huts, the first sign of civilization after Hunt’s, though we saw no
road as yet; we heard a cow-bell, and even saw an infant held up to a
small square window to see us pass, but apparently the infant and the
mother that held it were the only inhabitants then at home for several
miles. This took the wind out of our sails, reminding us that we were
travelers surely, while it was a native of the soil, and had the
advantage of us. Conversation flagged. I would only hear the Indian,
perhaps, ask my companion, “You load my pipe?” He said that he smoked
alder bark, for medicine. On entering the West Branch at Nicketow it
appeared much larger than the East. Polis remarked that the former was
all gone and lost now, that it was all smooth water hence to Oldtown,
and he threw away his pole which was cut on the Umbazookskus. Thinking
of the rapids, he said once or twice that you wouldn’t catch him to go
East Branch again; but he did not by any means mean all that he said.
Things are quite changed since I was here eleven years ago. Where
there were but one or two houses, I now found quite a village, with
sawmills and a store (the latter was locked, but its contents were so
much the more safely stored), and there was a stage-road to
Mattawamkeag, and the rumor of a stage. Indeed, a steamer had ascended
thus far once, when the water was very high. But we were not able to
get any sugar, only a better shingle to lean our backs against.
We camped about two miles below Nicketow, on the south side of the
West Branch, covering with fresh twigs the withered bed of a former
traveler, and feeling that we were now in a settled country,
especially when in the evening we heard an ox sneeze in its wild
pasture across the river. Wherever you land along the frequented part
of the river, you have not far to go to find these sites of temporary
inns, the withered bed of flattened twigs, the charred sticks, and
perhaps the tent-poles. And not long since, similar beds were spread
along the Connecticut, the Hudson, and the Delaware, and longer still
ago, by the Thames and Seine, and they now help to make the soil where
private and public gardens, mansions and palaces are. We could not get
fir twigs for our bed here, and the spruce was harsh in comparison,
having more twig in proportion to its leaf, but we improved it
somewhat with hemlock. The Indian remarked as before, “Must have hard
wood to cook moose-meat,” as if that were a maxim, and proceeded to
get it. My companion cooked some in California fashion, winding a long
string of the meat round a stick and slowly turning it in his hand
before the fire. It was very good. But the Indian, not approving of
the mode, or because he was not allowed to cook it his own way, would
not taste it. After the regular supper we attempted to make a lily
soup of the bulbs which I had brought along, for I wished to learn all
I could before I got out of the woods. Following the Indian’s
directions, for he began to be sick, I washed the bulbs carefully,
minced some moose-meat and some pork, salted and boiled all together,
but we had not patience to try the experiment fairly, for he said it
must be boiled till the roots were completely softened so as to
thicken the soup like flour; but though we left it on all night, we
found it dried to the kettle in the morning, and not yet boiled to a
flour. Perhaps the roots were not ripe enough, for they commonly
gather them in the fall. As it was, it was palatable enough, but it
reminded me of the Irishman’s limestone broth. The other ingredients
were enough alone. The Indian’s name for these bulbs was _Sheepnoc_. I
stirred the soup by accident with a striped maple or moose-wood stick,
which I had peeled, and he remarked that its bark was an emetic.
He prepared to camp as usual between his moose-hide and the fire; but
it beginning to rain suddenly, he took refuge under the tent with us,
and gave us a song before falling asleep. It rained hard in the night,
and spoiled another box of matches for us, which the Indian had left
out, for he was very careless; but, as usual, we had so much the
better night for the rain, since it kept the mosquitoes down.
* * * * *
SUNDAY, August 2.
Was a cloudy and unpromising morning. One of us observed to the
Indian, “You did not stretch your moose-hide last night, did you, Mr.
Polis?” Whereat he replied, in a tone of surprise, though perhaps not
of ill humor: “What you ask me that question for? Suppose I stretch
’em, you see ’em. May be your way talking, may be all right, no Indian
way.” I had observed that he did not wish to answer the same question
more than once, and was often silent when it was put again for the
sake of certainty, as if he were moody. Not that he was incommunicative,
for he frequently commenced a long-winded narrative of his own
accord,--repeated at length the tradition of some old battle, or some
passage in the recent history of his tribe in which he had acted a
prominent part, from time to time drawing a long breath, and resuming
the thread of his tale, with the true story-teller’s leisureliness,
perhaps after shooting a rapid,--prefacing with “We-e-ll, by-by,”
etc., as he paddled along. Especially after the day’s work was over,
and he had put himself in posture for the night, he would be
unexpectedly sociable, exhibit even the _bonhommie_ of a Frenchman,
and we would fall asleep before he got through his periods.
Nicketow is called eleven miles from Mattawamkeag by the river. Our
camp was, therefore, about nine miles from the latter place.
The Indian was quite sick this morning with the colic. I thought that
he was the worse for the moose-meat he had eaten.
We reached the Mattawamkeag at half past eight in the morning, in the
midst of a drizzling rain, and, after buying some sugar, set out
again.
The Indian growing much worse, we stopped in the north part of Lincoln
to get some brandy for him; but failing in this, an apothecary
recommended Brandreth’s pills, which he refused to take, because he
was not acquainted with them. He said to me, “Me doctor,--first study
my case, find out what ail ’em,--then I know what to take.” We dropped
down a little farther, and stopped at mid-forenoon on an island and
made him a dipper of tea. Here, too, we dined and did some washing and
botanizing, while he lay on the bank. In the afternoon we went on a
little farther, though the Indian was no better. “Burntibus,” as he
called it, was a long, smooth, lake-like reach below the Five
Islands. He said that he owned a hundred acres somewhere up this way.
As a thunder-shower appeared to be coming up, we stopped opposite a
barn on the west bank, in Chester, about a mile above Lincoln. Here at
last we were obliged to spend the rest of the day and night, on
account of our patient, whose sickness did not abate. He lay groaning
under his canoe on the bank, looking very woebegone, yet it was only a
common case of colic. You would not have thought, if you had seen him
lying about thus, that he was the proprietor of so many acres in that
neighborhood, was worth six thousand dollars, and had been to
Washington. It seemed to me that, like the Irish, he made a greater
ado about his sickness than a Yankee does, and was more alarmed about
himself. We talked somewhat of leaving him with his people in
Lincoln,--for that is one of their homes,--and taking the stage the
next day, but he objected on account of the expense saying, “Suppose
me well in morning, you and I go Oldtown by noon.”
As we were taking our tea at twilight, while he lay groaning still
under his canoe, having at length found out “what ail him,” he asked
me to get him a dipper of water. Taking the dipper in one hand he
seized his powder-horn with the other, and, pouring into it a charge
or two of powder, stirred it up with his finger, and drank it off.
This was all he took to-day after breakfast beside his tea.
To save the trouble of pitching our tent, when we had secured our
stores from wandering dogs, we camped in the solitary half-open barn
near the bank, with the permission of the owner, lying on new-mown
hay four feet deep. The fragrance of the hay, in which many ferns,
etc., were mingled, was agreeable, though it was quite alive with
grasshoppers which you could hear crawling through it. This served to
graduate our approach to houses and feather beds. In the night some
large bird, probably an owl, flitted through over our heads, and very
early in the morning we were awakened by the twittering of swallows
which had their nests there.
* * * * *
MONDAY, August 3.
We started early before breakfast, the Indian being considerably
better, and soon glided by Lincoln, and after another long and
handsome lake-like reach, we stopped to breakfast on the west shore,
two or three miles below this town.
We frequently passed Indian islands with their small houses on them.
The Governor, Aitteon, lives in one of them, in Lincoln.
The Penobscot Indians seem to be more social, even, than the whites.
Ever and anon in the deepest wilderness of Maine, you come to the log
hut of a Yankee or Canada settler, but a Penobscot never takes up his
residence in such a solitude. They are not even scattered about on
their islands in the Penobscot, which are all within the settlements,
but gathered together on two or three,--though not always on the best
soil,--evidently for the sake of society. I saw one or two houses not
now used by them, because, as our Indian Polis said, they were too
solitary.
The small river emptying in at Lincoln is the Matanancook, which
also, we noticed, was the name of a steamer moored there. So we
paddled and floated along, looking into the mouths of rivers. When
passing the Mohawk Rips, or, as the Indian called them, “Mohog lips,”
four or five miles below Lincoln, he told us at length the story of a
fight between his tribe and the Mohawks there, anciently,--how the
latter were overcome by stratagem, the Penobscots using concealed
knives,--but they could not for a long time kill the Mohawk chief, who
was a very large and strong man, though he was attacked by several
canoes at once, when swimming alone in the river.
From time to time we met Indians in their canoes, going up river. Our
man did not commonly approach them, but exchanged a few words with
them at a distance in his tongue. These were the first Indians we had
met since leaving the Umbazookskus.
At Piscataquis Falls, just above the river of that name, we walked
over the wooden railroad on the eastern shore, about one and a half
miles long, while the Indian glided down the rapids. The steamer from
Oldtown stops here, and passengers take a new boat above. Piscataquis,
whose mouth we here passed, means “branch.” It is obstructed by falls
at its mouth, but can be navigated with batteaux or canoes above
through a settled country, even to the neighborhood of Moosehead Lake,
and we had thought at first of going that way. We were not obliged to
get out of the canoe after this on account of falls or rapids, nor,
indeed, was it quite necessary here. We took less notice of the
scenery to-day, because we were in quite a settled country. The river
became broad and sluggish, and we saw a blue heron winging its way
slowly down the stream before us.
We passed the Passadumkeag River on our left and saw the blue Olamon
mountains at a distance in the southeast. Hereabouts our Indian told
us at length the story of their contention with the priest respecting
schools. He thought a great deal of education and had recommended it
to his tribe. His argument in its favor was, that if you had been to
college and learnt to calculate, you could “keep ’em property,--no
other way.” He said that his boy was the best scholar in the school at
Oldtown, to which he went with whites. He himself is a Protestant, and
goes to church regularly at Oldtown. According to his account, a good
many of his tribe are Protestants, and many of the Catholics also are
in favor of schools. Some years ago they had a schoolmaster, a
Protestant, whom they liked very well. The priest came and said that
they must send him away, and finally he had such influence, telling
them that they would go to the bad place at last if they retained him,
that they sent him away. The school party, though numerous, were about
giving up. Bishop Fenwick came from Boston and used his influence
against them. But our Indian told his side that they must not give up,
must hold on, they were the strongest. If they gave up, then they
would have no party. But they answered that it was “no use, priest too
strong, we’d better give up.” At length he persuaded them to make a
stand.
The priest was going for a sign to cut down the liberty-pole. So Polis
and his party had a secret meeting about it; he got ready fifteen or
twenty stout young men, “stript ’em naked, and painted ’em like old
times,” and told them that when the priest and his party went to cut
down the liberty-pole, they were to rush up, take hold of it, and
prevent them, and he assured them that there would be no war, only a
noise,--“no war where priest is.” He kept his men concealed in a house
near by, and when the priest’s party were about to cut down the
liberty-pole, the fall of which would have been a death-blow to the
school party, he gave a signal, and his young men rushed out and
seized the pole. There was a great uproar, and they were about coming
to blows, but the priest interfered, saying, “No war, no war,” and so
the pole stands, and the school goes on still.
We thought that it showed a good deal of tact in him, to seize this
occasion and take his stand on it; proving how well he understood
those with whom he had to deal.
The Olamon River comes in from the east in Greenbush a few miles below
the Passadumkeag. When we asked the meaning of this name, the Indian
said there was an island opposite its mouth which was called
_Olarmon_; that in old times, when visitors were coming to Oldtown,
they used to stop there to dress and fix up or paint themselves. “What
is that which ladies used?” he asked. Rouge? Red Vermilion? “Yer,” he
said, “that is _larmon_, a kind of clay or red paint, which they used
to get here.”
We decided that we, too, would stop at this island, and fix up our
inner man, at least, by dining.
It was a large island, with an abundance of hemp nettle, but I did not
notice any kind of red paint there. The Olamon River, at its mouth at
least, is a dead stream. There was another large island in that
neighborhood, which the Indian called “_Soogle_” (_i. e._, Sugar)
Island.
About a dozen miles before reaching Oldtown he inquired, “How you like
’em your pilot?” But we postponed an answer till we had got quite back
again.
The Sunkhaze, another short dead stream, comes in from the east two
miles above Oldtown. There is said to be some of the best deer ground
in Maine on this stream. Asking the meaning of this name, the Indian
said, “Suppose you are going down Penobscot, just like we, and you see
a canoe come out of bank and go along before you, but you no see ’em
stream. That is _Sunkhaze_.”
He had previously complimented me on my paddling, saying that I
paddled “just like anybody,” giving me an Indian name which meant
“great paddler.” When off this stream he said to me, who sat in the
bows, “Me teach you paddle.” So, turning toward the shore, he got out,
came forward, and placed my hands as he wished. He placed one of them
quite outside the boat, and the other parallel with the first,
grasping the paddle near the end, not over the flat extremity, and
told me to slide it back and forth on the side of the canoe. This, I
found, was a great improvement which I had not thought of, saving me
the labor of lifting the paddle each time, and I wondered that he had
not suggested it before. It is true, before our baggage was reduced we
had been obliged to sit with our legs drawn up, and our knees above
the side of the canoe, which would have prevented our paddling thus,
or perhaps he was afraid of wearing out his canoe, by constant
friction on the side.
I told him that I had been accustomed to sit in the stern, and,
lifting my paddle at each stroke, give it a twist in order to steer
the boat, only getting a pry on the side each time, and I still
paddled partly as if in the stern. He then wanted to see me paddle in
the stern. So, changing paddles, for he had the longer and better one,
and turning end for end, he sitting flat on the bottom and I on the
crossbar, he began to paddle very hard, trying to turn the canoe,
looking over his shoulder and laughing; but finding it in vain, he
relaxed his efforts, though we still sped along a mile or two very
swiftly. He said that he had no fault to find with my paddling in the
stern, but I complained that he did not paddle according to his own
directions in the bows.
Opposite the Sunkhaze is the main boom of the Penobscot, where the
logs from far up the river are collected and assorted.
As we drew near to Oldtown I asked Polis if he was not glad to get
home again; but there was no relenting to his wildness, and he said,
“It makes no difference to me where I am.” Such is the Indian’s
pretense always.
We approached the Indian Island through the narrow strait called
“Cook.” He said, “I ’xpect we take in some water there, river so
high,--never see it so high at this season. Very rough water there,
but short; swamp steamboat once. Don’t you paddle till I tell you,
then you paddle right along.” It was a very short rapid. When we were
in the midst of it he shouted “paddle,” and we shot through without
taking in a drop.
Soon after the Indian houses came in sight, but I could not at first
tell my companion which of two or three large white ones was our
guide’s. He said it was the one with blinds.
We landed opposite his door at about four in the afternoon, having
come some forty miles this day. From the Piscataquis we had come
remarkably and unaccountably quick, probably as fast as the stage or
the boat, though the last dozen miles was dead water.
Polis wanted to sell us his canoe, said it would last seven or eight
years, or with care, perhaps ten; but we were not ready to buy it.
We stopped for an hour at his house, where my companion shaved with
his razor, which he pronounced in very good condition. Mrs. P. wore a
hat and had a silver brooch on her breast, but she was not introduced
to us. The house was roomy and neat. A large new map of Oldtown and
the Indian Island hung on the wall, and a clock opposite to it.
Wishing to know when the cars left Oldtown, Polis’s son brought one of
the last Bangor papers, which I saw was directed to “Joseph Polis,”
from the office.
This was the last that I saw of Joe Polis. We took the last train, and
reached Bangor that night.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] These twigs are called in Rasle’s Dictionary _Sediak_.
APPENDIX
I. TREES
The prevailing trees (I speak only of what I saw) on the east and west
branches of the Penobscot and on the upper part of the Allegash were
the fir, spruce (both black and white), and arbor-vitæ, or “cedar.”
The fir has the darkest foliage, and, together with the spruce, makes
a very dense “black growth,” especially on the upper parts of the
rivers. A dealer in lumber with whom I talked called the former a
weed, and it is commonly regarded as fit neither for timber nor fuel.
But it is more sought after as an ornamental tree than any other
evergreen of these woods except the arbor-vitæ. The black spruce is
much more common than the white. Both are tall and slender trees. The
arbor-vitæ, which is of a more cheerful hue, with its light-green
fans, is also tall and slender, though sometimes two feet in diameter.
It often fills the swamps.
Mingled with the former, and also here and there forming extensive and
more open woods by themselves, indicating, it is said, a better soil,
were canoe and yellow birches (the former was always at hand for
kindling a fire,--we saw no small white birches in that wilderness),
and sugar and red maples.
The aspen (_Populus tremuloides_) was very common on burnt grounds. We
saw many straggling white pines, commonly unsound trees, which had
therefore been skipped by the choppers; these were the largest trees
we saw; and we occasionally passed a small wood in which this was the
prevailing tree; but I did not notice nearly so many of these trees as
I can see in a single walk in Concord. The speckled or hoary alder
(_Alnus incana_) abounds everywhere along the muddy banks of rivers
and lakes, and in swamps. Hemlock could commonly be found for tea, but
was nowhere abundant. Yet F. A. Michaux states that in Maine, Vermont,
and the upper part of New Hampshire, etc., the hemlock forms three
fourths of the evergreen woods, the rest being black spruce. It
belongs to cold hillsides.
The elm and black ash were very common along the lower and stiller
parts of the streams, where the shores were flat and grassy or there
were low gravelly islands. They made a pleasing variety in the
scenery, and we felt as if nearer home while gliding past them.
The above fourteen trees made the bulk of the woods which we saw.
The larch (juniper), beech, and Norway pine (_Pinus resinosa_, red
pine) were only occasionally seen in particular places. The _Pinus
Banksiana_ (gray or Northern scrub pine), and a single small red oak
(_Quercus rubra_) only, are on islands in Grand Lake, on the East
Branch.
The above are almost all peculiarly Northern trees, and found chiefly,
if not solely, on mountains southward.
II. FLOWERS AND SHRUBS
It appears that in a forest like this the great majority of flowers,
shrubs, and grasses are confined to the banks of the rivers and lakes,
and to the meadows, more open swamps, burnt lands, and mountain-tops;
comparatively very few indeed penetrate the woods. There is no such
dispersion even of wild-flowers as is commonly supposed, or as exists
in a cleared and settled country. Most of our wild-flowers, so called,
may be considered as naturalized in the localities where they grow.
Rivers and lakes are the great protectors of such plants against the
aggressions of the forest, by their annual rise and fall keeping open
a narrow strip where these more delicate plants have light and space
in which to grow. They are the _protégés_ of the rivers. These narrow
and straggling bands and isolated groups are, in a sense, the pioneers
of civilization. Birds, quadrupeds, insects, and man also, in the
main, follow the flowers, and the latter in his turn makes more room
for them and for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds.
One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries but
mountain maples came in, in the clearing and burning.
Though plants are often referred to primitive woods as their locality,
it cannot be true of very many, unless the woods are supposed to
include such localities as I have mentioned. Only those which require
but little light, and can bear the drip of the trees, penetrate the
woods, and these have commonly more beauty in their leaves than in
their pale and almost colorless blossoms.
The prevailing flowers and conspicuous small plants of the _woods_,
which I noticed, were: _Clintonia borealis_, linnæa, checkerberry
(_Gaultheria procumbens_), _Aralia nudicaulis_ (wild sarsaparilla),
great round-leaved orchis, _Dalibarda repens_, _Chiogenes hispidula_
(creeping snowberry), _Oxalis Acetosella_ (common wood-sorrel), _Aster
acuminatus_, _Pyrola secunda_ (one-sided pyrola), _Medeola Virginica_
(Indian cucumber-root), small _Circæa_ (enchanter’s nightshade), and
perhaps _Cornus Canadensis_ (dwarf cornel).
Of these, the last of July, 1858, only the _Aster acuminatus_ and
great round-leaved orchis were conspicuously in bloom.