10

Arosagunticook and Androscoggin

Gordon M. Day National Museum of Man

On the north bank of the Saint Francis River in , about four miles from the place where it empties into Lake Saint Peter, stands an Indian village called Odanak. It is better known in history as Saint-Francois and Saint Francis. The beginnings of this village are not recorded, but it has been at or near its present location for over three centuries. Uncertainty and controversy have characterized all discussion of its origin. In the Saint Francis Indians we have a group which probably was not at Saint Francis at the time of French exploration and first settlement on the Saint Lawrence River, and whose origins and movements in and out of Saint Francis have never been adequately explained. The usual view of historians has been that of a mysterious tribe into which at one time or another the local tribes were said to have disappeared. Canadian historians have known only of the arrival of increments of Indian emigrants from unknown locations in New England and New York, usually identified only under broad and misleading group names. Linguists and anthropologists have followed the historians and have been satisfied to present their data under the rubrics "" or "Saint Francis Abenaki" without enquiring effectively into the ancestral identities of the various components of the village. This is of course unsatisfactory. Linguistic and ethnographic data which cannot be assigned to a definite, named group at a definite time and place are at best useless and at worst a fruitful source of confusion and false theory. History has not been silent about the identity of the St. Francis Indians, but there has been no consensus. Rather, secondary writers repeating earlier writers have developed several explanatory traditions. We can detect one tradition among historians which attributed the earliest and principal settlement at Saint Francis to the Indians of the Adroscoggin River. Another can be detected among Quebec historians which attributed the major settlement to Indians from the Kennebec River. This tradition can be traced to Abbe Joseph Maurault (1866:173-174, 272). Some writers seem to be unaware of any settlement at Saint Francis before the arrival of the mission of Saint-Francois de Sales from the Chaudiere River in 1700. Not until James Mooney's article in the Smithsonian Handbook in 1907 was a multiple origin for the village stated (Hodge 1907:2.410-411). At present the multiple origins of the village are generally accepted, and herein lies the problem which has lain in the back of my head since the beginning of my work there in 1956. The language and culture there was already moribund, but the problem was not there there was no Saint Francis culture but that there was seemingly only one culture and one language in a village said to have been made up from ten 11 or a dozen bands. Whose culture and language was it? Or if it was a composite, who contributed what? This year I am undertaking a study of the peopling of the village with the goal of identifying if possible the movements of the several contributory tribes and their subsequent fate — migration out of the village, losses to epidemics and war, replacement and intermarriage. This is being done from historical sources at first; the testimony of language and comparative ethnography will constitute different approaches later on (Day 1977). Here I only want to take a quick look at one of the theories for the peopling of the village, one which has become rather commonly accepted by anthropologists, namely, that the Indians of the Androscoggin River were the first to settle at Saint Francis, were the most numerous there and hence the source of the culture and language which later pre­ dominated. If this be true, the whole problem is solved, but I have come to disbelieve some of this solution and to doubt most of it. This tradition seems to have had its origin with James Sullivan, the pioneer historian of the District of Maine. He spoke in 1804 of the "Androscoggins or Anasaguntacooks on Brunswick River" (Sullivan 1804:210). In 1828 Thomas Hutchinson, a Massachusetts historian, wrote that the Indians on the Saint Francis River were the Aresaguntacooks and Weweenocks who had gone first to the falls of the Chaudiere (Hutchinson 1936:1.384). In 1832 William D. Williamson followed with a statement in his history of Maine that the Anasagunticooks occupied all the Androscoggin River and were the first to go to Saint Francis (Williamson 1832:466). In 1859 Frederic Kidder called the Androscoggin Indians the Assagunticooks, said they left Maine in 1750 — which could deny them the role of first settlers at Saint Francis — but stated that they were the most numerous at Saint Francis and therefore it was probable that their dialect became dominant (Kidder 1859:235). In 1864 Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True wrote that the Indians on the Androscoggion were known under the general name of Anasa­ gunticooks and that at a late period the name "seemed to extend to the scattered remnants on the river and at St. Francis in " (True 1864:150-151). In 1907 the first volume of the first Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians appeared and in it James Mooney amalgamated the earlier writings and wrote of Saint Francis, "Here the Arosaguntacook were still the principal tribe and their dialect was adopted by all the inhabitants of the village, who were frequently known collectively as Arosaguntacook." Considering the circulation and prestige of the Handbook, it is not surprising that the idea was adopted by anthro­ pologists. It appears in the writings of Frank G. Speck, A.I. Hallowell, Fred Johnson and others. But there are difficulties with this notion. Jean Crevier, the first seigneur of Saint Francois, settled there about 1671, and there are indications that there were Indians in the vicinity already. There is no direct evidence for Androscoggin Indians, however. Rather, there is a record of an organized band of Sokokis, complete with chiefs, near 12 and probably on, the Saint Francis river in I669- s°koki names had begun to appear in church registers at , Sorel and Three Rivers by 1658, but no Abenaki names appear until a single baptism at Sorel in 1687 and in 1690 at fat. Francois. In 1678 Crevier spoke of his trade only with the Sokokis, and in 1684 Father Bigot spoke only of Sokokis in the vicinity of Three Rivers (Charland 1942:16-17; 19b4: 16-21). The first, and so far the only, definite reference I have found to Androscoggin Indians in Canada occurs during King Philip's War. The war broke out in June of 1675 between the English in Massachusetts and the southern New England Indians and quickly spread into southern New Hampshire and southern Maine, involving Penacooks, Piscataquas, Saco Indians and Amarascoggins. The end of this war in 1676 has been the occasion for New England historians to comment on the disappearance of local tribes and remnants into Canada, frequently assuming that their destination was Saint Francis. In the first summer of the war, a certain Francis Card was captured by the Kennebec Indians and after his escape in the fall he made a deposition which included this statement, "There is a great many Indians in Canada that have not been out this Summer, both of Kennibeck and Damarascoggin, therefore a great many of these Indians at Kennibeck do intend to go to Canada in the Spring to them." Thus we have Kennebec and Androscoggin Indians somewhere in Canada in the summer of 1675 and more planning to join them in the spring of 1676, since the Indians on the Kennebec at that time included Androscoggin and Saco River Indians under Squando (Hubbard 1865:2.204). We can probably pick up their destination in Canada from the Jesuit Relations which recorded the arrival before the war of some Sokokis who went to Three Rivers and some who went to Sillery. It is likely that the first Andro­ scoggins were in the latter contingent (Thwaites 1896-1901: 60.233). By October 1676 there were 150 Abenakis at Sillery. At Saint Francis, the Sokokis who "took the Road to three Rivers" found some of their country men who had preceded them and most if not all moved to Saint Francis in 1702 at the urging of Father Bigot. In 1699 the Intendant Campigny called Saint Francis a mission of Sokokis (Thwaites 1896- 1901:60.131-135; Charland 1964:21). In short, there is no evidence to support the idea that Androscoggin Indians formed the nucleus of the Saint Francis village, but rather some contrary indications. The first sizeable number of Androscoggin Indians to arrive at Saint Francis may have been part of the contingent which removed there from the Chaudiere mission in 1700. There has been much confusion among secondary writers on this missioththessubjecttraditiosomSokokialele e Abenakisarriva 750nsonl. n 0than yld personseSomtha aoyeaLoup ,fetpar movebegirthesits befor. dreceive camane s Actuall fartheeChaudierwelthe e tl othd foundatio erSainays 150 movu eAbenakispth t0 eAbenakis thwarriors Franciswapopulatioen sChaudiero fonl, whilSain.y, noMauraulThi35er t 5osfFranci thai nsoulsepopulatioparth ordeteothe tsChaudier cite, rinclude witr an tdpartonh aobof efde, 13 nearer their kinsmen in Maine (Maurault 1866:2 82-283; Charland 1964:40; Le Roy de Bacqueville de La Potherie 1722:1.309). It is possible that those who moved up the Chaudiere were all or mostly from the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers and that the Abenakis who came to Saint Francis with the Sokokis and Loups may have been mostly Androscoggins. In lieu of facts we might guess that this contingent was no more than half of the total population of the Chaudiere mission and that the Abenaki part no more than half of that, or perhaps some 90 persons. The subsequent arrivals at Saint Francis which can be identified up to 1772 are largely from Pigwacket, the Merrimack River in New Hampshire, the upper Connecticut River and Missisquoi on Lake Champlain. I have not yet found either French or English document testifying to a movement of Indians from the Androscoggin River to Saint Francis. That they did go there at some time is almost certain. Kendall, in his travels of 1807 and 1808 found Indians at Saint Francis who came from Sagadahoc at the mouth of the river (Kendall 1809:3.143). The Indians had apparently all gone from the upper Androscoggin by 1775, although they may have been the Indians Henry Tufts knew at Lake Umbagog between 1772 and 1775 (Lapham 1891; Tufts 1807, ch. 7-9). These together with related bands on the upper Connecticut River and at Lake Memphremagog did remove to Saint Francis soon afterwards, and in 1798 their head chief, Manawalemit Swassin, was one of the chiefs at Saint Francis who sold northern New Hampshire to the Bedell Land Company (Lapham 1891; Tufts 1807, ch. 7-9). If the Androscoggin Indians ever had a dominant role at Saint Francis, it must have come after the arrival of these last groups towards 1800, but considering the other bands that arrived at the same time from Cowas, Memphremagog, and Missisquoi, there seems to be no compelling reason to think the Androscoggins were dominant even then. Then where did the notion come from? I suspect that it came from an association of the name of the Androscoggin River Indians and that of the Saint Francis village. The early writers called the Androscoggin River Indians Amascoggin, Amanoscoggin, Amarascoggin and the like. About fifty years after this name appeared in the literature, a tribe variously known as Assagunticook, Arosagunticook, Anasagunticook, and the like began to appear in the Massachusetts colonial records, beginning with the treaty of Arrowsic in 1719, and later writers have assumed that these Indians were from the Androscoggin River. I have not found a contemporary statement linking the two, and I can only imagine that they became associated through a fancied resemblance between the two names — Amarascoggin and Arosaguntacook. The resemblance is not close. They share only an initial a, and somewhere in the middle, s_, r, n, k, and g sounds. But Nathaniel Tuckerman True asserted that not only these two words but one other — Amascontee were from the same roots and had the same meaning (True 1864: 150). Swanton grouped them in his synonymy and for good measure added a fourth name from the Androscoggin River beginning with A - Amilkongantegwok (Hodge 1907:1.89). 14 Once Arosaguntacook was identified with Amarascoggin, it was reasonable to postulate an important presence of Androscoggin Indians on the Saint Francis River — because the old name for Saint Francis River was Arsikontegok'. One could easily leap to the conclusion that the village was named for its first or most important group of inhabitants. But the anonymous author of the Abnaquis-French Dictionary stated clearly that Arsikontegok was the name of the St. Francis River and that it meant 'empty cabin river' (Anon. n.d.:14). This was a plausible name for the village which had suffered from epidemics, casualties during King William's War, and particularly from an attack by the in 1690. The census of 1692 gave it only 25 inhabitants (Charland 1964:20). Incidentally, Arsikontegok appears in the record as the name of the village ten years before Arosaguntacooks appear at conferences in Maine. We have at least one contemporary testimony for the distinction in the 1726 census of Jacob Wendall which lists the "Ammoscoggon" Indians with the other Maine tribes, then adds the "Arresaguntacooks of St. Francois" as one of the new tribes in Canada ([Wendall] 1866:9). Therefore, until and unless I see new evidence to the contrary, I favor the position that (1) the Androscoggin River Indians were the Amarascoggins, not the Arosagunta­ cooks, that (2) Arsikontegok was the name of the Saint Francis River and village, derived from its characteristics, not from the founding tribe, and probably given by the Eastern Abenakis from the Chaudiere in 1700, and that (3) the Arosaguntacooks who appear in the Maine treaties were merely delegations from Saint Francis, whose ethnic composition at that time was probably predominantly Western Abenaki.

REFERENCES ANON. n.d. Dictionnaire Abnaquis-Francois. Manuscript in the Museum of La Societe Historique d'Odanak. 540 pp. CHARLAND, Thomas-M. 1942 Histoire de Saint-Francois-du-Lac. Ottawa.

1964 Histoire des Abenakis d'Odanak (1675-1937). Montreal. DAY, Gordon M. 1977 The Abenaki identity project. Ottawa. HODGE, F.W. 1907-1910 Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico. 2 vols. Washington. HUBBARD, William 1865 The history of the Indian wars in New England (ed. Samuel G. Drake). 2 vols. Roxbury, Mass. 15 HUTCHINSON, Thomas 1936 The history of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass. KENDALL, Edward Augustus 1809 Travels through the northern part of the United States in the years 1807 and 1808. 3 vols. New York. KIDDER, Frederic 1859 The Abenaki Indians; their treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a vocabulary; with historical introduction ... Maine Historical Society Collections 6.229-263. LAPHAM, William B. 1891 History of Bethel ... Maine 1768-1890. Augusta, Maine. LE ROY DE BACQUEVILLE DE LA POTHERIE, Claude-Charles 1722 Histoire de l'Amerique septentrionale. 4 vols. Paris. MAURAULT, J.A. 1866 Histoire des Abenakis, depuis 1605 jusqu'a nos jours. Sorel, Quebec. SULLIVAN, James 1804 The history of the Penobscott Indians. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections 9.207-232. THWAITES, Reuben Gold 1896-1901 The Jesuit Relations and allied documents. 73 vols. Cleveland. TRUE, N.T. 1864 Names and locations of tribes on the Androscoggin. Historical Magazine 1st series, 8 (1864) .150-151. TUFTS, Henry 1807 A narrative of the life, adventures, travels and sufferings of Henry Tufts, now residing at Lemington, in the District of Maine. Dover, N.H. [WENDALL, Jacob] 1866 An estimate of the inhabitants, English and Indian, in the North American colonies, also their extent in miles — 1726. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 20.7-9. WILLIAMSON, W.D. 1832 History of the State of Maine; from its first discovery, A.D. 1602, to the separation, A.D. 1820. 2 vols. Hallowell, Maine.