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GLIMPSES OF THE PAST.
History
of the
River St. John
A. D. 1604-1784.
By
Rev. W. O. RAYMOND, LL.D.
St. John, N. B.
1905.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.
Discoverer of the River St. John. The Father of New
France. Born at Brouage in 1567. Died at Quebec, Dec. 25, 1635.]
PREFACE.
Born and reared upon the banks of the River Saint John, I have always
loved it, and have found a charm in the study of everything that
pertains to the history of those who have dwelt beside its waters.
In connection with the ter-centenary of the discovery of the river by
de Monts and Champlain, on the memorable 24th of June, 1604, the
chapters which follow were contributed, from time to time, to the
Saturday edition of the Saint John _Daily Telegraph_. With the
exception of a few minor corrections and additions, these chapters are
reprinted as they originally appeared. Some that were hurriedly
written, under pressure of other and more important work, might be
revised with advantage. Little attempt at literary excellence has been
practicable. I have been guided by an honest desire to get at the
facts of history, and in so doing have often quoted the exact language
of the writers by whom the facts were first recorded. The result of
patient investigation, extending over several years, in the course of
which a multitude of documents had to be consulted, is a more
elaborate and reliable history of the Saint John River region than has
yet appeared in print. The period covered extends from the discovery
of the river in 1604 to the coming of the Loyalists in 1784. It is
possible that the story may one day be continued in a second volume.
At the conclusion of this self-appointed task, let me say to the
reader, in the words of Montaigne, "I bring you a nosegay of culled
flowers, and I have brought little of my own but the string that ties
them."
W. O. RAYMOND.
ST JOHN, N. B., December, 1905.
ERRATA.
Page 36, line 8. After word "and," the rest of the line should
read--"beautiful islands below the mouth of."
Page 97, line 31. The last half of this line is inverted.
GLIMPSES OF THE PAST.
INCIDENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER.
CHAPTER I.
THE MALISEETS.
The Indian period of our history possesses a charm peculiarly its own.
When European explorers first visited our shores the Indian roamed at
pleasure through his broad forest domain. Its wealth of attractions
were as yet unknown to the hunter, the fisherman and the fur-trader.
Rude as he was the red man could feel the charms of the wilderness in
which he dwelt. The voice of nature was not meaningless to one who
knew her haunts so well. The dark recesses of the forest, the sunny
glades of the open woodland, the mossy dells, the sparkling streams
and roaring mountain torrents, the quiet lakes, the noble river
flowing onward to the sea with islands here and there embosomed by its
tide--all were his. The smoke of his wigwam fire curled peacefully
from Indian village and temporary encampment. He might wander where he
pleased with none to say him nay.
But before the inflowing tide of the white-man's civilization the
Indian's supremacy vanished as the morning mist before the rising sun.
The old hunting grounds are his no longer. His descendants have long
ago been forced to look for situations more remote. The sites of the
ancient villages on interval and island have long since been tilled by
the thrifty farmer's hands.
But on the sites of the old camping grounds the plough share still
turns up relics that carry us back to the "stone age." A careful study
of these relics will tell us something about the habits and customs of
the aborigines before the coming of the whites. And we have another
source of information in the quaint tales and legends that drift to us
out of the dim shadows of the past, which will always have peculiar
fascination for the student of Indian folk-lore.
With the coming of the whites the scene changes and the simplicity of
savage life grows more complicated. The change is not entirely for the
better; the hardships of savage life are ameliorated, it is true, but
the Indian learns the vices of civilization.
The native races naturally play a leading part in early Acadian
history, nor do they always appear in a very amiable light. The
element of fierceness and barbarity, which seems inherent in all
savage races, was not wanting in the Indians of the River St. John.
They united with their neighbours in most of the wars waged with the
whites and took their full share in those bloody forays which nearly
annihilated many of the infant settlements of Maine and New Hampshire.
The early annals of Eastern New England tell many a sad story of the
sacrifice of innocent lives, of women and children carried into
captivity and homes made desolate by savage hands.
And yet, it may be that with all his faults the red man has been more
sinned against than sinning.
Many years ago the provincial government sent commissioners to the
Indian village of Medoctec on the St. John river, where the Indians
from time immemorial had built their wigwams and tilled their
cornfields and where their dead for many generations had been laid to
rest in the little graveyard by the river side. The object of the
commissioners was to arrange for the location of white settlers at
Medoctec. The government claimed the right to dispossess the Indians
on the ground that the lands surrounding their village were in the
gift of the crown. The Indians, not unnaturally, were disinclined to
part with the heritage of their forefathers.
On their arrival at the historic camping ground the commissioners made
known the object of their visit. Presently several stalwart captains,
attired in their war paint and feathers and headed by their chief,
appeared on the scene. After mutual salutations the commissioners
asked: "By what right or title do you hold these lands?"
The tall, powerful chief stood erect, and with the air of a plumed
knight, pointing within the walk of the little enclosure beside the
river, replied: "There are the graves of our grandfathers! There are
graves of our fathers! There are the graves of our children!"
To this simple native eloquence the commissioners felt they had no
fitting reply, and for the time being the Maliseets remained
undisturbed.
It in not necessary to discuss at length the origin of the Indians who
lived on the banks of the St. John at the time the country became
known to Europeans. Whether or not the ancestors of our Indians were
the first inhabitants of that region it is difficult to determine. The
Indians now living on the St. John are Maliseets, but it is thought by
many that the Micmacs at one time, possessed the valley of the river
and gradually gave place to the Maliseets, as the latter advanced from
the westward. There is a tradition among the St. John river Indians
that the Micmacs and Maliseets were originally one people and that the
Maliseets after a while "went off by themselves and picked up their
own language." This the Micmacs regarded as a mongrel dialect and gave
to the new tribe the name Maliseet (or Milicete), a word derived from
Mal-i-see-jik--"he speaks badly." However, in such matters, tradition
is not always a safe guide. It is more probable the two tribes had an
independent origin, the Micmacs being the earlier inhabitants of
Acadia, while the Maliseets, who are an offshoot of the Abenaki (or
Wabenaki) nation, spread eastward from the Kennebec to the Penobscot
and thence to the St. John. The Indians who are now scattered over
this area very readily understand one another's speech, but the
language of the Micmacs is unintelligible to them.
The Micmacs seem to have permitted their neighbors to occupy the St.
John river without opposition, their own preference inclining them to
live near the coast. The opinion long prevailed in Acadia that the
Maliseets, were a more powerful and ferocious tribe than the Micmacs;
nevertheless there is no record or tradition of any conflict between
them.
That the Maliseets have for centuries inhabited the valley of the
River St. John is indicated by the fact that the Indian names of
rivers, lakes, islands and mountains, which have been retained by the
whites, are nearly all of Maliseet origin. Nevertheless the Micmacs
frequented the mouth of the St. John river after the arrival of
Europeans, for we learn that the Jesuit missionary, Enemond Masse,
passed the winter of 1611-2 at St. John in the family of Louis
Membertou, a Micmac, in order to perfect himself in the Micmac
language, which he had already studied to some extent at Port Royal.
The elder Membertou, father of the Indian here named, was, perhaps,
the most remarkable chieftain Acadia ever produced. His sway as grand
sagamore of the Micmac nation extended from Gaspe to Cape Sable. In
the year 1534 he had welcomed the great explorer Jacques Cartier to
the shores of Eastern New Brunswick, as seventy years later he
welcomed de Monts and Poutrincourt to Port Royal. The Jesuit
missionary, Pierre Biard, describes Membertou as "the greatest, most
renowned and most formidable savage within the memory of man; of
splendid physique, taller and larger limbed than is usual among them;
bearded like a Frenchmen, although scarcely any of the others have
hair upon the chin; grave and reserved with a proper sense of the
dignity of his position as commander." "In strength of mind, in
knowledge of war, in the number of his followers, in power and in the
renown of a glorious name among his countrymen, and even his enemies,
he easily surpassed the sagamores who had flourished during many
preceding ages."
In the year 1605 Pennoniac, one of the chiefs of Acadia, went with de
Monts and Champlain as guide on the occasion of their voyage along the
shores of New England and was killed by some of the savages near Saco.
Bessabez, the sagamore of the Penobscot Indians, allowed the body of
the dead chief to be taken home by his friends to Port Royal and its
arrival was the signal of great lamentation. Membertou was at this
time an old man, but although his hair was white with the frosts of a
hundred winters, like Moses of old, his eye was not dim nor his
natural force abated. He decided that the death of Pennoniac must be
avenged. Messengers were sent to call the tribes of Acadia and in
response to the summons 400 warriors assembled at Port Royal. The
Maliseets joined in the expedition. The great flotilla of war canoes
was arranged in divisions, each under its leader, the whole commanded
by Membertou in person. As the morning sun reflected in the still
waters of Port Royal the noiseless procession of canoes, crowned by
the tawny faces and bodies of the savage warriors, smeared with
pigments of various colors, the sight struck the French spectators
with wonder and astonishment.
Uniting with their allies of the River St. John, the great war party
sped westward over the waters of the Bay of Fundy and along the coast
till they reached the land of the Armouchiquois. Here they met and
defeated their enemies after a hard-fought battle in which Bessabez
and many of his captains were slain, and the allies returned in
triumph to Acadia singing their songs of victory.
The situation of the Maliseets on the River St. John was not without
its advantages, and they probably obtained as good a living as any
tribe of savages in Canada. Remote from the war paths of the fiercer
tribes they hunted in safety. Their forests were filled with game, the
rivers teemed with fish and the lakes with water fowl; the sea shore
was easy of access, the intervals and islands were naturally adapted
to the cultivation of Indian corn, wild grapes grew luxuriantly along
the river banks, there were berries in the woods and the sagaabum (or
Indian potato) was abundant. Communication with all arts of the
surrounding country was easily had by means of the short portages that
separated the sources of interlacing rivers and with his light bark
canoe the Indian could travel in any direction his necessity or his
caprice might dictate.
The characteristics of the Indians of Acadia, whether Micmacs or
Maliseets, were in the main identical; usually they were closely
allied and not infrequently intermarried Their manners and habits have
been described with much fidelity by Champlain, Lescarbot, Denys and
other early explorers. Equally accurate and interesting is the graphic
description of the savages contained in the narrative of the Jesuit
missionary Pierre Biard, who came to America in 1611 and during his
sojourn visited the St. John River and places adjacent making Port
Royal his headquarters. His narrative, "A Relation of New France, of
its Lands, Nature of the Country and of its Inhabitants," was printed
at Lyons in 1616. A few extracts, taken from the splendid edition of
the Jesuit Relations recently published at Cleveland, will suffice to
show that Pierre Biard was not only an intelligent observer but that
he handled the pen of a ready writer. "I have said before," he
observes, "that the whole country is simply an interminable forest;
for there are no open spaces except upon the margins of the sea, lakes
and rivers. In several places we found the grapes and wild vines which
ripened in their season. It was not always the best ground where found
them, being full of sand and gravel like that of Bourdeaux. There are
a great many of these grapes at St. John River in 46 degrees of
latitude, where also are to be seen many walnut (or butternut), and
hazel trees."
This quotation will show how exact and conscientious the old French
missionary was in his narration. Beamish Murdoch in Ibis History of
Nova Scotia (Vol. 1, p. 21) ventures the observation, "It may perhaps
be doubted if the French account about grapes is accurate, as they
mention them to have been growing on the banks of the Saint John
where, if wild grapes exist, they must be rare." But Biard is right
and Murdoch is wrong. Wild grapes naturally grow in great abundance on
the islands and intervals of the River St. John and, in spite of the
interference of the farmers, are still to be found as far north at
least in Woodstock. Biard visited the St. John River in October, 1611,
and stayed a day or two at a small trading post on an island near Oak
Point. One of the islands in that vicinity the early English settlers
afterwards called "Isle of Vines," from the circumstance that wild
grapes grew there in great profusion.
We quote next Father Biard's description of the Indian method of
encampment: "Arrived at a certain place, the first thing they do is to
build a fire and arrange their camp, which they will have finished in
an hour or two; often in half an hour. The women go into the woods and
bring back some poles which are stuck into the ground in a circle
around the fire and at the top are interlaced in the form of a
pyramid, so that they come together directly over the fire, for there
is the chimney. Upon the poles they throw some skins, matting or bark.
At the foot of the poles under the skins they put their baggage. All
the space around the fire is strewn with soft boughs of the fire tree,
so they will not feel the dampness of the ground; over these boughs
are thrown some mats or seal skins as soft as velvet; upon these they
stretch themselves around the fire with their heads resting upon their
baggage; and, what no one would believe, they are very warm in there
around that little fire, even in the greatest rigors of the winter.
They do not camp except near some good water, and in an attractive
location."
The aboriginies of Acadia when the country became known to Europeans,
no doubt lived as their ancestors had lived from time immemorial. A
glimpse of the life of the Indian in prehistoric times is afforded us
in the archaeological remains of the period. These are to be found at
such places as Bocabec, in Charlotte county, at Grand Lake in Queens
county, and at various points along the St. John river. Dr. L. W.
Bailey, Dr. Geo. F. Matthew, Dr. W. F. Ganong, James Vroom, and others
have given considerable attention to these relics and they were
studied also to some extent by their predecessors in the field of
science, Dr. Robb, Dr. Gesner and Moses H. Perley. The relics most
commonly brought to light include stone implements, such as axes,
hammers, arrow heads, lance and spear heads, gouges and chisels, celts
or wedges, corn crushers, and pipes; also bone implements such as
needles, fish hooks and harpoons, with specimens of rude pottery.
When Champlain first visited our shores the savages had nothing better
than stone axes to use in clearing their lands. It is to their credit
that with such rude implements they contrived to hack down the trees
and, after burning the branches and trunk, planted their corn among
the stumps and in the course of time took out the roots. In
cultivating the soil they used an implement of very hard wood, shaped
like a spade, and their method of raising corn, as described by
Champlain, was exactly the same as that of our farmers today. The corn
fields at the old Medoctic Fort were cultivated by the Indians many
years before the coming of the whites. Cadillac, writing in 1693,
says: "The Maliseets are well shaped and tolerably warlike; they
attend to the cultivation of the soil and grow the most beautiful
Indian corn; their fort is at Medocktek." Many other choice spots
along the St. John river were tilled in very early times, including,
probably, the site of the old Government House at Fredericton, where
there was an Indian encampment long before the place was dreamed of as
the site of the seat of government of the province.
Lescarbot, the historian, who wrote In 1610, tells us that the Indians
were accustomed to pound their corn in a mortar (probably of wood) in
order to reduce it to meal. Of this they afterwards made a paste,
which was baked between two stones heated at the fire. Frequently the
corn was roasted on the ear. Yet another method is thus described by
the English captive, John Gyles, who lived as a captive with the St.
John river Indians in 1689: "To dry the corn when in the milk, they
gather it in large kettles and boil it on the ears till it is pretty
hard, then shell it from the cob with clam shells and dry it on bark
in the sun. When it is thoroughly dry a kernel is no bigger than a
pea, and will keep years; and when it is boiled again it swells as
large as when on the ear and tastes incomparably sweeter than other
corn. When we had gathered our corn and dried it in the way described,
we put some of it into Indian barns, that is into hole in the ground
lined and covered with bark and then with earth. The rest we carried
up the river upon our next winter's hunting."
The Indians were a very improvident race, and in this respect the
Maliseets were little better than the Micmacs, of whom Pierre Biard
writes: "They care little about the future and are not urged on to
work except by present necessity. As long as they have anything they
are always celebrating feasts and having songs dances and speeches. If
there is a crowd of them you certainly need not expect anything else.
Nevertheless if they are by themselves and where they may safely
listen to their wives, for women are everywhere the best managers,
they will sometimes make storehouses for the winter where they will
keep smoked meat, roots, shelled acorns, peas, beans, etc."
Although the Indians living on the St. John paid some attention to the
cultivation of the soil there can be no doubt that hunting and fishing
were always their chief means of support. In Champlain's day the
implements of the chase were very primitive. Yet they were able to
hunt the largest game by taking advantage of the deep snow and making
use of their snow-shoes. Champlain says. "They search for the track of
animals, which, having found, they follow until they get sight of the
creature, when they shoot at it with their bows or kill it by means of
daggers attached to the end of a short pike. Then the women and
children come up, erect a hut and they give themselves to feasting.
Afterwards they proceed in search of other animals and thus they pass
the winter. This is the mode of life of these people, which seems to
me a very miserable one."
There can be little doubt that wild game was vastly more abundant in
this country, when it was discovered by Europeans, than it is today.
In the days of La Tour and Charnisay as many as three thousand moose
skins were collected on the St. John in a single year, and smaller
game was even more abundant. Wild fowl ranged the coasts and marshes
and frequented the rivers in incredible numbers. Biard says that at
certain seasons they were so abundant on the islands that by the
skilful use of a club right and left they could bring down birds as
big as a duck with every blow. Denys speaks of immense flocks of wild
pidgeons. But the Indian's food supply was not limited to these; the
rivers abounded with salmon and other fish, turtles were common along
the banks of the river, and their eggs, which they lay in the sand,
were esteemed a great delicacy, as for the musquash it is regarded as
the "Indian's turkey."
A careful examination of the relics discovered at the sites of the old
camping grounds suffices to confirm the universal testimony of early
writers regarding the nomadic habits of the Indians. They were a
restless race of people, for ever wandering from place to place as
necessity or caprice impelled them. At one time they were attracted to
the sea side where clams, fish and sea fowl abounded; at another they
preferred the charms of the inland waters. Sometimes the mere love of
change led them to forsake one camping place and remove to some other
favorite spot. When game was scarce they were compelled by sheer
necessity to seek new hunting grounds. At the proper season they made
temporary encampments for salmon fishing with torch and spear. Anon
they tilled their cornfields on the intervals and islands. They had a
saying: "When the maple leaf is as big as a squirrel's foot it is time
to plant corn." Occasionally the outbreak of some pestilence broke up
their encampments and scattered them in all directions. In time of
peace they moved leisurely, but in time of war their action was much
more vigorous and flotillas of their bark canoes skimmed swiftly over
the lakes and rivers bearing the dusky warriors against the enemies of
their race. Many a peaceful New England hamlet was startled by their
midnight war-whoop when danger was little looked for.
It is a common belief in our day that the Indians were formerly more
numerous than they now are. Exactly the same opinion seems to have
prevailed when the country was first discovered, but it is really very
doubtful whether there were ever many more Indians in the country than
there are today. In the year 1611 Biard described them as so few in
number that they might be said to roam over rather than to possess the
country. He estimated the Maliseets, or Etchemins, as less than a
thousand in number "scattered over wide spaces, as is natural for
those who live by hunting and fishing." Today the Indians of Maine and
New Brunswick living within the same area as the Etchemins of 1611,
number considerably more than a thousand souls. There are, perhaps, as
many Indians in the maritime provinces now as in the days of
Champlain. As Hannay observes, in his History of Acadia, excellent
reasons existed to prevent the Indians from ever becoming very
numerous. A wilderness country can only support a limited population.
The hunter must draw his sustenance from a very wide range of
territory, and the life of toil and privation to which the Indian was
exposed was fatal to all but the strongest and most hardy.
One of the most striking Indian characteristics is the keenness of
perception by which they are enabled to track their game or find their
way through pathless forests without the aid of chart or compass. The
Indian captive, Gyles, relates the following incident which may be
mentioned in this connection:
"I was once travelling a little way behind several Indians and,
hearing them laugh merrily, when I came up I asked them the cause of
their laughter. They showed me the track of a moose, and how a
wolverene had climbed a tree, and where he had jumped off upon the
moose. It so happened that after the moose had taken several large
leaps it came under the branch of a tree, which, striking the
wolverene, broke his hold and tore him off; and by his tracks in the
snow it appeared he went off another way with short steps, as if he
had been stunned by the blow that had broken his hold. The Indians
were wonderfully pleased that the moose had thus outwitted the
mischievous wolverene."
The early French writers all notice the skill and ingenuity of the
savages, in adapting their mode of life to their environment. Nicholas
Denys, who came to Acadia in 1632, gives a very entertaining and
detailed account of their ways of life and of their skillful
handicraft. The snowshoe and the Indian bark canoe aroused his special
admiration. He says they also made dishes of bark, both large and
small, sewing them so nicely with slender rootlets of fir that they
retained water. They used in their sewing a pointed bodkin of bone,
and they sometimes adorned their handiwork with porcupine quills and
pigments. Their kettles used to be of wood before the French supplied
them with those of metal. In cooking, the water was readily heated to
the boiling point by the use of red-hot stones which they put in and
took out of their wooden kettle.
Until the arrival of Europeans the natives were obliged to clothe
themselves with skins of the beaver and other animals. The women made
all the garments, but Champlain did not consider them very good
tailoresses.
Like most savage races the Indians were vain and consequential. Biard
relates that a certain sagamore on hearing that the young King of
France was unmarried, observed: "Perhaps I may let him marry my
daughter, but the king must make me some handsome presents, namely,
four or five barrels of bread, three of peas and beans, one of
tobacco, four or five cloaks worth one hundred sous apiece, bows,
arrows, harpoons, and such like articles."
Courtship and marriage among the Maliseets is thus described by John
Gyles: "If a young fellow determines to marry, his relations and the
Jesuit advise him to a girl, he goes into the wigwam where she is and
looks on her. If he likes her appearance, he tosses a stick or chip
into her lap which she takes, and with a shy side-look views the
person who sent it; yet handles the chip with admiration as though she
wondered from whence it came. If she likes him she throws the chip to
him with a smile, and then nothing is wanting but a ceremony with the
Jesuit to consummate the marriage. But if she dislikes her suitor she
with a surly countenance throws the chip aside and he comes no more
there."
An Indian maiden educated to make "monoodah," or Indian bags, birch
dishes and moccasins, to lace snowshoes, string wampum belts, sew
birch canoes and boil the kettle, was esteemed a lady of fine
accomplishments. The women, however, endured many hardships. They were
called upon to prepare and erect the cabins, supply them with fire,
wood and water, prepare the food, go to bring the game from the place
where it had been killed, sew and repair the canoes, mend and stretch
the skins, curry them and make clothes and moccasins for the whole
family. Biard says: "They go fishing and do the paddling, in short
they undertake all the work except that alone of the grand chase.
Their husbands sometimes beat them unmercifully and often for a very
slight cause."
Since the coming of the whites the Maliseets have had few quarrels
with the neighboring tribes of Indians. They entertained, however,
a dread of the Mohawks, and there are many legends that have been
handed down to us which tell of their fights with these implacable
foes. One of the most familiar--that of the destruction of the
Mohawk war party at the Grand Falls--told by the Indians to the early
settlers on the river soon after their arrival in the country and has
since been rehearsed in verse by Roberts and Hannay and in prose by
Lieut.-Governor Gordon in his "Wilderness Journeys," by Dr. Rand
in his Indian legends and by other writers.
John Gyles, the English captive at Medoctec village in 1689, relates
the following ridiculous incident, which sufficiently shows the
unreasonable terror inspired in the mind of the natives of the river
in his day by the very name of Mohawk:
"One very hot season a great number of Indians gathered at the
village, and being a very droughty people they kept James Alexander
and myself night and day fetching water from a cold spring that ran
out of a rocky hill about three-quarters of a mile from the fort.[1]
In going thither we crossed a large interval corn field and then a
descent to a lower interval before we ascended the hill to the spring.
James being almost dead as well as I with this continual fatigue
contrived (a plan) to fright the Indians. He told me of it, but
conjured me to secrecy. The next dark night James going for water set
his kettle on the descent to the lowest interval, and ran back to the
fort puffing and blowing as in the utmost surprise, and told his
master that he saw something near the spring which looked like Mohawks
(which he said were only stumps--aside): his master being a most
courageous warrior went with James to make discovery, and when they
came to the brow of the hill, James pointed to the stumps, and withal
touched his kettle with his toe, which gave it motion down hill, and
at every turn of the kettle the bail clattered, upon which James and
his master could see a Mohawk in every stump in motion, and turned
tail to and he was the best man who could run the fastest. This
alarmed all the Indians in the village; they, though about thirty or
forty in number, packed off bag and baggage, some up the river and
others down, and did not return under fifteen days, and the heat of
the weather being finally over our hard service abated for this
season. I never heard that the Indians understood the occasion of the
fright, but James and I had many a private laugh about it."
[1] The old Medoctec fort was on the west bank of the River St. John
about eight miles below the town of Woodstock. The spring is
readily identified; an apparently inexhaustible supply of pure
cold water flows from it even in the driest season.
Until quite recently the word "Mohawk," suddenly uttered, was
sufficient to startle a New Brunswick Indian. The late Edward Jack
upon asking an Indian child, "What is a Mohawk?" received this reply,
"A Mohawk is a bad Indian who kills people and eats them." Parkman
describes the Mohawks as the fiercest, the boldest, yet most politic
savages to whom the American forests ever gave birth and nurture. As
soon as a canoe could float they were on the war path, and with the
cry of the returning wild fowl mingled the yell of these human tigers.
They burned, hacked and devoured, exterminating whole villages at
once.
A Mohawk war party once captured an Algonquin hunting party in which
were three squaws who had each a child of a few weeks or months old.
At the first halt the captors took the infants, tied them to wooden
spits, roasted them alive before a fire and feasted on them before
the eyes of the agonized mothers, whose shrieks, supplications and
frantic efforts to break the cords that bound them, were met with
mockery and laughter. "They are not men, they are wolves!" sobbed one
of the wretched women, as she told what had befallen her to the Jesuit
missionary.
Fearful as the Maliseets were of the Mohawks they were in turn
exceedingly cruel to their own captives and, strange as it may appear,
the women were even more cruel than the men. In the course of the
border wars English captives were exposed to the most revolting and
barbarous outrages, some were even burned alive by our St. John river
Indians.
But while cruel to their enemies, and even at times cruel to their
wives, the Indians were by no means without their redeeming features.
They were a modest and virtuous race, and it is quite remarkable that
with all their bloodthirstiness in the New England wars there is no
instance on record of the slightest rudeness to the person of any
female captive. This fact should be remembered to their credit by
those who most abhor their bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Nor were the
savages without a certain sense of justice. This we learn from the
following incident in the experience of the English captive John
Gyles.
"While at the Indian village (Medoctec) I had been cutting wood and
was binding it up with an Indian rope in order to carry it to the
wigwam when a stout ill-natured young fellow about 20 years of age
threw me backward, sat on my breast and pulling out his knife said
that he would kill me, for he had never yet killed an English person.
I told him that he might go to war and that would be more manly than
to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery for them.
Notwithstanding all I could say he began to cut and stab me on my
breast. I seized him by the hair and tumbled him from off me on his
back and followed him with my fist and knee so that he presently said
he had enough; but when I saw the blood run and felt the smart I at
him again and bid him get up and not lie there like a dog--told him of
his former abuses offered to me and other poor captives, and that if
ever he offered the like to me again I would pay him double. I sent
him before me, took up my burden of wood and came to the Indians and
told them the whole truth and they commended me, and I don't remember
that ever he offered me the least abuse afterward, though he was big
enough to have dispatched two of me."
The unfortunate conduct of some of the New England governors together
with other circumstances that need not here be mentioned, led the
Maliseets to be hostile to the English. Toward the French, however,
they were from the very first disposed to be friendly, and when de
Monts, Champlain and Poutrincourt arrived at the mouth of our noble
river on the memorable 24th day of June, 1604, they found awaiting
them the representatives of an aboriginal race of unknown antiquity,
and of interesting language, traditions and customs, who welcomed them
with outward manifestations of delight, and formed with them an
alliance that remained unbroken throughout the prolonged struggle
between the rival powers for supremacy in Acadia.
[Illustration: Indian Encampment and Chief]