Maine Woods — Chesuncook, Section 16

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.

”