Radio Script #1007

Little Talks on Common Things
March 31, 1974

There recently came to my hands a letter that concerned an expansion made to the Keyes Fibre plant on the Waterville – Fairfield line 53 years ago in 1921. The Keyes Fibre Company had been operating then for only 14 years, but its paper products had already gained such acceptance that a larger mill was necessary.

The letter I refer to was written by Cecil Daggett in his capacity as president of the Horace Purinton Company, to Hume-Newhall Company, then prominent lumber partners, Guy Hume and Henry Newhall. The letter concerned supplying lumber for the contract the Purinton Company had taken to build the Keyes extension. Dated February 28, 1921, the letter said: “We accept your quotation of February 26 on the spruce lumber for the Keyes Fibre Company at a base price of $49 per thousand feet, all four sides planed, delivered FOB on cars at Waterville. Net 30 days, or l~% discount for cash in ten days. Deliveries to begin at once and all to be completed by April 15.

“We understand the ten inch timber is to be $2.00 per thousand additional, and anything over 20 feet in length is to be $1.00 per thousand additional.

“We are placing this order with you, trusting in Mr. Hume’s personal guarantee that the schedule of timber will be delivered to us every stick strictly spruce, straight grained, sound, without wavy edges. You are familiar with the Keyes Fibre Company’s specifications.”

In 1921 the Horace Purinton Company had been Waterville’s leading contract builders for many years. Many of the business structures on Main Street, built after 1900, were put up by that company. A few years before the Keyes job, Purinton had built two dormitories on the old campus of Colby College, Roberts and Hedman Halls. One feature of the Purinton Company was that it made its own brick. It had two local brickyards, one near the Keyes Fibre Company, approximately where the Joseph Motor Company is now located, the other near the Proctor and Bowie building in Winslow. It also operated brickyards at Skowhegan, Augusta, and Mechanic Falls, and altogether turned out 16 million bricks a year. By 1921, Horace Purinton had died, and the head of the company was his son-in-law Cecil Daggett. Vice-President was Mrs. Daggett’s sister, Alice Purinton. The company’s engineer was H. W. Kierstead.

There is in print considerable information about those sub-tribes of Abnaki Indians who, in colonial times, lived along the Kennebec. I have told on this program several incidents concerning the Norridgewocks, whose principal village was at Old Point, between the present village of Norridgewock and Madison, and which was wiped out with the killing of their Jesuit missionary, Father Rasle, in 1724. There has now come to my attention some information about Indians farther down the Kennebec, in fact between Waterville and Augusta. In 1889 – 85 years ago – H. H. Snell of Riverside sent a long communication to the Kennebec Journal. He wrote: “Standing at the M.C.R.R. station in Riverside and looking south, one can see a small mountain now called Mt. Tom. Sloping gently toward the south from that hill, to the Seven Mile Brook, is a large Indian burying ground.”

As long ago as 1889, Mr. Snell said no trace was left of that once powerful tribe save an occasional stone tool unearthed by a plow and the occasional finding of a skeleton. Yet those broad fields were once planted with corn by our Indians, and over these woods they hunted game and from the Kennebec they took salmon, shad and other fish.

Mr. Snell’s account continues: “So many skeletons have been found in this area between Mt. Tom and Seven Mile Brook that, despite our general lack of knowledge concerning these people, they tell us one of two things; either that a battle between tribes was fought here, leaving many dead, or this was a deliberately planned Indian cemetery. The latter theory is more plausible.

“Let us see what the bones tell us. They were buried in very light, sandy soil, where graves could easily be dug. Also, the way the bodies were buried indicates some care in placement, which would not be the case on a battlegound. It is clear that the burials were made one at a time; at least no two occupied the same grave. The bodies were by no means all of fighting age, or even all male. Women, children, and old men were there. Near the skeletons have been found the copper ornaments of chiefs, flint arrowheads of warriors, beaded ornaments of the less distinguished, the birch-bark shroud of a little child, and quantities of wampum.”

Mr. Snell said that some of the most important finds had come to light when the Somerset and Kennebec RR was built from Augusta, through Vassalboro and Winslow, to Waterville in 1854. At that time some of wampum dug up was scientifically examined. It was found to have been made from muscle shells. Why was so much of it unearthed? Maine’s first published state history, then by Williamson, tells us that in 1667 the provincial government of Massachusetts made wampum legal tender for the payment of debts not exceeding 40 shillings, and the rate was 8 pieces of wampum to the British penny. The Indians, of course, were the great collectors of muscle wampum, and the law of 1667 enabled them to use it in trade with the English. They would have found it especially useful whenever furs were scarce.

For so large a cemetery there must have been Indian settlements not far away. Mr. Snell suggested the particular area might itself have been the site of a large Indian village. It was near one of the best fishing points on the river. Seven Mile Brook was annually overrun with migratory fish during the spawning season. Even in the memory of people still living in 1859, herring came up Seven Mile Brook in such quantity that it looked as if one could walk across the stream on them, as one would on ice. The building of the Augusta dam in 1836 narrowed the river below it, and much land once flooded is now intervale.

Mr. Snell also said that in 1805 there were remains of an Indian encampment on the place where he lived as he wrote this account for the Journal. Before Snell’s occupancy the place was known as the Sturgess farm. About the turn into the 19th century, Herman Sturgess – so ran the old story – decided to have some fun with an Indian peddler-woman well known on the Kennebec and called Molly Molasses. Sturgess invited the old lady to take a ride. She mounted the horse behind him, but unlike many ladies who often rode in that position, she had no pillion for a safe seat. Sturgess expected her soon to falloff. He urged the horse into a trot, and then a gallop. But old Molly held on. When Sturgess finally stopped and told Molly to get off, she said: “You tell me we go ride. You call this slow go a ride?”

At that same time, early in the 19th century, an old Indian named Sabbatis still had his hut across the river from Riverside on the Sidney shore. He had a powerfully muscled son whom the settlers called John Sabbatis. Near the Sturgesses lived the Emery family who had a stalwart son built much like John Sabbatis. The two boys were so well matched that they actually staged wrestling bouts for money in the market square at Hallowell.

Mr. Snell himself often sought Indian relics. He told the Journal readers: “Following the windings of Seven Mile Brook from pond to pond, I have found stone implements of many kinds – some with holes drilled through them, others with knobs, supposed to be weights for fishing nets. Some of the tools are of flint, others of granite, and a few of some very fine stone not found in the locality. Some are amazingly sharp and of perfect shape, while others are very crude. Some look almost new; others show hard usage.”

Mr. Snell believed that Indians did plant corn in some of their Kennebec settlements, and early colonial records bear that out. Yet he tells us that, in all his unearthing of Indian relics, nowhere between Ticonic Falls and Augusta did he find any implements that could possibly have been designed as planting or harvesting tools. Certainly there are none in the Mt. Tom – Seven Mile Brook cemetery.

Of course a lot of new information has come to light about Maine Indians since Mr. Snell wrote in 1889. Because of the stone implements, Mr. Snell considered those Kennebec red men as living in the stone age. That was only partially true. Even when the first white men encountered them, they had used some copper, as Snell himself indicates about the chiefs. And, unlike men of the anthropologic stone age, they were not dependent wholly on hunting and fishing. With their crops of corn and pumpkins, they had already entered the agricultural stage in man’s progress. But it is quite true that, until the coming of the white men, they never knew the use of iron and they had no firearms.

Even in 1974 we still have much to learn about the Indians of the Kennebec. Another bit of information about our Maine Indians comes from an article in the Portland Argus on January 13, 1899. It tells how extensive trade between white men and Indians was in the 17th century. It was as early as 1645 when Jacques Cartier sold iron axes for furs to the Indians at Quebec. Similar trade axes have been found all along the east coast of the United States and as far west as the Great Lakes and even the upper Mississippi. From a letter written by Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor of New York, we know that many of those axes came from Holland, all made at Utrecht, which became famous for the manufacture of trade implements for American use.

Old colonial account books tell something about the Indian trade. Some of the items sold were by no means useful tools. One gill of rum, 4 pence; a mug of beer, 4 pence; a pair of mittens, 2 shillings. Adding to what Snell told us about wampum, this Argus account says, “Sometimes the Indians had neither money nor furs. They would then have a belt or arm band of wampum as pawn, to be returned when they could make payment.”

It is shamefully true that, in the account books of the old traders, the one item most often appearing in sales to Indians is rum. We know now, from historical records, that rum did far more than bullets to extinguish the native Americans. But the old accounts do list many other commodities, some of them entirely obscure to a modern reader. What, for instance, were Penneston shoes, strouds and duffles? But we still know what were knives, combs, clay pipes, kettles and pans. The 17th century Indian bought all such things from white traders.

And with that we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1974