Children's Stories in American History

by Henrietta Christian Wright

But all this made it very much harder for the English who tried to settle that part of the country, and Weymouth and his friends soon found that the natives looked upon them with distrust and dislike; and very good reason they had for this, as the English captain, the first chance he got, kept five Indians who had come on board his vessel and carried them off to England.

Here they were looked upon as great curiosities. Great crowds followed them about the streets, as they walked through London wrapped in their skin mantles, and with their strange head-dress of quills and feathers; and none the less curiously did the Indians look at the Londoners, and at the fine buildings and palaces which adorned their famous city.

The returned seamen reported that the coast of Maine would be an excellent place for an English settlement, and gave wonderful descriptions of the fine climate, rich soil, and good fishing, and praised the country so much that from their accounts, and from the stories of the kidnapped Indians, some English gentlemen decided to begin a settlement there at once. There were plenty of men willing to go to a place where the sailors said one could gather pearls on the beach, and where the trees oozed gum as sweet as frankincense, and very soon a ship was sent out to explore the country still farther, and take Nahanada, one of the captive Indians, back to his tribe at Pemaquid.

In 1607 two other ships left England also, and on one of them was the Indian Skitwanoes, who was to act as guide and interpreter.

They landed in July, and immediately received visits from Indians on the coast who came to trade; and after spending a week in visiting the islands near, a boat was sent up the river to an Indian village in Pemaquid. Skitwanoes went with this party to show them the way, and had it not been for his presence the English would have been met with a shower of arrows, for as soon as they came in sight of the village the Indians started up, and snatching up their bows, would have begun fighting at once, had not Skitwanoes stepped in front of the party and called the angry chief by name. It was Nahanada, the Indian who had been sent back from England the year before; as soon as he recognized Skitwanoes and saw that his friends were Englishmen, he dropped his weapons and went up to his visitors, and welcomed them and kissed them in true Indian fashion. After a pleasant visit of some hours they returned to the ship, and in a few days, after choosing a good spot on the banks of a river, built a fort and some houses, and the place soon looked like a thriving little settlement. Some timber was cut and seasoned for the building of a ship, which was named the Virginia, the first vessel ever built by English settlers in America.

The Indians looked on all these preparations with wonder. For the first time they saw substantial houses that would protect the inmates from snow and cold; and the fort, with its twelve mounted guns, looked as if the new-comers meant to stay, and if need be fight for the new homes that had been made with such trouble. But there was one thing the natives could not understand, and that was what right these white men had to come and take away one of their favorite spots, and make it their own without paying for it, or even asking for it. It seemed to them very unfair that they must lose their property in this way, and they soon began to show the settlers that they were very much displeased. They became very troublesome, refused to trade with the English, and showed their ill-will in many ways; and this was very discouraging to the English, who wanted to get along peaceably; and so many of them, before the winter was over, became disheartened at the thought of living in such a cold, dreary region, surrounded by bitter foes, and sailed back to England again in the Virginia, on her first voyage to the old country.

As time went on the Indians grew more and more troublesome, sometimes even coming inside the fort; and once the settlers became so angry that they set the dogs on them and drove them back to the woods. But this only made matters worse, and when a party went up the river to explore the country, they found that the other tribes were just as unfriendly, and that, excepting the chief Nahanada, they had not a friend among the natives.

The second winter was as severe as the first, and quite discouraged the colonists, who could get very little to eat, as their storehouse had been burned by the Indians; and so when spring came and they had a chance to leave Maine they all went back to England, and the settlement of Maine by the English was given up for many years. The next attempt to settle this coast was made by the French, who, not satisfied with claiming Acadia and Canada, wanted also to get possession of Maine, which had been so often described as a good place for settlement. In 1613 Madame la Marquise de Guercheville, a wealthy Catholic, and some French priests sailed from France to make a settlement at Kadesquit on the Penobscot; but, arriving at the coast in a heavy fog, they did not reach the mouth of the Penobscot, and, after waiting two days for the fog to lift, found themselves near Mt. Desert island. The grand and beautiful scenery of this island pleased them so much that they sailed up into Frenchmen's Bay, and made a landing on the coast, intending to stay there awhile before going on.

A number of Indian villages were scattered over the island, and as soon as the French landed they saw smoke arising, and knew by that that the natives had seen them, and that the smoke was meant for a signal; so they built a fire in answer, and the Indians soon came flocking down to the beach in great haste to see the strangers. One of the priests, Father Biard, had met some of these Indians before on his former visit to the Penobscot, and he now asked them the way to Kadesquit. But the cunning Indians did not want their white visitors to go on to Kadesquit; they wanted them to stay there with them, so they told them that their own island was a much better place than Kadesquit. They pointed to the mountains covered with spruce and pine, and to the sparkling brooks, fringed with delicate wild flowers, and to the moss-covered rocks, and clusters of dainty ferns, and said that this fair spot was as healthful as it was beautiful, and that all the neighboring tribes sent their sick to them to be cured by the pure air and delightful waters. But Father Biard was quite determined to go on to Kadesquit, and the Indians, seeing this, gave up coaxing and instead begged of him to visit their sick chief, who, they feared, was going to die. Kind Father Biard consented very willingly to go and see the sick man, and when he reached his home, which was on a bay in the eastern part of the island, he found the place so beautiful that he quite gave up Kadesquit, and decided to stay there.

So they raised a cross, built some huts, and planted corn, for it was in the early summer, with many long months of warm weather still to come.