Radio Script #988

Little Talks on Common Things
November 18, 1973

On this program I have often referred to the work of French Jesuit missionaries among Maine Indians in the 17th century, and how those missionaries won over the Abnakis to the Catholic faith. That does not mean that the English Puritans of Massachusetts made no attempt to Christianize the natives. Men like Eliot and Roger Williams worked among the tribes of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and the fundamental purpose of founding Dartmouth College was to bring Christian ideas and Christian ways to the red men.

The first religious ceremony of which we have any record on the Kennebec came long before the Jesuit missionaries. It was a service of the Church of England held by Weymouth’s colony at the mouth of the river in 1607. As you know, that colony did not last, but was abandoned in 1608, twelve years before the Pilgrams stepped on Plymouth Rock. In 1627 the Plymouth colony set up a trading post at Cushnoc, now Augusta, and three years later in 1630, religious services were held there, especially for the Indians. But those Norridgewocks were not impressed,

When Father Druillettes, the first Jesuit to appear at Old Point in Norridgewock and at Ticonic Falls, called at the Pilgrim trading post at Cushnoc, he was well received by the master, Capt. John Howland. Druillette later went to Nova Scotia, calling at the few English settlements along the coast, and he was well treated at all of them. At first, therefore, there was no clash between the English settlers and the French missionaries,

Soon after Fr. Druillettes again left Norridgewock to which he returned after his journey to Nova Scotia, those Old Point Indians induced some English carpenters to build a fort to protect the Norridgewocks and the Sacos against the Mohawks, a war-like tribe from the Great Lakes who frequently raided the more peaceful Abnakis. The fort was built on the Saco River not far from the present town of Fryeburg.

The first Protestant religious society on the Kennebec was organized by Robert Good of Salem in 1660, but 16 years later in the midst of King Philip’s, war all the settlers there were driven out by the Indian uprising.

By 1700 the Jesuits had taken over completely. In all of Maine there were only three fortified Indian encampments, and everyone of those had a resident priest and a chapel, as was the case at Old Point in Norridgewock under Father Rasle.

As for permanent English settlements directly on our river, John Parker in 1652 established a colony in the area that afterwards became the towns of Arrowsic and Georgetown. Parker acquired Arrowsic Island by purchase from the Indian chief whom the colonists called Robin Hood, the same chief who had conveyed land to settlers at Pemaquid somewhat earlier.

It is interesting to know how the trading post at Augusta got started in 1627, long before there were any English settlements on the river. Knowing how valuable were Indian furs on the London market, and anxious to payoff the debt to the merchants who had supplied the Mayflower, Governor Bradford sent one of the Mayflower passengers, Isaac Allerton to London to procure, if possible, a patent for a Pilgrim trading post on the Kennebec. James Shirley, the London agent for the colony, protested that the post’s operation and protection would be too costly. Allerton sought help from Richard Vines, a trusted employee of Sir Ferdinand’ Gorges to enlist Gorges help for the Pilgrim cause before the King. Since the court was faced with several similar petitions, it was thought best to get a general view of the premises, that is, the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay. That would cost money, and to meet the expense the various petitioners raised a common fund to which Allerton contributed 50 pounds on behalf of the Plymouth Colony. Governor Bradford later recorded: “Owing to his intimacy with Vines, Allerton finally obtained all that we desired.”

Although some unauthorized trade seems to have taken place as early as the summer of 1627, the royal grant was not issued until 1629, and not until then was the trading house actually built and manned. From the beginning it was commanded by John Howland, a resident of Plymouth Plantation. He had several assistants, and his group became known as the Cushnoc family. His stock in trade consisted of corn, coats, shirts, blankets, biscuits, peas and prunes. The business was actually owned by a partnership of leading members of Plymouth Plantation, who were in turn financed by four merchants of London.

At that time the river from its mouth up to Merrymeeting Bay was called the Sagadahoc. From the bay up to Cushnoc and to Ticonic Falls it was the Kennebec, while the other branch that entered the bay from the west was always called the Androscoggin. The trading post at Cushnoc was intended to dominate traffic with the Indians through control of the navigable waterway. Using wampum as a medium of exchange, the colony soon diverted the entire trade from the itinerant fishermen who had previously controlled it.

In 1634, there occurred at Cushnoc a violent incident in which John Alden had a part. One John Hocking, in a small boat with two men and a boy, had come from one of Gorges’ settlements to trade on the Kennebec. He boldly sent his boat up the river above the Cushnoc falls so as to intercept the Indian canoes that brought furs to the Pilgrim trading post there. Thus he would get first chance at their purchase.

John Howland, the resident agent, was at the time entertaining John Alden who had come from Plymouth with a load of supplies to open the trading season. In a few weeks the Indians would be coming down from their hunting and trapping areas up the river. Howland and Alden, both of whom were magistrates of Plymouth, told Hocking he was trespassing, and they ordered him to depart. When Hocking refused, the Cushnoc traders tried to cut his vessel adrift. Shots were fired on both sides, and Hocking, the intruder, was killed. The aftermath saw John Alden among those seized and imprisoned by the Mass. Bay Colony, under whose protection Hocking had been acting. At that time there was no love lost between the old colony at Plymouth and the newer colony on Mass. Bay.

The Cushnoc post was closed in 1640, and ten years later in 1650, one Christopher Lawson, on behalf of the traders Clark and Lake at Pemaquid, secured grants to set up posts at Swan Island near Richmond and at Ticonic Falls, and for the next decade Lawson monopolized Indian trade on the Kennebec. In 1652, Edward Winslow of Plymouth Plantation filed a petition to the British king. It said: “For many years Plymouth Plantation has had a grant for a trading place on the Kennebec; but not having the whole river under their government, many excesses have been committed, and benefit of the trade in furs, one of the greatest supports of the plantation, has been taken from the inhabitants of New Plymouth.” The petition went on to plead for a grant to the whole Kennebec region. The petition was approved, and in May, 1654, the struggling settlements on the Kennebec below Merrymeeting Bay, as well as the scattered inhabitants above the Bay, submitted to the jurisdiction of Plymouth.

But Clark and Lake at Pemaquid were quite independent of Plymouth control, and they held firmly to the post at Ticonic Falls. The situation soon convinced the Plymouth authorities that it was best to sell all their claim to Kennebec lands. They did so on October 27, 1661, and the purchasers were four men who together became owners of all the vast territory for 15 miles on each side of Kennebec from Cobbossee Stream to the falls at Norridgewock. Those four men were Antipas ,Boies, Thomas Brattle, Edward Tyng and John Winslow, and they paid for that vast acreage only 1400 pounds.

Soon after the sale, Cushnoc was entirely deserted. Indian trade on the whole river gradually declined. The Indians became less and less friendly, until the outbreak of King . Philip’s War in 1675 aroused them all to murderous raids in the white settlements. By the autumn of 1676 the entire Kennebec from Georgetown to Ticonic Falls had been abandoned by its white settlers.

While wandering traders still visited the river, precarious conditions continued for nearly three quarters of a century until 1754, when the proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase (the Gardiners, the Bowdoins, the Vassalls and others) had bought the lands from the heirs of the four purchasers of 1661. The company persuaded the Massachusetts government to erect a fort at Ticonic if the company itself would build one at Cushnoc. The result was Fort Western at Augusta and Fort Halifax at Winslow.

Almost as early as settlements on the Kennebec were those on the Sheepscot River. In 1662 Thomas Cleves and John Tucker, fishermen at Cape Newagen, obtained from the same Robin Hood who had conveyed other lands to white men a large tract along Phipps Point on the Sheepscot, but they did not occupy the land. The first settler on the river was Nathaniel Draper in 1663, who was killed by Indians in 1689. Above Boothbay, George Davis secured from the natives an entire township in 1664, and for about 20 years he lived in what is now Wiscasset Village. In 1665 Samuel Maverick, commissioner for the Duke of York, to whom his brother, King Charles II, had granted all the same lands, reported: “East of the Kennebec are three settlements, none with more than 20 houses, inhabited by the worst of men. They have no government, have fled from just punishment, are mostly fishermen, and share their wives as they do their boats.”

Despite that opprobrium, ten years later when King Philip’s War broke out, the Sheepscot Valley had become a prosperous farming and grazing area, but those industrious settlers suffered the same fate as settlers on the Kennebec. The aroused Indians raided the Sheepscot settlements, killed many of the people, took others captive to Canada, and drove all the rest to the more protected areas near Boston or to the large islands like Monhegan and Matinicus.

And that, in substance, is the story of the struggle of English settlers to get a foothold in this part of Maine three hundred and more years ago.

Year:1973