to touch them anywhere. The St. Francis Indian and Joe alone were
there at first, and we lay on our backs talking with them till
midnight. They were very sociable, and, when they did not talk with
us, kept up a steady chatting in their own language. We heard a small
bird just after dark, which, Joe said, sang at a certain hour in the
night,--at ten o’clock, he believed. We also heard the hylodes and
tree-toads, and the lumberers singing in their camp a quarter of a
mile off. I told them that I had seen pictured in old books pieces of
human flesh drying on these crates; whereupon they repeated some
tradition about the Mohawks eating human flesh, what parts they
preferred, etc., and also of a battle with the Mohawks near Moosehead,
in which many of the latter were killed; but I found that they knew
but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by
stories about their ancestors as readily as any way. At first I was
nearly roasted out, for I lay against one side of the camp, and felt
the heat reflected not only from the birch-bark above, but from the
side; and again I remembered the sufferings of the Jesuit
missionaries, and what extremes of heat and cold the Indians were said
to endure. I struggled long between my desire to remain and talk with
them and my impulse to rush out and stretch myself on the cool grass;
and when I was about to take the last step, Joe, hearing my murmurs,
or else being uncomfortable himself, got up and partially dispersed
the fire. I suppose that that is Indian manners,--to defend yourself.
While lying there listening to the Indians, I amused myself with
trying to guess at their subject by their gestures, or some proper
name introduced. There can be no more startling evidence of their
being a distinct and comparatively aboriginal race than to hear this
unaltered Indian language, which the white man cannot speak nor
understand. We may suspect change and deterioration in almost every
other particular but the language which is so wholly unintelligible to
us. It took me by surprise, though I had found so many arrowheads, and
convinced me that the Indian was not the invention of historians and
poets. It was a purely wild and primitive American sound, as much as
the barking of a chickaree, and I could not understand a syllable of
it; but Paugus, had he been there, would have understood it. These
Abenakis gossiped, laughed, and jested, in the language in which
Eliot’s Indian Bible is written, the language which has been spoken in
New England who shall say how long? These were the sounds that issued
from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have
not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language
of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I
stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that
night, as any of its discoverers ever did.
In the midst of their conversation, Joe suddenly appealed to me to
know how long Moosehead Lake was.
Meanwhile, as we lay there, Joe was making and trying his horn, to be
ready for hunting after midnight. The St. Francis Indian also amused
himself with sounding it, or rather calling through it; for the sound
is made with the voice, and not by blowing through the horn. The
latter appeared to be a speculator in moose-hides. He bought my
companion’s for two dollars and a quarter, green. Joe said that it was
worth two and a half at Oldtown. Its chief use is for moccasins. One
or two of these Indians wore them. I was told that, by a recent law of
Maine, foreigners are not allowed to kill moose there at any season;
white Americans can kill them only at a particular season, but the
Indians of Maine at all seasons. The St. Francis Indian accordingly
asked my companion for a _wighiggin_, or bill, to show, since he was a
foreigner. He lived near Sorel. I found that he could write his name
very well, Tahmunt Swasen. One Ellis, an old white man of Guilford, a
town through which we passed, not far from the south end of Moosehead,
was the most celebrated moose-hunter of those parts. Indians and
whites spoke with equal respect of him. Tahmunt said that there were
more moose here than in the Adirondack country in New York, where he
had hunted; that three years before there were a great many about, and
there were a great many now in the woods, but they did not come out to
the water. It was of no use to hunt them at midnight,--they would not
come out then. I asked Sabattis, after he came home, if the moose
never attacked him. He answered that you must not fire many times, so
as to mad him. “I fire once and hit him in the right place, and in the
morning I find him. He won’t go far. But if you keep firing, you mad
him. I fired once five bullets, every one through the heart, and he
did not mind ’em at all; it only made him more mad.” I asked him if
they did not hunt them with dogs. He said that they did so in winter,
but never in the summer, for then it was of no use; they would run
right off straight and swiftly a hundred miles.
Another Indian said that the moose, once scared, would run all day. A
dog will hang to their lips, and be carried along till he is swung
against a tree and drops off. They cannot run on a “glaze,” though
they can run in snow four feet deep; but the caribou can run on ice.
They commonly find two or three moose together. They cover themselves
with water, all but their noses, to escape flies. He had the horns of
what he called “the black moose that goes in low lands.” These spread
three or four feet. The “red moose” was another kind, “running on
mountains,” and had horns which spread six feet. Such were his
distinctions. Both can move their horns. The broad flat blades are
covered with hair, and are so soft, when the animal is alive, that you
can run a knife through them. They regard it as a good or bad sign, if
the horns turn this way or that. His caribou horns had been gnawed by
mice in his wigwam, but he thought that the horns neither of the moose
nor of the caribou were ever gnawed while the creature was alive, as
some have asserted. An Indian, whom I met after this at Oldtown, who
had carried about a bear and other animals of Maine to exhibit, told
me that thirty years ago there were not so many moose in Maine as
now; also, that the moose were very easily tamed, and would come back
when once fed, and so would deer, but not caribou. The Indians of this
neighborhood are about as familiar with the moose as we are with the
ox, having associated with them for so many generations. Father
Rasles, in his Dictionary of the Abenaki Language, gives not only a
word for the male moose (_aianbé_), and another for the female
(_hèrar_), but for the bone which is in the middle of the heart of the
moose (!), and for his left hind leg.
There were none of the small deer up there; they are more common about
the settlements. One ran into the city of Bangor two years before, and
jumped through a window of costly plate glass, and then into a mirror,
where it thought it recognized one of its kind, and out again, and so
on, leaping over the heads of the crowd, until it was captured. This
the inhabitants speak of as the deer that went a-shopping. The
last-mentioned Indian spoke of the _lunxus_ or Indian devil (which I
take to be the cougar, and not the _Gulo luscus_), as the only animal
in Maine which man need fear; it would follow a man, and did not mind
a fire. He also said that beavers were getting to be pretty numerous
again, where we went, but their skins brought so little now that it
was not profitable to hunt them.
I had put the ears of our moose, which were ten inches long, to dry
along with the moose meat over the fire, wishing to preserve them; but
Sabattis told me that I must skin and cure them, else the hair would
all come off. He observed that they made tobacco pouches of the skins
of their ears, putting the two together inside to inside. I asked him
how he got fire; and he produced a little cylindrical box of friction
matches. He also had flints and steel, and some punk, which was not
dry; I think it was from the yellow birch. “But suppose you upset, and
all these and your powder get wet.” “Then,” said he, “we wait till we
get to where there is some fire.” I produced from my pocket a little
vial, containing matches, stoppled water-tight, and told him, that,
though we were upset, we should still have some dry matches; at which
he stared without saying a word.
We lay awake thus a long while talking, and they gave us the meaning
of many Indian names of lakes and streams in the vicinity,--especially
Tahmunt. I asked the Indian name of Moosehead Lake. Joe answered
_Sebamook_; Tahmunt pronounced it _Sebemook_. When I asked what it
meant, they answered, Moosehead Lake. At length, getting my meaning,
they alternately repeated the word over to themselves, as a
philologist might,--_Sebamook_,--_Sebamook_,--now and then comparing
notes in Indian; for there was a slight difference in their dialects;
and finally Tahmunt said, “Ugh! I know,”--and he rose up partly on the
moose-hide,--“like as here is a place, and there is a place,” pointing
to different parts of the hide, “and you take water from there and
fill this, and it stays here; that is _Sebamook_.” I understood him to
mean that it was a reservoir of water which did not run away, the
river coming in on one side and passing out again near the same place,
leaving a permanent bay. Another Indian said, that it meant Large Bay
Lake, and that _Sebago_ and _Sebec_, the names of other lakes, were
kindred words, meaning large open water. Joe said that _Seboois_ meant
Little River. I observed their inability, often described, to convey
an abstract idea. Having got the idea, though indistinctly, they
groped about in vain for words with which to express it. Tahmunt
thought that the whites called it Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo,
which commands it, is shaped like a moose’s head, and that Moose River
was so called “because the mountain points right across the lake to
its mouth.” John Josselyn, writing about 1673, says, “Twelve miles
from Casco Bay, and passable for men and horses, is a lake, called by
the Indians Sebug. On the brink thereof, at one end, is the famous
rock, shaped like a moose deer or helk, diaphanous, and called the
Moose Rock.” He appears to have confounded Sebamook with Sebago, which
is nearer, but has no “diaphanous” rock on its shore.
I give more of their definitions, for what they are worth,--partly
_because_ they differ sometimes from the commonly received ones. They
never analyzed these words before. After long deliberation and
repeating of the word,--for it gave much trouble,--Tahmunt said that
_Chesuncook_ meant a place where many streams emptied in (?), and he
enumerated them,--Penobscot, Umbazookskus, Cusabesex, Red Brook, etc.
“_Caucomgomoc_,--what does that mean?” “What are those large white
birds?” he asked. “Gulls,” said I. “Ugh! Gull Lake.” _Pammadumcook_,
Joe thought, meant the Lake with Gravelly Bottom or Bed. _Kenduskeag_,
Tahmunt concluded at last, after asking if birches went up it,--for he
said that he was not much acquainted with it,--meant something like
this: “You go up Penobscot till you come to _Kenduskeag_, and you go
by, you don’t turn up there. That is _Kenduskeag_.” (?) Another
Indian, however, who knew the river better, told us afterward that it
meant Little Eel River. _Mattawamkeag_ was a place where two rivers
meet. (?) _Penobscot_ was Rocky River. One writer says that this was
“originally the name of only a section of the main channel, from the
head of the tide-water to a short distance above Oldtown.”
A very intelligent Indian, whom we afterward met, son-in-law of
Neptune, gave us also these other definitions: _Umbazookskus_, Meadow
Stream; _Millinoket_, Place of Islands; _Aboljacarmegus_, Smooth-Ledge
Falls (and Deadwater); _Aboljacarmeguscook_, the stream emptying in
(the last was the word he gave when I asked about _Aboljacknagesic_,
which he did not recognize); _Mattahumkeag_, Sand-Creek Pond;
_Piscataquis_, Branch of a River.
I asked our hosts what _Musketaquid_, the Indian name of Concord,
Massachusetts, meant; but they changed it to _Musketicook_, and
repeated that, and Tahmunt said that it meant Dead Stream, which is
probably true. _Cook_ appears to mean stream, and perhaps _quid_
signifies the place or ground. When I asked the meaning of the names
of two of our hills, they answered that they were another language. As
Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the
meaning of the word _Quebec_, about which there has been so much
question. He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked what
those great ships were called that carried soldiers. “Men-of-war,” we
answered. “Well,” he said, “when the English ships came up the river,
they could not go any farther, it was so narrow there; they must go
back,--go-back,--that’s Que-bec.” I mention this to show the value of
his authority in the other cases.
Late at night the other two Indians came home from moose-hunting, not
having been successful, aroused the fire again, lighted their pipes,
smoked awhile, took something strong to drink, and ate some moose
meat, and, finding what room they could, lay down on the moose-hides;
and thus we passed the night, two white men and four Indians, side by
side.
When I awoke in the morning the weather was drizzling. One of the
Indians was lying outside, rolled in his blanket, on the opposite side
of the fire, for want of room. Joe had neglected to awake my
companion, and he had done no hunting that night. Tahmunt was making a
cross-bar for his canoe with a singularly shaped knife, such as I have
since seen other Indians using. The blade was thin, about three
quarters of an inch wide, and eight or nine inches long, but curved
out of its plane into a hook, which he said made it more convenient to
shave with. As the Indians very far north and northwest use the same
kind of knife, I suspect that it was made according to an aboriginal
pattern, though some white artisans may use a similar one. The Indians
baked a loaf of flour bread in a spider on its edge before the fire
for their breakfast; and while my companion was making tea, I caught a
dozen sizable fishes in the Penobscot, two kinds of sucker and one
trout. After we had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bed-fellows,
who had also breakfasted, came along, and, being invited, took a cup
of tea, and finally, taking up the common platter, licked it clean.
But he was nothing to a white fellow, a lumberer, who was continually
stuffing himself with the Indians’ moose meat, and was the butt of his
companions accordingly. He seems to have thought that it was a feast
“to eat all.” It is commonly said that the white man finally surpasses
the Indian on his own ground, and it was proved true in this case. I
cannot swear to his employment during the hours of darkness, but I saw
him at it again as soon as it was light, though he came a quarter of a
mile to his work.
The rain prevented our continuing any longer in the woods; so, giving
some of our provisions and utensils to the Indians, we took leave of
them. This being the steamer’s day, I set out for the lake at once.
I walked over the carry alone and waited at the head of the lake. An
eagle, or some other large bird, flew screaming away from its perch by
the shore at my approach. For an hour after I reached the shore there
was not a human being to be seen, and I had all that wide prospect to
myself. I thought that I heard the sound of the steamer before she
came in sight on the open lake. I noticed at the landing, when the
steamer came in, one of our bed-fellows, who had been a-moose-hunting
the night before, now very sprucely dressed in a clean white shirt and
fine black pants, a true Indian dandy, who had evidently come over the
carry to show himself to any arrivers on the north shore of Moosehead
Lake, just as New York dandies take a turn up Broadway and stand on
the steps of a hotel.
Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men,
with their batteau, who had been exploring for six weeks as far as the
Canada line, and had let their beards grow. They had the skin of a
beaver, which they had recently caught, stretched on an oval hoop,
though the fur was not good at that season. I talked with one of them,
telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the
white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but
that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had
found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With
a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me. However, he said
that he had found enough to employ two teams the next winter in a
place where there was thought to be none left. What was considered a
“tip-top” tree now was not looked at twenty years ago, when he first
went into the business; but they succeeded very well now with what was
considered quite inferior timber then. The explorer used to cut into a
tree higher and higher up, to see if it was false-hearted, and if
there was a rotten heart as big as his arm, he let it alone; but now
they cut such a tree and sawed it all around the rot, and it made the
very best of boards, for in such a case they were never shaky.
One connected with lumbering operations at Bangor told me that the
largest pine belonging to his firm, cut the previous winter, “scaled”
in the woods four thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety
dollars in the log at the Bangor boom in Oldtown. They cut a road
three and a half miles long for this tree alone. He thought that the
principal locality for the white pine that came down the Penobscot
now was at the head of the East Branch and the Allegash, about Webster
Stream and Eagle and Chamberlain lakes. Much timber has been stolen
from the public lands. (Pray, what kind of forest-warden is the Public
itself?) I heard of one man who, having discovered some particularly
fine trees just within the boundaries of the public lands, and not
daring to employ an accomplice, cut them down, and by means of block
and tackle, without cattle, tumbled them into a stream, and so
succeeded in getting off with them without the least assistance.
Surely, stealing pine trees in this way is not so mean as robbing
hen-roosts.
We reached Monson that night, and the next day rode to Bangor, all the
way in the rain again, varying our route a little. Some of the taverns
on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a
transition state from the camp to the house.
* * * * *
The next forenoon we went to Oldtown. One slender old Indian on the
Oldtown shore, who recognized my companion, was full of mirth and
gestures, like a Frenchman. A Catholic priest crossed to the island in
the same batteau with us. The Indian houses are framed, mostly of one
story, and in rows one behind another, at the south end of the island,
with a few scattered ones. I counted about forty, not including the
church and what my companion called the council-house. The last, which
I suppose is their town-house, was regularly framed and shingled like
the rest. There were several of two stories, quite neat, with front
yards inclosed, and one at least had green blinds. Here and there
were moose-hides stretched and drying about them. There were no
cart-paths, nor tracks of horses, but footpaths; very little land
cultivated, but an abundance of weeds, indigenous and naturalized;
more introduced weeds than useful vegetables, as the Indian is said to
cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this
village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish
villages as I have seen. The children were not particularly ragged nor
dirty. The little boys met us with bow in hand and arrow on string,
and cried, “Put up a cent.” Verily, the Indian has but a feeble hold
on his bow now; but the curiosity of the white man is insatiable, and
from the first he has been eager to witness this forest
accomplishment. That elastic piece of wood with its feathered dart, so
sure to be unstrung by contact with civilization, will serve for the
type, the coat-of-arms of the savage. Alas for the Hunter Race! the
white man has driven off their game, and substituted a cent in its
place. I saw an Indian woman washing at the water’s edge. She stood on
a rock, and, after dipping the clothes in the stream, laid them on the
rock, and beat them with a short club. In the graveyard, which was
crowded with graves, and overrun with weeds, I noticed an inscription
in Indian, painted on a wooden grave-board. There was a large wooden
cross on the island.
Since my companion knew him, we called on Governor Neptune, who lived
in a little “ten-footer,” one of the humblest of them all.
Personalities are allowable in speaking of public men, therefore I
will give the particulars of our visit. He was abed. When we entered
the room, which was one half of the house, he was sitting on the side
of the bed. There was a clock hanging in one corner. He had on a black
frock coat, and black pants, much worn, white cotton shirt, socks, a
red silk handkerchief about his neck, and a straw hat. His black hair
was only slightly grayed. He had very broad cheeks, and his features
were decidedly and refreshingly different from those of any of the
upstart Native American party whom I have seen. He was no darker than
many old white men. He told me that he was eighty-nine; but he was
going a-moose-hunting that fall, as he had been the previous one.
Probably his companions did the hunting. We saw various squaws dodging
about. One sat on the bed by his side and helped him out with his
stories. They were remarkably corpulent, with smooth, round faces,
apparently full of good-humor. Certainly our much-abused climate had
not dried up their adipose substance. While we were there,--for we
stayed a good while,--one went over to Oldtown, returned and cut out a
dress, which she had bought, on another bed in the room. The Governor
said that “he could remember when the moose were much larger; that
they did not use to be in the woods, but came out of the water, as all
deer did. Moose was whale once. Away down Merrimack way, a whale came
ashore in a shallow bay. Sea went out and left him, and he came up on
land a moose. What made them know he was a whale was, that at first,
before he began to run in bushes, he had no bowels inside, but”--and
then the squaw who sat on the bed by his side, as the Governor’s aid,
and had been putting in a word now and then and confirming the story,
asked me what we called that soft thing we find along the seashore.
“Jelly-fish,” I suggested. “Yes,” said he, “no bowels, but
jelly-fish.”
There may be some truth in what he said about the moose growing larger
formerly; for the quaint John Josselyn, a physician who spent many
years in this very district of Maine in the seventeenth century, says
that the tips of their horns “are sometimes found to be two fathoms
asunder,”--and he is particular to tell us that a fathom is six
feet,--“and [they are] in height, from the toe of the fore foot to the
pitch of the shoulder, twelve foot, both which hath been taken by some
of my sceptique readers to be monstrous lies;” and he adds, “There are
certain transcendentia in every creature, which are the indelible
character of God, and which discover God.” This is a greater dilemma
to be caught in than is presented by the cranium of the young Bechuana
ox, apparently another of the _transcendentia_, in the collection of
Thomas Steel, Upper Brook Street, London, whose “entire length of
horn, from tip to tip, along the curve, is 13 ft. 5 in.; distance
(straight) between the tips of the horns, 8 ft. 8½ in.” However, the
size both of the moose and the cougar, as I have found, is generally
rather underrated than overrated, and I should be inclined to add to
the popular estimate a part of what I subtracted from Josselyn’s.