Radio Script #894

Little Talks on Common Things
May 23, 1971

From time to time on this program, I like to tell the story of someone of Maine’s more notorious murder trials. Today I want to tell you about one that, while it occurred more than 150 years ago, received publicity as recently as last July. when it was referred to in that high grade magazine, the Saturday Review, in an article by Francis Hatch. Reading that article made me aware that I had never mentioned the trial on this program, although I had long known about it from an interesting account in Williamson’s History of Maine, published in 1832, only 15 years after the trial occurred.

The case well illustrates the attitude toward Indians in the early 19th century and shows how that attitude could be tempered by compassion and understanding.

One of the greatest wrongs done to the Indians by white men was introducing the natives to the use of intoxicating liquor. New England rum was probably responsible for more Indian deaths than were all the white men’s bullets, and it was certainly responsible for cheating the Indians out of furs and land rights.

It was liquor that got a Penobscot Indian, Peol Sussep into trouble. About sunset on June 28. 1816 that Indian caused so much noise and disturbance in the tavern of William Knight at Bangor that Knight physically ejected Sussep and tried to drive him off the premises, Sussep turned ragingly violent pursuedthe innkeeper to the tavern steps, where suddenly Sussep drew a knife and plunged the blade into Knight’s side just below the shoulder. The next day Knight died of the wound. The Indian was held in jail for a year before he was brought to trial in the county court, then held in Castine. There on June 16, 1817, Sussep was found guilty of manslaughter. On the stand. testifying in his own defense, the Indian had said: “I kill Knight and I ought to pay. But I was full of liquor when I did it. Knight abused me, or I never would have done it.”

Before pronouncing sentence, the judge asked Sussep if he had anything to say. The Indian replied that John Neptune would speak for him. Neptune had just been made Deputy Chief of the Penobscot Indians, second only to Chief Aitteon, and a few years later would start his own command of the tribe, which he held for many years. The speech which John Neptune made for his convicted tribesman is recorded in Williamson’s History of Maine. It is well worth repeating today. Here is what that Penobscot Indian said: “You know your people do my Indians much wrong. They abuse them very much. A white man murders an Indian and walks right off; nobody touches him. Then my Indians say: ‘We’ll go and kill those bad and wicked men.’ But I tell them, ‘No. Never do that thing. We and the white men are brothers.’ Five years ago a very bad man shot an Indian dead. Your people said that bad man must die. But he is still in the prison house. He eats and lives, sure he will never die for just shooting an Indian. My brothers say, ‘Let that bloody man go free.’ Then they must say same for Peol Sussep. Peace is good, and these, my Indians, love it. The white man and the red man must be always friends. The Great Spirit is father of us both. I speak what I feel.”

John Neptune’s speech so moved the judge that he sentenced Sussep to only two years in prison, counting as one of those years the time the Indian had spent in jail while awaiting trial. The only other requirement was that he post a bond of $500 to keep the peace. That bond was supplied by John Neptune himself, and two members of the Passamaquoddy tribe.

There, indeed, we have evidence that even when Indians were common in our frontier settlements, it was possible for a red man to get justice in a Maine court.

Several years ago, in the earlier days of this program, I devoted several broadcasts to William Heath, who died in command of a regiment early in the second year of the Civil War. I told about how he and his brother Francis organized one of the earliest Civil War companies right here in Waterville. I told how, a decade before the war, William had accompanied his father to California by covered wagon. Then I told how he took ship at San Francisco, and sailed around the world before his 17th birthday. I published that last story several years ago in Down East magazine.

William Heath had graduated from Waterville College, now Colby, between his return from his long voyage and his going off to war. He was in the Class of 1855, and not long ago I saw the college term bill made out to William Heath for his next to last term in college, the term that ended May 9, 1855. That date makes it seem like the last term of the year to us today who are familiar with modern Colby calendars. But in the 1850’s the college year was quite different. The year then consisted of three terms. The fall term began in early September and closed about the middle of December. There was no winter term, but rather what was called the Winter Vacation – a period of about six weeks to allow the students to teach in the common schools. The spring term began in mid-February and closed early in May. After a pause of only a week, it was followed by the third term of the year, called the summer term, which ran from mid-May to mid-August. Commencement was then held about the 20th of August.

In 1855 the Colby President was Robert E. Pattison, the only man who was twice president of the college, with a lapse of 15 years between his two terms. He had first become president in 1836, the third president in Colby history, but had left at the end of three years. After President David Sheldon, who had become a Unitarian at the strict Baptist college, left to take a pastorate in Bath, the trustees wanted to be sure that they again had as head of the college a pious, hard-shelled Baptist. So they asked Pattison to return, and again he had a three year term, from 1854 to 1857.

The term bills for those days, each covering one-third of the expenses for the college year, were unbelievably small compared with college charges today. In 1969-70 tuition alone at Colby was $2,100 a year. In William Heath’s time, 115 years ago, it was $24 a year, or $8 a term. Room rent is now $500 a year. It was then $15. Although earlier the college had operated a dining commons, in Heath’s day out-of-town students boarded in private families, and Heath was an out-of-town student. His family did not move from Belfast to Waterville until after he had graduated. As students long did and still do, those of Heath’s time did a lot of damage in dormitories. Someone was always breaking down a door, and during a year’s time the number of window panes broken would be nearly the total in a building. So, almost from its beginning, the college had charged every student — and at that time all were male — an item called Average of General Repairs. Compared with tuition and room rent, it was a substantial charge – $1.50 a term, or $4.50 a year. The bill carried another item called Private Repairs. That was particular damage for which the culprit could be identified.

In the spring of 1855 that item cost William Heath one dollar. Students in those days were fined for all manner of offenses – absence from class, absence from chapel, failure to attend church on Sunday, making excessive noise, going to prohibited places in town. Fines that semester cost Heath 65 cents. Every student had to pay a share of the cost to heat classrooms, besides buying fuel for his dormitory room. There was, in the whole college, no central heating. Heath’s share in the cost of heating the classrooms was 40 cents. His entire bill was $16.88. If fall and summer terms cost about the same as the spring term, which was usually the case, the cost of attending Colby in 1855 all expenses except books, meals, wood for the stove in the dormitory room, and oil for the lamp, or perhaps candles – except for those items the year’s total expenses were about $50.

Every bill had attached to it the student’s attendance record, showing the number of excused and unexcused absences from classes, from prayer (that is, daily chapel), and from Sunday worship. Heath had a clean record, no absences either excused or unexcused. So his fines were certainly not for absences. In fact, when he paid his bill, he succeeded in having that 65 cents charge for fines canceled; so that instead of $16.88, he actually paid $16.23.

A well known public figure in Waterville nearly a century ago was Martin Blaisdell. In 1880 he was a young man, operating a large farm and doing a lot of work for others. Like most such men of the time, he kept accurate accounts, and his record for the year 1880 still survives. Now 1880 seems rather late for the cheap labor we read about as prevalent before the Civil War. But just listen to some of Martin Blaisdell’s charges. To Mrs. S.M. Parker, two horses and two men, 4 hours, hauling manure and plowing garden. Today 4 hours would be half a work day, but in 1880 it was about 1/3 of a spring day, for the date of that charge was April 13. At any rate Blaisdell charged the lady 40 cents an hour for two men and two horses. Since the going rate for a man was $1.00 a day, if we generously consider the day as 10, rather than 12 hours, that would mean 10 cents an hour for each man, or 80 cents for both men for 4 hours. That was exactly half of the 1.60 total charge. So we conclude that Blaisdell got for the work of his two horses exactly what he got for his two men. A boy named Elijah, whether his own relative or another boy we do not know, got mighty low wages. For his services, 5 hours harrowing and 3 hours furrowing, Blaisdell charged 75 cents.

One day Blaisdell himself got $1.20 for mowing oats, hunting cows and building fence. In August he had three men threshing oats for 4 hours, for which he was paid $1.20. In October he got 50 cents for half a day’s work making cider. In the same month he had the tough job of plowing an acre of sodded ground, for which his pay was $1.75. His sole charge to anyone else in December was 75 cents for repairing a pump and putting in a new spout.

And with water gushing again from that pump spout, we must say goodbye until next week, when I will tell you about an account book that Martin Blaisdell kept 14 years later in 1894.