Radio Script #1279

Little Talks on Common Things
June 7, 1981

Today we know that, except for small groups in Aroostook County, all Maine Indians now belong to two tribes, the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddies. The former are located on Indian Island at Old Town, the latter in two villages in the far eastern part of; Washington County. It was these tribes who were the chief beneficiaries of the settlement of the recent land disputes netting those Indians substantial awards in land and money.

The Penobscots and the Passamaquoddies were tribes of the Abnakis, that branch of the huge Algonquin people who extended from Maine to Georgia. The Abnakis, in their various tribes, inhabited most of New England. In 1858 some people thought of the Abnakis as a much smaller group. In that year a Jesuit priest, Eugene Vetromile, addressing the Maine Historical Society said: “The Abnaki territory extends from the shores of the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the mouth of the Kennebec to the eastern part of New Hampshire.” He further said: “Those Indians who lived on the banks of the Kennebec were visited by white men earlier than were most other Maine Indians. When in 1613, Father Biard sailed from Port Royal in Nova Scotia for Mount Desert near the mouth of the Penobscot, he had recently visited the shores of the Kennebec and its people. He spoke of them as a powerful nation with a culture advanced beyond the hunting and fishing stage, for they lived in settled villages where they cultivated crops, especially the Indian corn.

The Jesuit father admitted that the tribes had been called by many different names by the English and French, but that some word resulting in the pronunciation Abnaki was used by all when referring to the region he described. He said: “It is difficult to determine the names or even the number of the different tribes included in the Abnakis, but all authorities agree that the Indian meaning of the word Abnaki was ‘people of the dawn’, ‘people of the sunrise’, ‘people of the east'”.

On an ancient map, printed in French Canada in 1660, the Abnakis were located between t he Kennebec River and Lake Champlain, with villages near the headwaters of both the Kennebec and the Androscoggin rivers, as well as on the Saco and the Presumpscot, in the now most thickly settled part of Maine. In his address to the Maine Historical Society, the Jesuit father said that he had to give up trying to pin down local tribes, because the few Indian names that were picked up by French or English explorers or traders were badly distorted by those who tried to turn the Indian words into European languages. It had become well known, however, that the names given the tribes were often taken from such geographical features as streams, rapids, falls, gravel beds, mountains and hills.

Since the Jesuit father’s address in 1858, diligent research has shown that the Kennebec Indians were only one branch of the larger Abnaki group. Even that branch had at least two names. The scholar-priest said: “The Abnakis are called by the French Canabas, and by the English Kennebeck.” He continued: “Those Indians have five great villages: two in Canada at St. Joseph or Sillery, and at St. Francis de Sales; and three villages on the Maine side of the Canadian line: one on each of three Maine rivers, Saco, Androscoggin and Kennebec. The one which English settlers first disputed with the French was at Old Point near Norridgewock, where Father Rasle compiled his dictionary of the Abnaki language, a work still preserved by this historical society. ”

Father Rasle in his diary mentioned several other Indian villages besides his own at Norridgewock. One was near the present hamlet of Riverside in the town of Vassalboro; another was on Swan Island near Richmond. Father Rasle praised the advanced culture of the Kennebec Indians, far in advance of some groups living even nearer to Boston. He was proud that his Indians at Norridgewock had even abandoned wigwams and lived in strong huts that could reasonably be called houses. The Father said: “Our village looks much like a small village in France.” It was surrounded by a palisade of stakes to protect it from enemy attacks.

His Indians, said Father Rasle, were very fond of rings, bracelets. belts, and all manner of beads, put together with great skill. Their basket making was excellent, not the crude product of other tribes. Father Rasle declared that his Indians, as soon as the winter snows had melted, prepared the land with great care and planted their corn early in June by making holes with a stick and dropping eight or ten kernels in each hill. Their harvest was in late August.

The Kennebec Indians, like most of the Abnakis, were a peaceful people. In that respect they were unlike most other Indians in North America. Because of their peaceful nature, they were often victims of the warlike Mohawks from New York. The Norridgewock Indians were so docile and so easily led that their first Jesuit priest, Father Druillettes found them willing to take his stern advice to give up the white man’s intoxicating liquor, and when Father Rasle came later, he found no drunkenness among the Indians at Old Point.

All authorities agree that the Kennebec Indians were people with strong family ties. That is something we might well emulate near the end of this 20th century when family life is in real jeopardy. Father Rasle noted that Indian children were tenderly treated, kept scrupulously clean, and were well fed no matter how hard pressed their elders were for food. Boys, as soon as they could walk, were taught to use bow and arrow.

Early writers uniformly commented on the honesty, integrity and dependability of the Kennebec Indians. Even King Philip’s War had not made the Kennebec Indians attack the settlements. That came only when the French induced them to take to the warpath.

Although the Maine Indians had no written language, they were not without means of sending messages. When the first French arrived in Acadia, they found Indian signs carved on wood or stone, and etched on birch bark. Many inscriptions were found on standing trees. When Father Druillettes came to Old Point, he found that the chief had in his dwelling what could be called a library of stones and bark marked with a variety of signs. By those signs the Indians could express a wide variety of ideas with many modifications. To that extent they had indeed developed a kind of written language.

So, again today, as on many previous broadcasts, I have given you some additional facts about our Maine Indians, a subject to which I never tire turning.

Let us now turn to another subject connected with Maine Indians, but hundreds of years older than the 1600’s of Father Rasle’s time. The oyster shell heaps at Damariscotta are indeed so old that no one knows when they were started. There is no doubt that the huge deposit is manmade. It could not have been created by nature. They are arranged in piles, have remains of charcoal at varying depths, and contain animal remains, indicating a campsite where food was consumed.

As time went on, the river gradually eroded away part of the bank, affording opportunity for careful study of the shells. The glacial deposit is sand mixed with rock, and the shells appear at first to have been thrown on the surface of dry ground. The whole heap, except at the eroded edge, seems never to have been affected by water. The lower layers were deposited so long ago that they have almost completely decomposed, but the upper layers are intact, leaving each shell in its original shape. Mixed with the shells at all layers is charcoal, showing that the depositors had fires where they threw out the shells. In the shell heaps are also found animal bones. They are mostly of birds and small mammals like beaver. Indeed, identified beaver bones are among the most frequent finds. Because there are no larger bones, and especially none of humans, the site could not have been a permanent Indian settlement with a cemetery. Today the Damariscotta Shell Heap attracts many visitors. Geological estimates place the date of the earliest shells at from 800 to 1000 years ago.

We may well close this broadcast with some facts about the Maine Historical Society itself. It is one of the oldest organizations in Maine, having been established in 1822. only two years after Maine became a separate state. Among its founders were President William Allen of Bowdoin College; Robert Hallowell Gardiner, great landowner on the Kennebec,Reuel Williams, leader of Augusta, Governor Samuel Smith of Wiscasset. The original membership was restricted to 80, but is now unlimited.

From the beginning the Society took interest in historical manuscripts regarding Maine, and proceeded to publish them in volumes called “Collections of the Maine Historical Society.” Published in two series containing more than fifty volumes, those collections give us the most valuable and detailed information about Maine that can anywhere be found. No historian can write a decent account of our state without referring to that spendid collection. In recent years the Society has published small paperback volumes, each detailing with some person or some event in Maine history. In a recent issue was Ray Owen’s life of his father, Fred Owen, editor of the Portland Evening Express and a prominent political figure. Fred Owen graduated from Colby in 1887. Among his classmates were Holman Day and Harvey Eaton. His son and biographer, Ray Owen, is a Colby graduate of 1920. About twenty years ago I had the honor of being guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Maine Historical Society. I told them about the career of Waterville’s George Flood who was an executive of the Androscoggin and Kennebec railroad, that reached Waterville in 1849, and an officer of its successor the Maine Central. Flood later established the family business, the Flood Fuel Co.

It was George Flood who had charge of laying the rails of the Kennebec and Penobscot R.R. between Waterville and Bangor when that wide gauge line of 5 feet six inches was changed to the standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches. When Flood first managed the line, its locomotives burned wood, and it was Flood’s duty to buy four-foot wood from farmers all the way between Waterville and Bangor, have them haul the wood to numerous points along the track and stack it where it could be hastily thrown into the locomotive tender. A train had to stop numerous times between the two cities just to take on wood.

This completes the broadcasts of the 33rd season of Little Talks. During the summer we shall have on the air each Sunday a repeat of some broadcast of earlier years. In September will start our 34th season.

Year: 1981