THE PENOBSCOT INDIANS.
BY GEORGE J. VARNEY. ALL persons who are conversant with the pioneer history of New England are aware that hostilities between the white settlers and the Indians, in that period, were frequent and sanguinary. For nearly one hundred and fifty years, since, -— even to the closing decade of the nineteenth century, the two races had lived in peace, — when war again arose between them within the terri tory of the Tarratines. At the time of Captain John Smith's visit to New England, in 1614, the population of the region now known as the State of Maine was estimated to be about thirty thousand; and of the four tribes, the Tarratines, occu pying the Penobscot River region, were far the most numerous and powerful. The seat of the recent disturbance is up the Penobscot River, where the remnant of the powerful old tribe occupies one hundred and forty-six islands, — extending from Oldtown (which is some twelve miles above Bangor) to the town of Lincoln, — a distance of nearly forty miles. The four townships reserved for these Penobscot Indians by the treaty of 1819 with Massachusetts (accepted and assumed by Maine in the following year, when she was separated from the former) were sold many years ago, and the proceeds have since been held by the State as a fund for the benefit of thé tribe, the legislature annually appropriating a sum for educational, religious and economic purposes. The Indians on the reservation are not taxed, neither do they vote on other than their own internal affairs. When the townships were sold, the tribe was required to reside in the remaining por tion of its territory, — the islands in the Penobscot. The location was regarded as specially suitable to the wants of these In dians, both by the state authorities and by
themselves. Some of the islands are very fertile, and all furnish abundant fuel, — an essential article in the long northern winters, — either by natural growth or by drift on the shores. The chief village of the red men is on Indian Island, — sometimes called Oldtown Island, from being opposite a village of that name, belonging to the white people. At the period when the Gulf of Maine was first explored, the French voyagers gave the name Norimbcagne — since become Norumbega — to the region along its north ern side, and the Penobscot was known as the " river of Norumbega." The belief was prevalent that a magnificent semi-barbarous city, bearing the same name, was located somewhere up the "great river." Its site was even laid down on one noted map — that published in Antwerp in 15/0. Not a few adventurous voyagers — French, Dutch, English, Italians and Portuguese — listened with interest to tales of its splendor. Whittier, in his poem, " Norumbega," has pre sented the pathetic story of one of these, a Norman knight, who perished in his attempt to penetrate to the mysterious city. As the shadows of evening fell upon his dying couch, his face lighted up,— "I see," said he, " the domes and spires Of Norumbega town."
When, years later, the Sieur Samuel Champlain, in the service of France, sailed up this lordly river, he found " under the hemlocks on the shore " the grave of the luckless explorer. Our definite knowledge of the Penobscots or Tarratines begins about the time (16601665) that Baron Castine came among them, married the daughter of the chief sachem, Madockawando, and finally settled on the high peninsula on the east side of the bay, which has ever since borne his name.
