Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 - Various
I was surprised by Joe's asking me how far it was to the Moosehorn. He
was pretty well acquainted with this stream, but he had noticed that I
was curious about distances, and had several maps. He, and Indians
generally, with whom I have talked, are not able to describe
dimensions or distances in our measures with any accuracy. He could
tell, perhaps, at what time we should arrive, but not how far it
was. We saw a few wood-ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks, but they
were not so numerous there at that season as on our river at home. We
scared the same family of wood-ducks before us, going and returning.
We also heard the note of one fish-hawk, somewhat like that of a
pigeon-woodpecker, and soon after saw him perched near the top of a
dead white-pine against the island where we had first camped, while a
company of peetweets were twittering and teetering about over the
carcass of a moose on a low sandy spit just beneath. We drove the
fish-hawk from perch to perch, each time eliciting a scream or
whistle, for many miles before us. Our course being up-stream, we were
obliged to work much harder than before, and had frequent use for a
pole. Sometimes all three of us paddled together, standing up, small
and heavily laden as the canoe was. About six miles from Moosehead, we
began to see the mountains east of the north end of the lake, and at
four o'clock we reached the carry.
The Indians were still encamped here. There were three, including the
St. Francis Indian who had come in the steamer with us. One of the
others was called Sabattis. Joe and the St. Francis Indian were
plainly clear Indian, the other two apparently mixed Indian and white;
but the difference was confined to their features and complexions, for
all that I could see. We here cooked the tongue of the moose for
supper,--having left the nose, which is esteemed the choicest part, at
Chesuncook, boiling, it being a good deal of trouble to prepare it. We
also stewed our tree-cranberries, (_Viburnum opulus_,) sweetening
them with sugar. The lumberers sometimes cook them with
molasses. They were used in Arnold's expedition. This sauce was very
grateful to us who had been confined to hard bread, pork, and
moose-meat, and, notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced
them equal to the common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to
be made for our forest appetites. It would be worth the while to
cultivate them, both for beauty and for food. I afterward saw them in
a garden in Bangor. Joe said that they were called _ebeemenar_.
While we were getting supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on
which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most
of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two
stout forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much
asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long,
and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the
hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the
poles on the forked stakes, tied the other down tightly at the
bottom. The two ends also were tied with cedar bark, their usual
string, to the upright poles, through small holes at short intervals.
The hide, thus stretched, and slanted a little to the north, to expose
its flesh side to the sun, measured, in the extreme, eight feet long
by six high. Where any flesh still adhered, Joe boldly scored it with
his knife to lay it open to the sun. It now appeared somewhat spotted
and injured by the duck shot. You may see the old frames on which
hides have been stretched at many camping-places in these woods.
For some reason or other, the going to the forks of the Penobscot was
given up, and we decided to stop here, my companion intending to hunt
down the stream at night. The Indians invited us to lodge with them,
but my companion inclined to go to the log-camp on the carry. This
camp was close and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to
accept the Indians' offer, if we did not make a camp for ourselves;
for, though they were dirty, too, they were more in the open air, and
were much more agreeable, and even refined company, than the
lumberers. The most interesting question entertained at the
lumberers' camp was, which man could "handle" any other on the carry;
and, for the most part, they possessed no qualities which you could
not lay hands on. So we went to the Indians' camp or wigwam.
It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to hunt after
midnight, if the wind went down, which the other Indians thought it
would not do, because it was from the south. The two mixed bloods,
however, went off up the river for moose at dark, before we arrived at
their camp. This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which
had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on
the west. If the wind changed, they could turn it round. It was
formed by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from
this to the ground. The covering was partly an old sail, partly
birch-bark, quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to
the ground on the sides. A large log was rolled up at the back side
for a headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the
ground with the hair up. Various articles of their wardrobe were
tucked around the sides and corners, or under the roof. They were
smoking moose-meat on just such a crate as is represented by With in
De Bry's "Collectio Peregrinationum," published in 1588, and which the
natives of Brazil called _boucan_, (whence buccaneer,) on which
were frequently shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the
rest. It was erected in front of the camp over the usual large fire,
in the form of an oblong square. Two stout forked stakes, four or five
feet apart and five feet high, were driven into the ground at each
end, and then two poles ten feet long were stretched across over the
fire, and smaller ones laid transversely on these a foot apart. On the
last hung large, thin slices of moose-meat smoking and drying, a space
being left open over the centre of the fire. There was the whole
heart, black as a thirty-two pound ball, hanging at one corner. They
said, that it took three or four days to cure this meat, and it would
keep a year or more. Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in
different stages of decay, and some pieces also in the fire, half
buried and sizzling in the ashes, as black and dirty as an old
shoe. These last I at first thought were thrown away, but afterwards
found that they were being cooked. Also a tremendous rib-piece was
roasting before the fire, being impaled on an upright stake forced in
and out between the ribs. There was a moose-hide stretched and curing
on poles like ours, and quite a pile of cured skins close by. They had
killed twenty-two moose within two months, but, as they could use but
very little of the meat, they left the carcasses on the
ground. Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever
witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years. There
were many torches of birch-bark, shaped like straight tin horns, lying
ready for use on a stump outside.
For fear of dirt, we spread our blankets over their hides, so as not
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 arrow-heads,
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, (_aianbe_) and another for the female,
(_herar_,) 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 Dead-Water); _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,
Mass., 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 further, 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 bedfellows,
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. At
the carry-man's camp I saw many little birds, brownish and yellowish,
with some white tail-feathers, hopping on the wood-pile, in company
with the slate-colored snow-bird, (_Fringilla hiemalis_,) but
more familiar than they. The lumberers said that they came round their
camps, and they gave them a vulgar name. Their simple and lively note,
which was heard in all the woods, was very familiar to me, though I
had never before chanced to see the bird while uttering it, and it
interested me not a little, because I had had many a vain chase in a
spring-morning in the direction of that sound, in order to identify
the bird. On the 28th of the next month, (October,) I saw in my yard,
in a drizzling day, many of the same kind of birds flitting about amid
the weeds, and uttering a faint _chip_ merely. There was one
full-plumaged Yellow-crowned Warbler (_Sylvia coronata_) among
them, and I saw that the others were the young birds of that
season. They had followed me from Moosehead and the North. I have
since frequently seen the full-plumaged ones while uttering that note
in the spring.
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 bedfellows, 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 _bateau_, 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.