<\/p>\n
In books of Maine history we find frequent references to the King’s broad arrow. That was the mark made by royal surveyors, in colonial times, for huge pines selected as masts for the British navy and merchant marine.<\/p>\n
In 1700 most commercial relations between the American colonies and the British government were controlled by what was called the Lords of Trade and Plantation~ In 1718 their chief legal counsel published a carefully researched opinion on the King’s right to woods.in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The cause of that decree was the claim of Elisha Cook, merchant of Boston. that the King had no valid claim to trees on Cook’s land in Maine. ~r some time the crown had claimed all pines fit for masts that measured two feet in diameter a foot above the ground. Cook based his claim on the purchase in 1678 of those Maine lands from the heirs of Ferdinando Gorges.<\/p>\n
Now let us see exactly what the commissioners’ legal counsel had to say. “In 1639 King Charles I granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges the Province of Maine. which in 1678 the heirs of Gorges did sell to the Province of Massachusetts. which in turn conveyed them to a corporation headed by John Usher, and for those lands William Dorman b~came the agent.<\/p>\n
“It is a question of law whether a corporation could legally purchase land in the Province of Maine. It is British law that no corporation can purchase land unless express license to do so is entered in their charter of corporation. The Massachusetts corporation had no such charter.<\/em><\/p>\n “Even if it is admissible that the corporation had power to purchase land, the corporation itself is now extinguished, and consequently, when the corporation ended in 1684. all lands that it had purchased reverted to the crown.<\/em><\/p>\n “A new charter granted by King William made it clear that the King considered the counties of Xassachusetts Bay specifically named as being in Maine to be his own, vested in the right of the crown; and he did then unite those counties into one province, and granted lands in that province to inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay.<\/em><\/p>\n “It is true that the King did grant power to the General Assembly of Massachusetts Bay to dispose of lands within the boundaries of the charter. but treated all the lands alike. excepting none. All the lands are therefore subject to the last clause of the charter. by which all trees of a specified size are reserved for the crown. Consequently the General Assembly of\u00a0 Massachusetts Bay cannot grant lands without their being subject to that reservation.”<\/em><\/p>\n That ends our direct quotation from the legal opinion. It was at once confirmed by British courts, and the King’s broad arrow continued to mark Maine pines until after the Revolution. Yet that royal right was by no means a deterrent to settlements in Maine. The King owned the trees, but he couldn’t come across the Atlantic with an axe to cut them.<\/p>\n By colonial, resident labor those big pines had to be cut and transported to New England ports, where they were loaded aboard especially constructed mast ships for transportation to England. That required men to cut the trees, men to get them to the ports, others to load them on the ships, and the process took hundreds of yoke of oxen and their drivers. The mast trade was indeed a lucrative source of income for early Maine settlers.<\/p>\n After the Revolution the big pines. no longer the King’s property. furnished masts for ships built in Maine itself. Until early in the 19th century Maine had become the leading shipbuilding state in the nation.<\/p>\n Now from that story about }~ine masts we turn to an important early voyage to the coast of ~aine. This story comes from the account of that voyage written by the man who made it in 1623. Christopher Levett. Only three years after the first ~ew England settlement had been made at Plymouth, Levett set out to explore the ~’;e\\” England coast for additional settlement sites.<\/p>\n Levett wrote:<\/p>\n \u00a0“~y first place of landing was on the Isles of Shoals about t~o leagues from the ~ainland. There I found not a si~gle good timber tree nor land enough to make a garden. But it did have aharbor fit for half a dozen fishing ships. but not room enough for drying stages. Upon those islands I found no savages at all.”<\/em><\/p>\n Levett continued northeast along the coast. He prodded short distances up two rivers, the Piscataqua and the Saco. He felt there was a possibility of plantations near the mouth of each. Levett wrote:<\/p>\n “There is good harbor for ships, good ground for planting, much of it already cleared and planted by savages, and the fishing is excellent.”<\/em><\/p>\n A bit farther along the coast Levett came to Cape Porpoise, which he considered equally suitable. Stopping at Old Orchard Beach, Levett wrote:<\/p>\n “Here we built a wigwam in an hour’s time. It had no frame but was made from a few poles and our boat sails; yet it kept out the wind and rain. Our bed was the wet ground, and our bedding our own rain-soaked clothes \u2022. We had plenty of ducks and other fowl, both boiled and roasted, but as we had to use wooden spits, they often caught fire.”<\/em><\/p>\n Next Levett came to a place that he says the Indians called Quack, but he gave it the English name of York. That place is not to be confused with the later town of York near the New Hampshire border. Levett’s York was on the western side of Casco Bay and may have been the site of the present Portland. There he went a few miles up a river that was probably the Presumpscot, that empties Sebago Lake into the ocean. He gave the stream his own name, Levett’s River. Three miles up the river at an unnavigable waterfall he found the residence of an Indian chief with a group of 50 natives. He said:<\/p>\n “They made me welcome and gave me such victuals as they had, and I gave them tobacco in return.”<\/em><\/p>\n Next Levett reached the mouth of the Kennebec, an area already well known to Europeans through the Popham Colony of 1607. There were in 1623 no settlers on those river-mouth islands, but Levett did find two British ships fishing there.<\/p>\n At Cape Newagen Levett found opportunity to trade with the Indians. He learned that nearby Indians had large quantities of beaver furs which they intended to take to Pemaquid to trade with Captain Beverage. master of a British ship fishing there. Levett wrote:<\/p>\n “I urged the Indians to bri:1g their furs to ~r. Cook’s fishing stage at ~ewagen and I would pay them ~ore than they could get at Pemaquid. The chiefs agreed that none of their furs should go to Pemaquid. but that I should have them all. They called me their brother, and adopted me into their tribe. They asked me where I intended to place my plantation. I told them that I had seen many good sites to the west and that I was going to seek sites further east before I decided. They said there was no place to the eastward, and I had better stay where I was. I knew that Pemaquid and Monhegan were already granted, but I was not quite ready to leave out all the other prospects to the east.”<\/em><\/p>\n Levett did. however, accept the offer of one chief to go back a bit west and look at certain sites again. He wrote:<\/p>\n “The next day I sailed back to Quack, the place I had named York, with the chief, his queen, arid his prince son, his noble attendants rowing nearby in canoes. There at York, after much exploring and much labor, I obtained a place of habitation in New England, built a house and fortified it strong enough against possible enemies. While the Indians with me were friends and could be trusted, that is not true of all the natives.”<\/em><\/p>\n Levett soon encountered competition. It seemed as if every Englishman who came to New England wanted to trade for Indian furs. Some of them got trade away from Levett, but by sound diplomacy he managed to h01d on to much o\u00a3 it. Levett then wrote:<\/p>\n “I told the chiefs I must return to England to get my wife and children. but I would leave ten of my men with them until I returned.”<\/em><\/p>\n Levett did not return. His plantation was not settled; and that is why we do not know exactly where on Casco Bay he intended it to be. In his narrative, however, Levett did give some information about the ~ine Indians. He wrote:<\/p>\n “I found they have t’:JO gods; one they love and the other they hate. The loved one they call Squanto. and to hin :hey ascribe all their good fortune. Their bad luck is caused by the uther God, Tanto. They say.they do not know where Squanto lives. but it is somewhere up high. Their phYSicians or nedicine men I believe to be all witches. They not only tend the sick. but :oretell the weather a:1d do many strange things. Every chief has a medicine man attached to him. I find these savages marvelously quick of understanding and full of subtlety. They know how to flatter lavishly. yet convincingly. When they see their flattery getting nowhere. they become cunning enemies.<\/p>\n They are full of treachery. even toward each other. Though we should deal kindly with them. it is best to keep a strong hand over them. One chief asked me how many wives King James has. When I told him only one. the chief asked. “Then who does all the King’s work?”<\/em> The native weapons are bows and arrows. but the English have brought them a few fowling pieces. tI<\/p>\n And that concludes Christopher Levett’s account of the wilderness of Maine in 1623.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1315, Broadcast on May 23, 1982<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}