Glimpses of the Past History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

The Maliseets.

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 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....