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August, 2005
The Lost Maliseet Trail
A Lament by Sammy Solo (AKA Dino KubiK) ©2005
The Maliseet Trail: The Pre-Contact Period.
The Maliseet Trail was one of the most important routes1 traveled by the semi-nomadic peoples we now call the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot First Nations. Reports of portage trails with solid rock furrowed by the moccasins of the native tribes2 led to speculation in the 1800s that the Trail was the earliest evidence of man in Eastern North America. Its central inland location and intersections with three major river drainages made the Pre-Contact Trail a well-known and long used corridor of travel.
Describing the Trail as an ancient route comprised of 200 kilometers of paddling and 20 kilometers of portaging does not do it justice. A route that linked three major rivers like the Saint John, Saint Croix, and Penobscot Rivers would be of great value and utility in pre-contact times. It is no accident that one finds the Maliseet’s ancient Fort Medoctec (12 kms south of today’s Woodstock, NB, Can.) at the eastern terminus of the Trail and Penobscot’s Indian Island on the western terminus (just north of today’s Old Town, ME, USA) by. The Trail was an important link in the original world-wide waterway (www) of pre-contact Eastern North America.
This Trail, like so many other waterways, supported and gave rise to that most efficient craft of superior qualities3 we call the birch-bark canoe. A craft which arriving Europeans adopted without modification for forest travel3 and which, in this writer’s opinion, modern man has yet to equal.
The ancient Pre-Contract Trail existed in a place and time when highly skilled peoples perfected their canoes using environmentally-appropriate materials and technologies. It should be no surprise that it was near the western end point of the Trail that a 19-year-old Edwin Tappan Adney would begin his interest in the birch-bark canoe. Adney’s interest grew into a life of study, which many accredit as being an import factor in the survival of the birch-bark canoe4.
The Maliseet Trail: The Post-Contact Period.
Arriving Europeans found new uses for the Maliseet Trail including settlement, deforestation, and war. In the post-contact era, the Trail was quickly put into service as France and England fought for control of Eastern North America. The Trail became a warpath capable of taking one quickly and directly from New France to New England.
In 1689, a group of New England colonialists were kidnapped from Pemaquid, taken north across the Trail, tortured and sold into slavery as retaliation in a French-English war5. Among the captives was 14 year old John Gyles who would live among the First Nations for 6 years and in 1736 published his memoirs entitled Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, Etc. In the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on Saint George River in the District of Maine, Written by Himself. This account of life in 18th century Canada remains an important historical text.
When the age-old French-English hostilities were replaced by new ones between an American Republic and England, the Maliseet Trail was again pressed into diplomatic, if not war service.
In February 1776, General George Washington sent gifts and letters of friendship to Maliseet and Mi’kmaq leaders. Later that same year, Maliseet leaders Pierre Tomah and Ambroise St. Aubin, traveled to Delaware and met General Washington to discuss their support for his revolutionary cause. In 1777, Washington's emissary, Colonel John Allan, traveled to Meductic and informed the Pro-Continental Congress Maliseets that a large number of British troops were moving up the Saint John River to act against them. In July, Col. Allan and a party of 480 Maliseets in 128 canoes crossed the Trail in order to find safety in the New Republic6.
The Maliseet Trail: The Post-Contact Period. …continued
According to local folklore, it was during the July, 1777 crossing of the Trail that a Maliseet golden treasure was buried and lost on the Meductic portage7. As the Maliseets portaged west from Fort Medoctic to Benton, a golden idol, “…about the size of a new born critter”, was secretly buried by a chief and a young man. The Maliseets knew the Americans were engaged in an expensive war and they wished to avoid the possibility of being taxed on the value of their gold. Just days after burying the idol, the only two men who knew of the secret location drowned crossing Grand Lake. The idol is said to remain buried somewhere on the 5 km portage to Benton.
Tales of near death and hardship on the Trail continued, and in the early 1800s a 10-year old Penobscot boy named Joseph Polis almost met his end crossing westward on the Trail. His hunting party became ice-bound in Grand Lake and the young Polis faced starvation, then near drowning in the icy Mattawamkeag River. Polis lived to become a famous figure in early American literature courtesy of writer, poet, and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau.
In 1857, Joseph Polis acted as guide for Henry David Thoreau on the writer’s third, and last, excursion into the Maine woods. In July of that year, Polis and Thoreau struck a deal that paid Polis a dollar and a half a day, plus fifty cents a week for his canoe. Polis’ initial interest in the trip was to hunt moose and the two reached an understanding that Polis would keep the skins of any moose they shot. Thoreau provided these interesting details, plus a short but accurate description of the Maliseet Trail, when Maine Woods was posthumously published in 1864.
In 1804, tales of hardship on the Trail appeared again in a story of the first American settlers of Houlton, Maine. They crossed the Trail but became hopelessly lost east of North Lake on the portage to First Eel River Lake. For several days, they faced starvation before stumbling upon a pioneer’s cabin next to the Saint John River8.
The Maliseet Trail: The Post-Contact Period. …continued
By the 1840s, the first roads had been built through the wilderness and use of the Trail had decreased to the point where travelers were forced to depend on ink hieroglyphics to find the once well-worn route. Dr. Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, and later the inventor of kerosene, got lost on the North Lake to Eel River Portage, and then almost plummeted over the falls on the lower Eel River. This happened to Gesner despite being in the company of three native guides. Both times, crude hieroglyphics saved the party from harm9.
In 1887, a vacationing 21- year-old Ohio named Edwin Tappan Adney came to Woodstock, where he met a skilled Maliseet named Peter Joe. Two years later Adney and Joe each build a birch-bark canoe and from this experience Adney made notes and sketches. These were published in 1900 and become the earliest detailed description on a birch-bark canoe complete with instructions for building one.
Adney continued a life long study of birch-bark canoes. When he died in 1950 he left a body of work that included 110 detailed scale models, drawings, instructions, articles, interviews, and correspondence with builders. Many consider Adney’s work as the definitive source on the birch-bark canoe and in particular on the canoes of the Eastern First Nations. In 1964 The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America10 was posthumously published by the Smithsonian Institute. To many this book has bible-like authority on the subject of the birch-bark canoes of the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot First Nations.
The Maliseet Trail: The Last Hundred Years
Over the last century, this ancient Trail drew the attention and interest of William Francis Ganong, Dr George Frederick Clarke, Nicholas N. Smith, Dr. Peter L. Paul, J. Robert Ross, Patrick Polchies and Martin Paul. Of all those drawn to the Trail, Dr Peter L. Paul was perhaps the most experienced and authoritative. Peter Lewis Paul was a Maliseet historian who advanced Native Scholarship for which he receiving an honorary PhD in 1979. His role in rekindling interest in the Trail can not be overstated.
Over the last 50 years, the exact route and trailheads were contested and debated but no advancements in mapping the Trail were published after Ganong's 1899 sketched maps. Only two crossing of the Trail are know to have been attempted in the last 50 years and one authority on the Trail speculated that Native Shaman were using supernatural powers to hide the Trail and prevent a successful passage.
In 1963, a Canadian military training exercise on the Trail went awry11. In the exact spot where Geologist Gestner narrowly avoided death in 1847, seven Canadian soldiers went over the falls on the Lower Eel River in a 300 pound rubber assault raft. Two soldiers were injured and five stranded on an island until rescuers arrived.
In 1964, after 14 years of scouting and research, a crossing was staged by Nicholas N. Smith and noted Maliseet leader Dr. Peter L. Paul. The men ran into trouble from the start and were eventually stopped only 6 miles from the intended end point of Indian Island, ME. Windy weather and dysentery proved to be the final blows to the crossing. But the trouble did not end there. Smith’s 35mm camera film was spoiled by moisture on the crossing and his 16mm movie film from the trip was lost by the processor and never returned to Smith.
In 1994, the two-man team of Pat Polchies and Martin Paul stages the last known crossing of the Trail by paddling the water portions and motoring over the portage routes, However 10 years later, as 2004 drew to a close, neither were willing to discuss their experience or provide advice to this author. In 1996, a New Brunswick film production company shot a video re-enactment of the earlier crossing and filmed expensive air footage of the route. Nine years later, that material remains unreleased.
The history of the Maliseet Trail encompasses several thousand years, two hundred kilometers of paddling, twenty kilometers of portaging, nine bodies of water, four First Nations, two European Nations, and two New Nations. The story of the Trail is too rarely told, has been partially lost, largely abandoned, but not completely forgotten.
The Maliseet Trail: Today
Today, the Trail’s exact portage routes and precise trailheads are either unknown, unmarked, or unmapped. This seems fitting is you accept Alan Morantz’ view that mapping and survey were the very process that explorers used to move the Native People off their ancestral lands12. If surveying and mapping enabled the colonization that ended the Pre-Contact Maliseet way of life, then perhaps Nicholas N. Smith was onto something in 1964 when he speculated that “... Indian Shaman wished to retain the secret of the Old Trail.”13
Sunday, May 07, 2005
Lament - Post Script @ 202 words
In Old Town Maine on May 29th, a rain-beaten and trail-weary party of 8 paddlers stepped out of 4 canoes to complete a successful crossing of the Maliseet Trail. The 9-day crossing was in almost constant rain with most of the daily temperature averaging well below 10 C. Despite the obvious hardships, the crossing was made without accident, incident, or argument.
Members of the Crossing of 2005 were: Mike Grant, Beth Johnston, Dino KubiK, Nancy Macdonald, and Paul Meyer of Fredericton NB; Matt Hopkinson of Hubbardston MA, USA (aka "Paddle'n Hal" vodoocanoe.com); Craig Macdonald of Dwight, ON; and Anthony Reader of St Stephen, NB.
These were not eco-challengers trying to beat the Trail. This was a diverse group, ranging in age from 28 to 68, who were able to combine the skills of the woodlands canoeist, an attitude of respectful appreciation, and a daily practice of leaving tobacco behind at each encampment, to experience the Trail to its fullest. The protectorate shamans did allow the crossing but retained many of the Trail's secrets.
PS Visit me at www.kubik.ca to read more about the 2005 Crossing, the 1964 Crossing, Ganong's 1899 maps, and more.
Yours in the matters of the Trail,
Sammy Solo
1 WF Ganong: A monograph of historic sites in the province of New Brunswick. Ottawa: J. Hope, 1899
Reprint: Historic Sites in the Province of NB, St. Stephen, N.B.: Print'n Press, 1983
2 Gesner: New Brunswick: With Notes for Emigrants, Comprehending the Early History, and Account of the Indians, Settlement, Topography, Statistics, Commerce, Timber, Manufactures, Agriculture, Fisheries, Geology, Natural History, Social and Political state, Immigrants, and Contemplated Railways of that Province: London, Simmonds & Ward, 1847
3 ET Adney and HI Chapelle: P(3), 1964.
4 ET Adney and HI Chapelle: P(4) The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America: Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1964.
5 WO Raymond: P The river St. John: it physical features, legends and history from 1604-1784. Sackville NB, Tribune Press, 1943.
6 WO Raymond: The river St. John: it physical features, legends and history from 1604-1784. Sackville NB, Tribune Press, 1943.
7 GF Clarke: Six Salmon Rivers and Another. Fredericton NB, Brunswick Press, 19??
8 JR Ross: Talk to the Carleton County Historical Society, 1960, unpublished.
9 JR Ross: Talk to the Carleton County Historical Society, 1960, unpublished.
10 ET Adney and HI Chapelle: P(3) The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America: Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1964.
11 J. Robert Ross: 1964 Letter to Nicholas Smith, Collection on Nicholas Smith, unpublished.
12 Alan Morantz, Where Is Here?: Canada's Maps and the Stories They Tell. 2002
13 Nicholas N. Smith, The Old Trail: Maine Archaelogical Bulletin 1(2):13-14, 1964.
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