Canoeing in the wilderness

by Henry David Thoreau

We started early before breakfast, the Indian being considerably better, and soon glided by Lincoln, and stopped to breakfast two or three miles below this town.

We frequently passed Indian islands with their small houses on them. The Penobscot Indians seem to be more social even than the whites. Ever and anon in the deepest wilderness of Maine you come to the log hut of a Yankee or Canada settler, but a Penobscot never takes up his residence in such a solitude. They are not even scattered about on their islands in the Penobscot, but gathered together on two or three, evidently for the sake of society. I saw one or two houses not now used by them, because, as our Indian said, they were too solitary.

From time to time we met Indians in their canoes going up river. Our man did not commonly approach them, but only exchanged a few words with them at a distance. We took less notice of the scenery to-day, because we were in quite a settled country. The river became broad and sluggish, and we saw a blue heron winging its way slowly down the stream before us.

The Sunkhaze, a short dead stream, comes in from the east two miles above Oldtown. Asking the meaning of this name, the Indian said, “Suppose you are going down Penobscot, just like we, and you see a canoe come out of bank and go along before you, but you no see ’em stream. That is Sunkhaze.”

He had previously complimented me on my paddling, saying that I paddled “just like anybody,” giving me an Indian name which meant “great paddler.” When off this stream he said to me, who sat in the bows, “Me teach you paddle.”

So, turning toward the shore, he got out, came forward, and placed my hands as he wished. He placed one of them quite outside the boat, and the other parallel with the first, grasping the paddle near the end, not over the flat extremity, and told me to slide it back and forth on the side of the canoe. This, I found, was a great improvement which I had not thought of, saving me the labor of lifting the paddle each time, and I wondered that he had not suggested it before. It is true, before our baggage was reduced we had been obliged to sit with our legs drawn up, and our knees above the side of the canoe, which would have prevented our paddling thus, or perhaps he was afraid of wearing out his canoe by constant friction on the side.

I told him that I had been accustomed to sit in the stern, and lift my paddle at each stroke, getting a pry on the side each time, and I still paddled partly as if in the stern. He then wanted to see me paddle in the stern. So, changing paddles, for he had the longer and better one, and turning end for end, he sitting flat on the bottom and I on the crossbar, he began to paddle very hard, trying to turn the canoe, looking over his shoulder and laughing, but, finding it in vain, he relaxed his efforts, though we still sped along a mile or two very swiftly. He said that he had no fault to find with my paddling in the stern, but I complained that he did not paddle according to his own directions in the bows.

As we drew near to Oldtown I asked Polis if he was not glad to get home again; but there was no relenting to his wildness, and he said, “It makes no difference to me where I am.” Such is the Indian’s pretense always.

We approached the Indian Island through the narrow strait called “Cook.” He said: “I ’xpect we take in some water there, river so high—never see it so high at this season. Very rough water there; swamp steamboat once. Don’t you paddle till I tell you. Then you paddle right along.”

It was a very short rapid. When we were in the midst of it he shouted, “Paddle!” and we shot through without taking in a drop. Soon after the Indian houses came in sight. I could not at first tell my companion which of two or three large white ones was our guide’s. He said it was the one with blinds.