Thoreau's Penobscot Indians and Mary P. Sherwood THOREAU'S PENOBSCOT INDIANS by Mary P. Sherwood Published by THE THOREAU FELLOWSHIP, Inc. Box 551 Old Town, Maine 04468 Original in: THE THOREAU JOURNAL QUARTERLY Vol. 1., n. 1, January 15, 1969. First Reprinting: Stormont Press Berwick, Ontario, Canada May 24, 1970. 300 copies. Second Reprinting: L.H. Thompson, Inc. Printer, Lithographer Brewer, Maine 04412 April, 1972 THOREAU'S PENOBSCOT INDIANS Mary P. Sherwood Indian Island, where Thoreau procured guides for two of his Maine woods trips, is one of the oldest known Indian villages still in use. This Indian camp ground is at least 5000 years old, some burial artifacts going back to days of dug- out canoes and spear-throwing, before birch bark canoes and bows and arrows were invented. Leif Ericson was a very late arrival in this part of the world by comparison. At least one of the cemeteries contains layer upon layer of ancestors, for as tradition goes, the Indians would not enlarge their over-crowded graveyard by making more space available for they believed they would die quickly to fill it up again if they did. When anyone died far away from their Indian Island home, every effort was made to bring the remains home to the village. To keep this up on a small island, and for just one or two small spots, for even one thousand years, created problems. But such a custom provides an incomparable source of artifacts to prove their early history if and when the Penobscot Indians ever choose to delve deeply into their remote past. Their village on Indian Island, which they called Pana- wakskis, a term variously translated as "at the rocks," "the white rocks," or "where the river broadens out," has always had all the advantages of a roadway into the wilderness of lakes and forests connecting with waterways into Canada, with less carries or portages than most such inland water- ways of such great extent, and when the river was frozen over it formed a highway for sleds in hunting season, free from the dense tangle of virgin forest. This island, three miles at its longest axis, is but one and one half miles across at its widest. The Penobscots are a distinct tribe within the Wabanaki branch of the northeastern Indians; their nearest and only surviving Wabanaki brethern, who are collaborating friends 1 THOREAU'S today, are the Passamaquoddies at the shore eastward. Other survivors who were in the Wabanaki Confederacy are the Malecite and the Micmac tribes of the maritimes of Canada. The Penobscots were by nature a quiet, peaceful tribe, preferring to keep busy with their daily occupations. Al- though they were a hunting and gathering primitive people into white settlement time, they were sturdy and intelligent. At the time when first seen by white people they had ad- vanced into agricultural ways, planting fairly extensive gar- dens of corn, beans and squash. But most of the year they had to follow the hunter-gatherer routine of traveling to where the food was. They did their planting in late spring, as we do today; by early summer they moved to the shore where they collected bird eggs, fished and gathered vast quantities of clams, oysters and Tobsters, some of which they smoked and dried for future use. Along the coast they also caught seal and porpoise for skins and oil. Judging by the artifacts found in the massive shell piles, the Indians dropped their empty shells and left behind some of their tools on the same heaps for more than five thousand years, corroborating the estimated age of grave artifacts in the region. In the fall they returned to Indian Island to harvest their crops and grind corn for the winter. Then the men moved upstream, into the relatively nearby woods, to hunt. Turkeys were part of the fauna of the New England woods in those days found usually not far from streams. Like other New England Indians, they returned to their home village just before what is now our Christmas time, for a big thanks- giving feast, at which roast turkey, cranberries and corn- meal pudding were the major items on the menu, a custom we have obviously adopted. Then with the arrival of winter snows began the trapping season, and hunting for deer, caribou and moose, which took the men far from home into the wild interior of Maine, each tribe fanning out into its own hunting area. In late winter 2 PENOBSCOT INDIANS just before the ice went out of the rivers, beaver were caught. When the rivers opened again SO that canoes were once more afloat, muskrats and river fish and feels became the chief source of food; then the Indians gradually drifted or paddled their way home to Indian Island to begin preparing for spring planting. Much of this seasonal migration was still being done by individuals in Thoreau's time. One of the reasons why Henry drew Joe Polis as a guide was that most of the men were off to the shore. But by then some of the wandering pattern was broken, as Indians engaged in potato farming for them- selves and others; they also worked at a great variety of local jobs for white employers. Thoreau says of Joe Polis, "He said he had fifty acres of grass, potatoes, etc., some- where above Old Town, besides some about his house." Polis grew potatoes and other vegetables in his yard, and the grass he raised elsewhere was a very salable commodity in the days of horses in a heavy wooded area where there wasn't much cleared pasture land. Thoreau's tales graphically illustrate that the Indians were still adept at moose hunting, and at the economical use of moose meat and hides. By this time, of course, they had long since exchanged bows and arrows for guns. Thoreau says, "The Indians of this neighborhood are about as fami- liar with the moose as we are with the ox, having associated with them for so many generations." The impression which the indigenous hunters and their almost giraffe-tall moose made on Thoreau is well known to his readers, the final curtain on that drama coming down as Thoreau uttered his famous last words, "Moose" and "Indian." Today there are several Penobscots who still hunt, trap and fish, but though they are charged no fees for licenses they must compete with white hunters for game, in contra- diction to legal treaties made with the Indians in the past. The present Indians, however, are more sedentary in their ways now, earning most if not all of their living in the same 3 THOREAU'S varied ways as do their white neighbors, for even they must now "serve Admetus," as Henry would say. The Penobscot language, some of which Thoreau tried to write out phonetically for his readers, and some of which he tried to match in translation with Concord Indian place names, belongs to the coast branch of the Algonkian linguis- tic stock, which originally extended into southern New Eng- land. "Joe said that they called chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of that which was probably never spelt before, but I pronounced after him till he said it would do The kingfisher was skuscumonsuck; bear was wassus ", All Indian languages, of which there were about 5000 in the Americas, were sophisticated and musical with expressive imagery; each syllable represented what to us would be a word SO they could say almost a whole sentence in one word. This is a more flexible form of language structure than that with which we are familiar. The Micmacs today still have their own language form. The Passamaquoddies and Malacites share another form. The Penobscots stand alone today in their language, as those who shared their speech, such as Abnaki, Penacooks, and a few others, are now extinct, except for a few St. Francis Abnaki in Canada. When Henry was young he and his brother John pretend- ed to converse with one another in an anglicized version of Indian talk. He never lost this fascination with Indian verbal communication and in his MAINE WOODS Henry wrote of Joe Polis, "I observed that I should like to go to school to him to learn his language, living on Indian Island the while; could not that be done? 'Oh, yer,' he replied, 'good many do so.' I asked how long he thought it would take. He said one week. I told him that in this voyage I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew, to which he readily agreed." Of course there is some exaggera- tion here, on both sides; the Indian was either too impressed 4 PENOBSCOT INDIANS by Thoreau's facility with words, or he put the then usual Indian interpretation of time on the measure of one week. And for Henry to suggest they tell each other all they knew during the short space of the trip, even if it pertained only to language, was like the letters which come in today to universities and museums asking "Will you please tell me everything about birds," or "about conservation." Some of the Penobscot families have symbolic stories and signs, mostly animal symbols, which border on totems, a custom not found anywhere else among the Wabanaki or Labradorean Indians; in fact, there is a gap in the geography of this trait, all the way across the continent to the north- western tribes, though there is no evidence of relationship between the two. Joe Polis's family, through marriage, belonged to both the Wolf and Bear families. The present-day Mitchells also belong to the Bear family, but they had a bear-hunting taboo. The Attean family were the Squirrels, and the Neptunes belonged to the Eel family, having special rights along the eel rivers. One of the uses of this identification was the placing of drawings, or "marks" of family signs in the family hunting territory. While there was no ownership of land in the white man's sense, Indian families inherited hunting rights on specific territories; but there were also common lands set aside for anyone's hunting use, much as we assigned the Common for grazing use of all families in our colonial towns, Emerson as a boy grazing the family cow on Boston Common. Through such territory assignment conservation was prac- ticed, for each family took care not to over-hunt, over-fish or over-trap its area SO there would be sufficient food pro- duced on it. In some areas families had a stern rule that no beaver hunters could harvest more than two thirds of the crop; then no beaver hunting there for three years. This system we belatedly applied to our game laws; for the In- dians it worked effectively for more than five thousand years. 5 THOREAU'S Not until white hunters came into this wild Maine area in overwhelming numbers, trespassing on Indian life-sustaining territories, ruthless in their indiscriminate killing regardless of needs of the reproductive cycle, was game excessively killed off or driven out, as happened with the turkey and wild caribou. Protective legislation came just in time to save the bear, moose, deer, and many smaller animals. The turkey succumbed to the pressure; the caribou, a migrant large- herd animal, was apparently both chased out and killed off. Caribou were still seasonably abundant in Thoreau's time, though he never happened across a herd of them; by 1886 they were still officially reported as plentiful. But by 1894 hunters had to be limited to two caribou, then only one in 1895. There is a record of 105 caribou shipped out of Maine by hunters in 1895. Five years later, in 1900 prac- tically no caribou could be found anywhere in Maine. There were 18 seen on the Mt. Katahdin tableland on February 8, 1892. The last caribou taken out of Katahdin was a young male, its head now being on the wall of the Portland Natural History. Society. This huge animal, which had been one of the staple foods of the Indians for thousands of years, was put out, or chased out, of Maine by greedy white hunters. Henry wrote, "The Indian said that he got his money by hunting, mostly high up the West Branch of the Penobscot, and toward the head of the St. John; "he had hunted there from a boy and knew all about that region. His game had been beaver, otter, black cat (fisher), sable, moose, etc. Loup-cervier (or Canada lynx) were yet plenty in burnt grounds. For food in the woods he uses partridges, ducks loons too, only 'bile em good'. He told us how he had suffered from starvation as a mere lad, being overtaken by winter when hunting with two grown Indians in the northern part of Maine, and obliged to leave their canoes on account of ice." Thoreau tells us about coming across the Polis Family bear sign in the woods. "Our course was up the Umbazooks- kus, but as the Indian knew of a good camping-place, that 6 PENOBSCOT INDIANS is, a cool place where there are few mosquitos, about a half mile farther up the Caucomgomoc, we went thither So quickly we changed the civilizing sky of the Chesuncook for the dark wood of the Caucogomoc. On reaching the Indian camping ground, on the south side, where the bank was about a dozen feet high, I read on the trunk of a fir tree, blazed by an axe, an inscription in charcoal which had been left by him. It was surmounted by a drawing of a bear pad- dling a canoe, which he said was the sign which had been used by his family always. The drawing, though rude, could not be mistaken for anything but a bear,and he doubted my ability to copy it. The inscription ran thus, verbatim and literatum. I interline the English of his Indian as he gave it to me." (To save space here, Thoreau's presentation of this is run along in lines. Later, in a special pamphlet on Joe Polis, it will be reproduced as it appears in THE MAINE WOODS) : (The figure of a bear in a boat). July 26, 1853, niasoseb. We alone Joseph, Polis elioi, Polis start, si olta, for Old Town, onke ni, right away, quambi July 15, 1855, niasoseb. He added now below:- 1857, July 26, Jo. Polis. This was one of his homes. I saw where he had sometimes stretched moosehides on the opposite or sunny north side of the river, where there was a narrow meadow It was, as usual, a damp and shaggy forest, that Caugomoc one." Thus, according to current maps, the Polis family hunting ground was, at least in part, about 150 miles west and north of Old Town, due west of the present northwest corner of Baxter State Park. It is still wilderness country up there today, with no roads except possibly loggers' tote roads which don't show on the latest Maine maps. The State Forest Service, however, maintains campsites in the Um- bazookskus area, but they are reachable only by canoe or similar boat. You still have to carry to Mud Pond and Chamberlain Lake from Umbazookskus. The Polis family hunting territory included the area around 7 THOREAU'S Nahmakanta, and Pemadumcook, and to North Twin Lakes. Today the Polis family has lost its identity, but the graves of Joe and his wife Mary are well marked, in the village center. The name Polis is said to come from "little Paul." The name Attean, or Aittean, is from the French Etienne. Attean family lands extended from Ragged Lake west to Chesuncook, to Block Brook Pond. The Neptune family territory was mostly in eel hunting territory, the valley of the Kenduskeag River north, and including Bigwagduk near Pushaw. The Wabanakis were among those Indians who helped the early settlers, especially providing food for the colonists during their first difficult winters. Christopher Levitt, who spent the winter of 1623-24 at present-day York, trying to establish a colony, and was familiar with their help, called them "the children of Noah," and well they might be, arriv- ing on this continent around the time of the glacial flood, then taking a few thousand years to get over to this side, and a few more thousand years expended in living here. The Penobscots served in the Revolution, on the colonial side, and Joe Polis, after Thoreau's day, may have served in the Civil War and may have lost an arm. The Penobscots have served in all our wars, on our side, ever since. Sometimes erroneously called the Tarratines, the Penob- scots numbered in the thousands in the 1400's; in 1615, it has been estimated, there were about 37,000 Indians in what is now the State of Maine, thousands of them being Penob- scots. But diseases brought to this country by explorers and settlers, especially smallpox, for which they had no natural immunity, greatly reduced their population even before the arrival of the Pilgrims. A war between the Abnakis and the Tarratines in 1615-1616 even further reduced their numbers. From 1662 to 1669 a bloody, exterminating war between the Mohawks and the New England tribes brought victory to the Mohawks who pursued the Penobscots into their home terri- tory and burned many of their villages. But according to 8 PENOBSCOT INDIANS one report, the Indian Island people were safe behind a stockade, where there were 40 to 50 wigwams divided by a street down the center, from east to west, which was 50 rods wide. There was a Catholic church within the stockade. But in 1723, Colonel Thomas Westbrook, as part of the French and Indian Wars, made an expedition with 320 men into Penobscot territory, and discovered the settlement on Indian Island March 9th. As he describes it: " the fort was 70 yards long by 15 in breadth, walled with stockades 14 ft. high and enclosing 23 well-finished wigwams. Their chapel on one side was handsomely finished. A little farther south was the dwelling of the priest which was very commo- dious. We set fire to it all, and by sunrise they were in ashes." Which was the savage? After the French and Indian Wars the Indians were so reduced in numbers, many whole families being wiped out, that the tribes of New England, including the Wabanakis, were just mere handfuls of people. In 1775 the Governor of Massachusetts at last extended protection over the Penob- scots because no other eastern tribe had treated the English with such forbearance. Thoreau states that Indian Island had 362 souls when he was there. With the coming of medical help and the end of war pressures, the Penobscots began to increase, though agonizingly slowly at first. It took them half a century to gain 15 people, as their total population was 387 in 1900. But by 1939 the population had climbed to a safer 580. The 1960 census lists 604 Indians present on the Island, and 189 absent. It was a close race for one epidemic could have wiped out 300 people easily before present-day medi- cine was available; but some of the Wabanakis were not so fortunate, for several of the tribes have vanished. It is possible that without the help of their French allies, and the sincere zeal of the Catholic missionaries, all of the Penobscots would have been exterminated, or at best a hand- ful would have escaped to Canada and probably have died 9 THOREAU'S out there or have been absorbed into the Micmac or Mala- cite tribes, and then Thoreau's beguiling accounts of these Indians would not have come into existence. For once a population drops too low a comeback is impossible, as we see today with the Alacaluf and Yahgin Indians of lower Patagonia, where the population of each can now be counted on less than one hand. While there is a Baptist mission on the Island today, and there has been for some time, and Joe Polis was a Protestant, the Indians there have been associated with the Catholic church over three hundred years; an active mission was founded there in 1687, under Abbe Louis-Pierre Thury from Quebec. Thus most of the Wabanakis, protected and be- friended by French missionaries when other white groups were persecuting and exploiting them, have been Catholic for three centuries. Father St. Pierre is Chaplain on the Island today, assisted by Sisters of Mercy. The chieftainship of the Penobscots is considered to have been hereditary, and for life, up to 1875. Thus Louis Nep- tune, born July 22, 1767, whom Thoreau visited for a few hours in his cabin on Indian Island, in September, 1853, was Governor and Chief by hereditary right. He was then 86 "being old and deaf." Neptune died May 8, 1865, age 97, three years after Thoreau who was less than half Nep- tune's age. Polis died March 24, 1884, at the age of seventy- five. But apparently Governor Neptune was no longer capable of serving in office by August, 1857, for at that time Thoreau reports, "We frequently passed Indian islands, with their small houses on them. The Governor, Aittean, lives on one of them in Lincoln." Both the Neptune and Aittean families were considered "first" families, smart, intelligent people, by both their own people and the whites. Neptune was in favor of schools, for "if Indians got learning they would keep their money. Madocawando was the first recorded Sagamore, his name 10 PENOBSCOT INDIANS appearing in 1669 records. He died in October, 1698. It was his daughter who married the Baron de Castine, who used his friendship to talk the Indians into giving up vast territories to the white people. The next Sagamore was Orono, who died in 1901 at the age of 113. It was for him that the University of Maine town of Orono was named. The Indian in office just before Neptune was the Sagamore Attean, who was chief at least in the year 1818. Joseph Francis was Governor in 1900. All the Sagamores are re- corded as having been capable and courageous, and all were inducted into office with elaborate and powerfully-symbolic ceremonies. The Chiefs, called Governors today, are now elected, and for specific terms. Mr. John Mitchell is the current Governor. (1969) Throughout the first half of Maine's history, the whole territory belonged to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1786, betrayed by Castine, whose kiss was that of Judas, the Indians ceded to Massachusetts all the land in the Penob- scot Valley from tidewater to the mouth of the Piscataquis on the west, and to Mattawamkeag on the least, reserving for themselves only the islands in the Penobscot River from Indian Island to Mattawamkeag. The Indians had no under- standing of white man's ownership; they assumed they were loaning the use of the land. But Castine knew. So now the Penobscots have only 146 islands, most of them very small, totalling about 4,481 acres. Indian Island is the only one inhabited today. The Penobscots gave up some of their in- land territory in 1818. In 1833 they sold four townships north of Indian Island for $50,000, which was put into a savings account for the tribe, the interest still being used for reservation needs. Obviously, with such territory restrictions, the Penobscots have never since been able to live off the land. They must now share the game of the area with white men, many of whom are still greedy poachers on land which belonged to the Penobscots for at least five millenia. For many years, no doubt centuries, the Mohawks to the 11 THOREAU'S MOHOURS west, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York State, were the major enemies of the Wabanaki, Every now and then a group of Mohawks would stage a surprise raid on the Penob- scots, especially attacking small family groups camped out of reach of help from Indian Island. Usually they killed the men and carried the women and children back to their own camps. While the Penobscots rarely went out looking for trouble, at times they did conduct punitive expeditions after a Mohawk raid. Around 1700, when all the Indian tribes were weakened from wars and disease, the leaders of the Iroquois and Wa- banaki tribes decided that a peace treaty made more sense than raids. The Eastern Algonkian Wabanaki Confederacy was formed, and the village on Indian Island was designated the capital of the eastern Confederacy. The western group consisted of the Mohawk of Caughnawago, where their capital was situated, and the Oka, some of the Tetes de Baule of the St. Lawrence River, Quebec, and the Ottawa. The "venerable" and severe Ottawas were chosen head of the combined groups. The alliance began around 1700, and every three years delegates from all the tribes within it met, usually at Caugh- nawag council fire, the eastern tribes meeting first at the Indian Island council fire for choosing and preparing its representatives to Caughnawago. The League of Indians lasted over 150 years, being still in operation during the years that Thoreau visited Indian Island. In the year that Thoreau died, 1862, however, Attean Orson, after returning from the Caughnawago council as the Wabanaki delegate, witnessed the sudden end of Penob- scot participation in the alliance. Orson had laid the cere- monial wampum belt on the table in front of his own coun- cil, the belt being a revered symbol of communication auth- ority between tribes. He was explaining what had transpired at Caughnawago when suddenly Nick Sockabesin grabbed the wampum belt off the table and threw it out the door, saying, "Throw out the cursed wampum." 12 PENOBSCOT INDIANS The Penobscots had felt for some time that they were becoming subservient to the Mohawk. All the Iroquois had been a superior, advanced people when the Penobscots were still primitive from lack of contact with outside influence. But now, with years of contact with both the Iroquois and the white people, the Penobscots had caught up, and had discovered they were as intelligent as anyone else, a decision confirmed by modern neuro-anatomy which has failed to find any gene change in human brain capacity for tens of thousands of years. The only changes have been cultural changes. The Penobscots had also come to feel it was too costly sending delegates SO far. In 1857, the last year Tho- reau visited the tribe, a dozen Penobscot families, at Mohawk invitation, had moved to Caughnawago; now they returned home and that was the end of the alliance for the Penob- scots. The Passamaquoddies continued to send delegates until 1870; the Micmacs gave up in 1882. It wasn't until 1820 that Maine became a State, officially severed from Massachusetts; thus Indian Island had been part of Thoreau's native state the first four years of his life. The new State of Maine took over all obligations in the Massachusetts treaties with the Indians. Thus the Maine Wabanaki were put under the jurisdiction of the State; un- like western and southern tribes, they have never been under the Federal Government. But just recently, 1965, a Department of Indian Affairs, was created by the 102nd Maine Legislature, to exercise general supervision over the Indian tribes except in the field of education. This became effective July 1, 1966. Until then, the Indians were under the State Commission for Health and Welfare, having to compete with all white people in Maine for much-splintered attention. But there is now a State Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the State Capitol at Augusta, making Maine the first of the fifty states to have a Department devoted to the needs and desires of its Indian citizens. 13 THOREAU'S Ironically, these first residents of North America had to wait until 1924 to be declared United States citizens; and, un- believably, it wasn't until 1955 that they were given the right to vote, and then only by taking their plea directly to the President in Washington,- a classic example of why minor- ity residents have had to develop a protest technique, using Thoreau's civil disobedience ideas to gain recognition and justice. Not until now, the first time in Maine's 148 year history, have the tribes been given meaningful, decision-making and administrative authority. They have already made good use of their new opportunities, by setting up a Housing Authority for each of their three reservations (two being Passamaquoddies) and getting a Maine Housing Act passed by the State Legislature. All this made them eligible to sub- mit entries for a possible award from the New York and New England Urban Development Inter-governmental Hous- ing Authority aid. They won this regional award then went on to win a national award. *It is within the framework of this new Housing Project that the Thoreau-Polis Memorial Cabin and library project of the Thoreau Fellowship, described elsewhere in this issue, will be carried out. The Indian Island Housing Authority is incorporating the Thoreau cabin within their extensive plans, which include 40 housing units, and modern and adequate water supply and sewage disposal. Of special interest to Thoreauvians is that the Old Town Sewall family, related by marriage to part of the Thoreau family, is the engineering concern of Old Town working on this big Island project. The current Governor of Indian Island, John Mitchell, was born on Indian Island, and served in the U.S. Marines for six years, and in the U.S. Airforce for three years. He assumed his duties in January, 1967, and was recently re- elected for a new term. Chief Mitchell has committed him- self to working for programs to benefit the youth of the Island, and one of his successful creations is the Neighbor- 14 PENOBSCOT INDIANS hood Youth Corps. Vista volunteers are helping with many new recreational projects. Chief Mitchell was instrumental in helping create the new Maine Advisory Committee to work closely with the Indian school agencies. There are nine students from the Island at the University of Maine this year, or at Husson, or Eastern Maine Vocational-Tech- nical Institute. Governor Mitchell's assistant in Augusta is **Representative John Nelson, who is also an island native. The Goslins own a small but attractive gift shop on Indian Island. Chief Poolaw, of the Kiowas of Oklahoma, who married a Penobscot girl, also has a gift shop for tour- ists on the Island, and there are many small handicraft acti- vities present. Today Indian Island has many small cottages and cabins, and several two-story houses. There are a few modern homes, including a split level just built by Governor Mitchell on the southeast side of the Island. In Thoreau's time it was necessary to find a boat to get you across from Old Town to the Island, but there is now an already old one-lane bridge across, which serves modern transportation to the Island. An important thing to remember about all Indians is that they have a heritage, and traditions, which are not ours; they do not have an immigrant past, their background is not rooted in Europe. They all derive directly from a tribal tradition. They skipped over the peasant stage which all our ancestors had to go through, and they have capably and intelligently jumped feet first into the modern world of the white man. Father LeJeune, a French missionary of colonial times, claimed that the Indians were superior in intellect to the French peasantry of that time. We must also not forget that unlike other ethnic groups, Indians are not cut off from the country of their origin; that's right in their back and front dooryards, and out their side doors too. They belong here, in a way you and I never belong, even those of us with colonial ancestry. We are the 15 THOREAU'S squatters. If ever our government wanted to deport the In- dians of Indian Island where would that be to? America is it. It has been our government policy from colonial times to make white men of the Indians, to try to destroy their cul- ture, to absorb them into the anonymity of our population. Their heritage, their culture, however, are far too unique to be lost or submerged. Only blind snobbery produces this kind of thinking, a failing among too high a percentage of white people. Thoreau gave SO much of his life to thinking about these native peoples that he left behind twenty notebooks full of material he had collected on the Indians. The life of the Indian in the "unhandseled globe" beguiled him all his life. When he got home from his last trip to Maine, Thoreau wrote to his friend Blake, "I have now returned, and think I have had quite a profitable journey, chiefly from associat- ing with an intelligent Indian I have made a short excur- sion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off. It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man, he is SO much the more divine I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew " Said Hawthorne of Thoreau, "He has a great regard for the memory of the Indian tribes, whose wild life would have suited him SO well." For the last five thousand years until paper mill effluent kept the river too warm to form thick ice, the Penobscot In- dians have stood on the banks of their Island in early spring and watched the spectacular drama of nature when the ice moves out in a frightening, churning, glistening, sliding mass of rainbow-hued ice chunks. An apropos ending is to reprint here the recently stated Republican National Platform stand on America's Indians: "The plight of the American Indians and Eskimos is a na- tional disgrace. Contradictory government policies have led 16 PENOBSCOT INDIANS to intolerable deprivation for these citizens. We dedicate ourselves to the promotion of policies responsive to their needs and desires and will seek full particulars on these people and their leaders in the formulation of such policies." A Thoreau Cabin museum planned for the Island may be but a microcosm compared to Indian needs but it does fit into this declaration, and it gives the Indians one more opportunity for sef-expression. Indian Island has not escaped from the inequality of jobs, education, housing and health measures. But at last the way has been opened to them to participate in the larger life SO long denied to them and they are taking full advantage of these new opportunities. These are Indians Thoreau loved. * This project was abandoned when it was found that the fine print in the federal government's contract could have led to eventual Indian Island control by Washington. Died 1971. 17 Also by Mary P. Sherwood: Pamphlet No. 1 JOSEPH POLIS - THOREAU'S MAINE GUIDE The Stormont Press, 1970