especially has the effort been made to locate at Pemaquid Popham colonists, who are said to have remained on the coast after the abandonment of Fort St. George. There is no evidence,
1 The latest, perhaps, is in Herbert Edgar Holmes' Makers of Maine, Lewiston, Maine, 1912, 149: "When the [Popham] colonists at the end of the year returned to England, they returned in the 'Mary and John' and the 'Virginia of Sagadahoc'! The ship 'Gift of God', with forty-five men, remained behind. What became of these men and their ship is doubtful, but the weight of evidence tends to prove that they went to Pemaquid and Monhegan and became those scattered settlements of Englishmen along the coast of Maine." There is no evidence whatever that these men went to Pemaquid and Monhegan. The persistence of such statements that overlook well-established facts is one of the surprises of well-informed readers con- cerning our colonial history.
2 Coll. of the Me. Hist. Society, Series II, 6, 64.
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however, upon which such an attempt can be based with any show of reason. Not only is there positive testimony, which the sources of this part of our history abundantly furnish, that all the colonists connected with the Popham plantation at the time of its abandonment returned to England, but there is no evidence that there was any English occupation of Pemaquid following the breaking up of the settlement on the Kennebec. When, for example, it is said that French missionaries report English people at Pemaquid in 1608, and 1609, a good illustration is furnished of the foundation upon which this claim of English occupation at Pemaquid at this time is made to rest. The reference plainly is to the statement made by Father Biard, in his Relation, that the Indians told him "they drove away the English who wished to settle among them in 1608 and 1609". But the connection shows that Father Biard, in this statement, had in mind the Popham colony at the mouth of the Kennebec, whither he went with Biancourt in the autumn of 1611. It is true that he makes a mis- take in the date he gives and should have written 1607 and 1608, the dates of the Sagadahoc settlement ; but the error is easily cor- rected by the reader, as Father Biard has no record of any visit to Pemaquid in his narrative of this trip. In the passage to which reference is made, he is recording what he learned from the Indians during his visit to the Kennebec (Kinibequi) with Bian- court, allusion to which is made in the preceding chapter. Other statements, presented as a basis for Pemaquid settlement at this time are equally without foundation. They are figments of the imagination only.1
Certainly if any one had known of English settlers on the Maine coast immediately following the return of the Popham colonists to England, it would have been Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who was so bitterly disappointed at the outcome of an enterprise into which
1 For a clear and exhaustive statement concerning "Beginnings at Pema- quid" see a paper with that title read before the Maine Historical Society, September 7, 1894, by Rev. H. O. Thayer, and printed in the Society's Col- lections, Series II, 6, 62-85 ; also The Sagadahoc Colony, Gorges Society, IV, 217-239.
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he had put so much of heart and hope. His writings, however, lack even a hint of any such information.
Already, under the reign of James I, the condition of affairs in England was such as to awaken serious consideration among thoughtful men. Two letters of Gorges,1 written to Lord Salis- bury in 1611, touch upon this unhappy condition. Matters con- nected with English commerce especially distressed Gorges, who, at Plymouth, was made familiar with the piratical assaults of English adventurers upon the vessels of London merchants in the English channel, and with the contempt with which these free- booters regarded both the king and the government. Gorges also was distressed because of the very large number of men in the great cities and towns who were out of employment. Accord- ingly, with his thoughts still busy with reference to the oppor- tunities for English expansion on this side of the sea, he ven- tured the suggestion to Cecil that in this unhappy state of affairs in the kingdom relief might be sought, as had been done before in the history of nations, by "the planting of colonies in barbarous and uninhabited parts of the world", to the great honor and hap- piness of all concerned. But his suggestion, if it found support in Cecil, evidently found little support elsewhere, and the coun- try continued to drift on and on into a still more deplorable con- dition.
Between 1608 and 1614, no evidence whatever is found in authoritative sources that there were English colonists on the coast of Maine, and they afford only glimpses-provokingly faint glimpses-of English vessels. In the Brief Relation of the Dis- covery and Plantation of New England, prepared by the "Presi- dent and Council for the affairs of New England" and published in 1622, after a reference to the breaking up of the Popham col- ony in 1608, and the return of "the whole company" to England, and the discouragement that followed so that "there was no more speech of settling any other plantation in those parts for a long time after", it is added : "Only Sir Francis Popham, having the
1 Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, III, 171-176.
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ships and provisions which remained of the company, and supply- ing what was necessary for his purpose, sent divers times to the coasts for trade and fishing".1 Gorges makes mention of a voyage made by Captain Henry Harley to the New England coast about this time; and as he adds that Harley was "one of the plantation sent over by the lord chief justice", in other words a member of the Popham colony, it is difficult to think of him as master of a vessel in New England waters and not making his way to the coast of Maine. On his return, Captain Harley called on Sir Ferdinando at Plymouth, bringing with him an Indian whose name was Epenow,2 a native of the island of Capawick, or Martha's Vineyard. "At the time this new savage came to me", writes Gorges, "I had recovered Assacumet, one of the natives I sent with Captain Chalownes (Challons) in his unhappy employ- ment".3 This Indian Assacumet, will be recognized as one of
1 Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, I, 207.
2 Gorges says he was "a person of goodly stature, strong and well propor- tioned", and that he was "taken upon the main with some twenty-nine others by a ship of London that endeavored to sell them for slaves in Spain ; but being understood that they were Americans, and found to be unapt for their uses, they would not meddle with them, this being one of them they refused. How Captain Harley came to be possessed of this savage I know not, but I understood by others how he had been showed in London for a wonder". Gorges, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, II, 20. Some writers mention Epenow as one of the Indians captured by Hunt ; but as Epenow was placed by Gorges on Hobson's vessel, which sailed from England in June, 1614 (Briefe Narration, II, 22), he could not have been included in Hunt's captives, as Hunt had not at that time captured the Indi- ans which he took to Spain. Tisquantum, a Cape Cod Indian, was probably captured by the same party that captured Epenow. He is mentioned in Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation under the name of Squanto. The Pilgrims came to know him through Samoset as one who could speak better English than himself. He taught the Pilgrims corn planting and befriended them in many ways. In recording Squanto's death in 1622, Brad- ford says (History of Plymouth's Plantation, 155) that he desired "the gov- ernor to pray for him that he might go to the Englishmen's God in heaven, and bequeathed sundry of his things to sundry of his English friends, as remembrances of his love, of whom they had great loss".
8 Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, II, 22.
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those captured by George Waymouth in 1605 and taken to Eng- land. He accompanied Challons in the voyage of 1606, and with him and the rest of his company was captured and taken to Spain. In August, 1607, Captain John Barlee wrote to Secretary Cecil, inclosing in his letter a list of Challons' prisoners at Seville; and urged him to use his influence in the recovery of two savages, Manedo (Maneddo) and Sassacomett (Saffacomoit)1. Doubtless there was delay in the matter, and it may have been several years before Saffacomoit arrived in Plymouth. His return, however, whether sooner or later, quickened Gorges' interest in American matters, and in June, 1614,2 he despatched a vessel under Captain Nicholas Hobson to the New England coast-the company includ- ing three Indians, "Epenow, Assacomet and Wanape", who were to be used as pilots after the vessel's arrival at its destination. But the voyage, apparently directed primarily to Martha's Vine- yard (where, it would seem, the adventurers were to search for a gold mine), was a failure, and Gorges, after telling briefly the story, recorded his added disappointment in connection with this new enterprise in these words : "Thus were my hopes of that par- ticular made void and frustrate, and they returned without doing more, though otherwise ordered how to have spent that summer to good purpose".3 Search for the gold mine might prove a fail- ure, but fishing on the coast of Maine had promise of success, and in his supplemental orders doubtless Gorges directed Hobson to make his way thither. Assacomet probably returned to England with Hobson, though he is not again mentioned.
At this time a picturesque figure appeared on the Maine coast in the person of Captain John Smith, who says4 that "in the
1 Thayer, Sagadahoc Colony, 164.
2 Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, II, 23.
8 Ib., II, 25. A somewhat different account appears in The Discovery and Plantation of New England, published by the president and council for New England in 1622. Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, I, 209, 210. Also see Captain John Smith's A Description of New England : Veazie reprint of edition of 1616, Boston, 1865, 67, 68.
4 A Description of New England, Veazie reprint, 19.
ST. SEPULCHRE CHURCH, LONDON, IN WHICH CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH WAS BURIED.
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month of April, 1614, with two ships from London", he "chanced to arrive in New England, a part of America, at the isle of Mona- higgon in 43} of northerly latitude". In this record is found the first appearance in print of the designation New England, and here, also, appears for the first time the Indian name of Monhegan island, which Waymouth named "St. George's Island".1
Captain Smith became interested in new world enterprises after many adventures in European countries.2 This, he records, was two years before the departure of the Jamestown colonists, who left England December 19, 1606, and whom he accompanied. He was a member of the first Virginia council, and was elected presi- dent of the colony in 1608. This office he held until he was arrested in September, 1609, and sent to England "to answer to some misdemeanors", probably as the result of factional condi- tions in the colony, which Smith, doubtless, had a share in creat- ing. He remained in England until 1614; and though he was not again identified with affairs in Virginia, he seems to have so
1 Rosier's Relation of Waymouth's Voyage to the Coast of Maine in 1605, Gorges Society, 1887, 138.
2 These are recounted by himself in his True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Republished in Richmond, Va., in 1819, from the London edition of 1629. Smith's trustworthiness as a historian has been strongly assailed during the past half century by some writers, especially by Alexander Brown in his Gen- esis of the United States, Boston, 1890, II, 1006-1010. "Smith's position in our early history", he says, "is a remarkable illustration of the maxim, 'I care not who fights the battles, so I write the dispatches' " ; and he adds, "He was certainly incapable of writing correct history when he was personally interested". On the other hand the article on Captain John Smith in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is exceedingly favorable to him, and defends him against the charge of untrustworthiness. The writer is inclined to think that the truth is not on the one side or the other, but between the two. Smith's Description of New England is certainly a work for which we owe to him grateful remembrance. He had his faults, but he had also his excellences. He died in London, in the house of Sir Samuel Saltonstall, June 21, 1631, and was buried in St. Sepulchre's church, on the south side of the choir, where an elaborate epitaph still records his deeds in eulogistic lines. The original monument, however, was destroyed by fire in 1661.
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far made good his defense against the Virginia charges as to secure general confidence in England, so that some London merchants furnished him with two vessels for a venture to the territory assigned to the North Virginia colony.1
One object of the voyage, he says, "was there to take whales and make trials of a mine of gold and copper. If these failed, fish and furs", he added, "was then our refuge". Evidently, in his preparation for the undertaking, Captain Smith had inter- viewed his predecessors in voyages to the New England coast, and doubtless had obtained from them reports of whales in Ameri- can waters, and suggestions as to the possibility of discovering mines of gold and copper. But he knew that other fisheries than the whale fishery had proved remunerative, as also had fur-trading with the Indians. Accordingly he felt reasonably confident that in his prosecution of the enterprise he was warranted in looking for such returns as would satisfy the London adventurers. He acted wisely, therefore, in broadening the scope of his intended operations.
The fitness of Monhegan as a favorable location for the prosecu- tion of such an undertaking was doubtless suggested to him
1 In his General Historie, II, 206, Smith mentions two Indians in connec- tion with his voyage of 1614, Dohoday, "one of their greatest lords, who had lived long in England", and another called Tantum whom he says "I carried with me from England and set on shore at Cape Cod". The first, doubtless, is to be identified with Tahanedo, mentioned by Rosier in his list of the five Indians captured by Waymouth in 1605 [Rosier's Relation, Gorges Society reprint, 161) and taken to England; also mentioned by Gorges as Dehamda (Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, II, 14). He was returned with Pring in 1606, and was visited by the Popham colonists in 1607. Rosier designates him as "Sagamo or Commander", and Smith here calls him "one of their greatest lords". But if we are to identify Tantum with Tistquantum (Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, I, 104) he certainly was not one of the Indians treacherously seized by Hunt after Smith left Monhegan for England, as Smith says he set him "on shore at Cape Cod"; and this he must have done before Hunt's capture of the Indians if Smith has correctly recorded his disposal of Tantum, inasmuch as it is hardly supposable that having been landed on Cape Cod, the Indian hurried back to Monhegan in time to fall into Hunt's hands, and so was carried by him to Malaga.
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before he left England; and on his arrival there, if not before, whale fishing was attempted, but without success. "We found this whale fishing a costly conclusion", he said. "We saw many, and spent much time in chasing them, but could not kill any : they being a kind of Inbartes, and not the whale that yields fins and oil as we expected". The search for gold and copper also was not attended with success. How the search came to have a place in the proposed objects of the voyage, Captain Smith relates : "For our gold, it was rather the master's (Hunt's) device to get a voyage that projected it, than any knowledge he had at all of any such matter".
But invaluable time was consumed in these endeavors. There was "long lingering about the whole", says Captain Smith. The best opportunity for obtaining furs from the Indians, and for coast fishing, "were past ere we perceived it", he adds, "we thinking that their seasons served at all times ; but we found it otherwise, for by the midst of June, the fishing failed. Yet in July and August some was taken, but not sufficient to defray so great a charge as our stay required. Of dry fish we made about 40,000, of corfish 1 about 7,000." 2
Monhegan harbor, in which Captain Smith found anchorage for his vessels, must have presented a busy scene during that summer of 1614. It was a scene that became a familiar one on the Maine coast. Without doubt others, in previous years, had erected stages there and dried their fish; but now, for the first time, the parties are known and it is not difficult to reproduce in imagina- tion the fishermen on the harbor beach and the stages on the grassy slopes not far away; while between the beach and the stages were scattered here and there boats, cordage, canvas and the various articles of one kind or another connected with fishing interests.
While the larger number of the men of the two vessels were employed in fishing, Smith himself, with eight or nine others who
1 Corned fish.
2 Smith, Description of New England, Veazie reprint, 19, 20.
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"might best be spared", gave some attention to fur-trading with the Indians. "We ranged the coast both east and west much further", he says, "but eastwards our commodities were not esteemed, they were so near the French who affords them better ; and right against, in the main, was a ship of Sir Francis Popham's that had there such acquaintance, having many years used only that port, that the most part there was had by him. And forty leagues westwards were two French ships, that had made there great voyage by trade, during the time we tried those conclusions, not knowing the coast nor savages' habitations." Popham's ship evidently was at what is now known as New Harbor, on the east- ern side of Pemaquid peninsula. The words, "right against, in the main", plainly point to the place. Here it was that Way- ยท mouth, in 1605, met the Pemaquid Indians, and came to the determination to capture some of them and take them to England.1 It was here that Captain Gilbert, of the Mary and John, landed Skidwarres, when the Popham colonists came to Pentecost harbor, two years later.2 Nothing could be more natural than that the master of Sir Francis Popham's vessel should anchor there, or that he should secure "the most part" of the trade with the Pemaquid Indians, because of acquaintance with Nahanada, the chief of the tribe, who had been in England, and kindly treated.
But Captain Smith did not confine his personal attention to the fur trade alone. He was a careful, busy observer and passing along the coast "from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor", he gathered materials for a map.8 Soundings were made and recorded. Rocks and landmarks were located. The map was not as perfect as he desired. The haste of other affairs pre- vented fuller details, but it was all that the circumstances allowed, "being sent", he writes, "more to get present commodities than knowledge by discoveries for any future good yet it
1 Rosier's Relation, Gorges Society reprint, 129.
2 Thayer, Sagadahoc Colony, 57, note 78.
8 The map has often been reprinted. Alexander Brown reproduces it in his Genesis of the United States, II, 780. There is also a good reproduction of the map in the Veazie reprint of Smith's Description of New England.
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will serve to direct any shall go that ways to safe harbors and the savages' habitations".1
Captain Smith's Description comprises the New England coast from Penobscot bay to Cape Cod. It is full of valuable informa- tion, giving the results of intelligent observation. The following is his account of his observations of the Maine coast from Penob- scot bay to the Piscataqua.
"The most northern part I was at was the bay of Penobscot, which is east and west, north and south, more than ten leagues ; but such were my occasions, I was constrained to be satisfied of them. I found in the bay, that the river ran far up into the land, and was well inhabited with many people;2 but they were from their habitations, either fishing among the isles, or hunting the lakes and woods for deer and beavers. The bay is full of great islands, of one, two, six, eight or ten miles in length, which divides it into many fair and excellent good harbors. On the east of it are the Tarrantines, their mortal enemies, where inhabit the French 3 as they report that live with those people, as one nation or family. And northwest of Penobscot is Mecaddacut, at the foot of a high mountain, a kind of a fortress against the Tarrantines adjoining to the high mountains of Penobscot, against whose feet doth beat the sea. But over all the land, isles, or other impedi- ments, you may well see them sixteen or eighteen leagues from
1 Veazie reprint of Smith's Description of New England, 23.
2 The reference, of course, is to the Penobscot Indians.
8 This report can have no reference to a French settlement at Castine (called by the English, Penobscot, and by the French, Pentegoet). There were no Frenchmen residing there in 1613, for Father Biard, who had oppor- tunities for receiving information from Indian sources, would have known it and have mentioned it. Moreover Argall had no knowledge of French occu- pation there, or at any other place on the French coast in that year except at St. Sauveur on Mount Desert. In his map-making in Penobscot bay in 1614, Captain John Smith was at Castine-"The principal habitation north- ward we were at was Penobscot", Description of New England, Veazie reprint, 26,-but he makes no mention of finding Frenchmen there. The report made to him concerning the French at the eastward doubtless had its foundation in some mention of the French colony at St. Sauveur, which was broken up by Argall in 1613.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF COLONIAL MAINE.
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