Radio Script #442

Little Talks on Common Things

January 10, 1960

Even small children today have heard stories of Indian raids in colonial times, just as persons of my age heard those stories when we were children. I used to hear those hair-raising yarns from the lips of my great-grandmother, who lived until I was twelve years old. So I have very vivid recollections of the stories — how on one spring day Indians massacred all six members of the Bryant family in Gorham; how they boldly but unsuccessfully attacked the fort at the top of the hill where now are located the imposing modern buildings of the Gorham State Teachers College; how Mary Gorham Phinney, the first white child born in Gorham, was rescued from the hands of a hostile Indian who had seized her to carry her off to Canada to sell to the French.

Those Indian raids must indeed have been terrible affairs and they were always made by the savages on foot, coming overland from their camps on the Saco, the Kennebec or the Penobscot, and later from their villages on the Chaudiere and the St. Francis in Quebec.

What I want to tell you tonight is what I am sure will be to most of you an entirely new aspect of the Indian wars. It is the story of the Indian as a sea fighter. I owe my knowledge of it to my friend and former Colby colleague, Professor Webster Chester. A native of Connecticut, Dr. Chester has long been interested in the historical investigations of the Marine Historical Association of the old Connecticut town of Mystic. A member of that association, Horace P. Beck, has done a remarkable job of digging up the evidence that the New England Indians were effective and dangerous fighters on the sea as well as on the land.

Now what interests us on this program is that the contents of Mr. Beck’s publication, which is entitled “The American Indian as a Sea Fighter in Colonial Times” is very largely devoted not to Beck’s Connecticut, but to our Maine. The reason why Maine occupies so large a part in the result of the investigations by this man from Mystic is that most of the activity of hostile Indians by sea took place between Newfoundland and the Piscataqua, or even more narrowly between Nova Scotia and the Isle of Shoals. Mr. Beck puts it this way: “Southern New England was not like Maine and the Maritimes, with their numerous protected and hidden harbors, their sparse English population, and the banks of fog that hung offshore all summer. By 1635 Southern New England was well on its way to becoming an English land and an English sea. Fogs were rare and harbors were few. For 120 miles Southern New England fronted on Long Island Sound, guarded by narrow entrances controlled by white settlers. Hence, after the beginning of the 18th century, the Indians seldom attacked either west of the the Isle of Shoals or east of Cape Breton. After 1725 the fighting became concentrated even more within the regions near Cape Sable, and around Casco and Penobscot Bays.”

Now, just as we all remember stories of Indian raids, we are all familiar with the fact that the Indian was an expert builder and user of the birch bark canoe. But most of us have thought of his use of that craft on the rivers and inland lakes. There is definite evidence, however, that he ventured in those frail boats on salt water.

As early as 1594 — 26 years before the landing of the Pilgrims — Captain Rice Jones came from England to Newfoundland to fish. As his ship lay at anchor near the shore, Indians slipped out in canoes by night, seized the ship’s two boats, and made off with them. Eight years later in 1602, when the expedition of Bartholomew Gosnold arrived near the Isle of Shoals, off the mouth of the Piscataqua River close to the present Kittery, he was surprised to see a Basque shallop near the shore. He would have expected to see such a boat near the Grand or George’s Banks, because the Basques were venturesome seamen and ardent fishermen in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia waters. But to see a Basque ship drawn up close to shore in a region where there was not a single white settler, even a transient fisherman, caused Gosnold to investigate. He got close enough to see that there were eight men in the boat. Getting still closer, he discovered that they were not Europeans but Indians. Somehow the natives had come into possession of that ship, built on the faraway coast of France, and what is more, they had learned to navigate it.

In 1609 when Henry Hudson, discoverer of the Hudson River, pushed into Penobscot Bay, to cut a new mast, he had an experience that duplicated Gosnold’s. He encountered two French shallops, both manned by Indians.

The interesting thing is that the Indians seldom destroyed the vessels they captured. From the earliest times they seemed to have made some use of them. As I am sure most of you know, as early as 1605 Indians were captured by explorers to the Maine coast and taken to European countries. While we know most about those taken to England, there are records of such captives being exhibited in France and Spain, and even in the Netherlands. As time went on, captive Indians were pressed into service on the ships. The Indian was no fool. He could learn like any other man, and before 1700 many an Indian had acquired considerable skill at navigation.

But one thing the Red Man did not do: he did not become a builder of seagoing boats. He preferred to seize them from the White Man ready made. Thus, through the first half of the 18th century, the Indian became adept in the piratical art of privateering. A band of savages would seize a small ship, then use that to seize a larger ship, and finally be ready to grab the biggest vessels then afloat.

Mr. Beck says: “By 1700 the Eastern Indians were recognized by the English as seafarers and sea-fighters though English pride made them reluctant to admit that red savages could capture British ships. So they attributed to the French many ship losses that they really owed to the Indians.”

In the ten years before the destruction of the Indian village at Norridgewock and the killing of Father Rasle, and likewise before the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond — that is, in the period between 1715 and 1725 — the Indian privateersmen wrought havoc in both Casco and Penobscot Bays.

In June, 1720 they took eleven fishing vessels carrying 45 men, of whom they killed 22 and held 23 for ransom.

In 1722 Indians captured a Marblehead schooner and used her to prey on the fishing fleet. That old, reliable newspaper, the Boston News Letter, said: “The savages have a great gun on that schooner. They chase everything and have taken so many vessels that they have driven our fishermen from the sea.”

In the same year, 1722, the Indian sea fighters had become so bold that those untutored, supposedly landlocked savages actually attacked two British privateers at the same time. Let’s hear about it in Mr. Beck’s own words: “Those Red Men who were supposed to know nothing about ships or navigation had faced two of the King’s privateers and had severely damaged one of them. A native manned vessel able to stand up to two British privateers at the same time presented a hazard to the fishing fleet that was decidedly impressive. It was one thing for an Indian manned vessel to chase and occasionally capture poorly manned fishermen, but it was quite another thing to be able to pull the beard of a man-of-war. With such a vessel loose on the sea, no fisherman was safe.”

The year 1724 — the very year in which Captain Moulton’s party killed Father Rasle and demolished the Indian village at Norridgewock — that year saw the very height of the Indian success on the sea. In May, 1725 the Boston News Letter said: “Vessels taken last year by the Indian pirates are out again and are beginning new raids on our ships.” That statement shows that the Indians had not taken the captured craft to the St. Lawrence for sale to the French, but had kept the boats over the winter on the Maine coast.

In the summer of 1725 the Indians began to put the captured ships to a new use — a use that I will venture to say most of you never heard of as an Indian practice. In fact, until I read the account in Beck’s book, I had never seen or heard it mentioned. Let us now see what that new practice was.

The utter rout of the Norridgewocks at Old Point and the victory of Captain Lovewell over the Sacos at East Fryeburg had made it increasingly unsafe for the Indians to set up villages along the Maine rivers west of Penobscot Bay. White raiding parties, like Captain Moulton’s, had diligently wiped out village after village of the Red Man’s wigwams. Unable to plant their corn and await its harvest, many of the Maine Indians who had refused to flee to Canada took to the ships. Men, women and children of an Indian band would board one of the captured vessels and use it for fishing and sealing. As Beck puts it, “During 1725 and 1726 the Maine Indians seem almost to have developed a floating culture.”

The Indian seamen learned how to manage ships in three different schools. First they learned from the French, who took them fishing and later used them as crews on privateers. Second, they learned from the English — on the British coasters and merchant marine, where they sailed in large numbers, both with and without their own consent. In fact so many Indians had been pressed into the British maritime service by 1720 that Governor Sewall presented to the Great and General Court in Boston the proposal that they make it unlawful to conscript Indians for crews on English vessels. The very fact that the legislature refused to heed Sewall’s advice shows that Indians were regarded as such good and valuable seamen that the legislators were reluctant to stop the practice of shanghaiing them even though the Governor asked it. Thirdly, the Indians learned the trade of pirates, and as bold privateersmen they wrought havoc along the Maine coast in the first quarter of the 18th century, until their diminishing numbers and the rapidly increasing number of whites finally drove them from the sea.

Well, there you have it. The Maine Indians, two hundred and fifty years ago, were fighters not on the land alone, but on the ocean waves of Penobscot and Casco Bays.

As a final item tonight, let us turn from Indian fighting to another kind of violence — death and injury connected with Maine’s attempt to suppress the pernicious liquor traffic a hundred years ago.

The Maine Prohibitory law was enacted in 1851. Four years later Neal Dow’s insistence as Mayor of Portland that the law be strictly enforced in that city led to a disgraceful riot. Of course it was not Neal Dow, but the rumsellers who were to blame. The Portland authorities had seized a supply of illegal liquor and had locked it up in a big safe in City Hall. A mob, variously estimated at from 1,500 to 3,000 angry men, tried to batter down the doors of the building. In self-protection the police were forced to draw their pistols and use them.

One man was killed by a police bullet. That sobered the mob and they speedily dispersed. The victim’s family brought suit against the City and attempted to have the police officer tried for manslaughter. But since it could not be proved which one of several policemen fi.red the fatal bullet, no criminal ‘charge was lodged, and the civil court soon found in favor of the city. There were other exciting scenes in the subsequent years of prohibition in Portland, but that was the only instance of anyone meeting death as a result of the law’s enforcement.

Year: 1960