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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 6 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.

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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 8 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.

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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 archæological 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 10 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 11 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 12 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 13 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.”

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 14 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.