Hi, I grew up in southern Maine, and have heard stories over the years of the Native American tribes around the region, such as the story of a man named Frye who jumped off what is now known as "Frye's Leap" into Sebago Lake to escape local natives who were chasing him. "The Curse of the Saco River" a local legend that, in short, British Soldiers in the 17th or 18th century threw a Native baby into the Saco River and the river was then cursed by the tribe's chief that 5 white men would die a year in the river...A letter I found to the Governor of then Massachusetts asking for help in defending the town of Limington from the Native Americans that sounded extremely fearful and desperate...And recently I came across something about "The Red Paint People"...which sounded the most intriguing of all.
Anyway, my questions are; Can any of you elaborate on any of these legends, confirm or deny their truthfulness, or give me any unique or interesting facts about the tribes of Maine?
I am also specifically interested in the Tribes that lived around Sebago Lake and on the Saco River, specifically in the Standish, Steep Falls, (or general western Cumberland County Area)...Basically what is known about these Tribes and is there any unique or interesting history?
My family has had a camp on Sebago Lake since the 1920's and for a long time out front of the camp there was a sign with a word that I'm told was in the local Native dialect, "Hakanaki". Does anyone know what this means?
Thanks!
Hi, so the native peoples in Maine upon contact were Algonquian-speaking peoples like the Abenaki and Maliseet. Here is a map showing their general distribution. So Sebago Lake, the Saco River and the other places you mentioned would have been primarily Abenaki areas.
I don't have an Abenaki dictionary, but there is one here. I went to an online dictionary elsewhere and while they didn't have the word 'Hakanaki' listed, there were a few words with 'hakan' in there somewhere that were related to throwing or catching. It might be related.
No one can speak for the truthfulness of legends (unless they were extensively documented), but its namesake, Joseph Frye, was a real person. He was a captain of the Massachusetts militia before the American Revolution. He served in the French and Indian War against New France and the Abenaki (one of many Native nations allied with the French) and acquired much of their land for the colonial Americans.
The 'Red Paint People', or the Moorehead Phase, is just a term archaeologists use to describe a culturally-connected group of people living in New England 3,000 years ago. The name is kind of misleading as it implies they were unique in using red paint; using red ochre pigment was a common practice from the Great Lakes to New England to Newfoundland. We get the term 'redskin' from people like the Lenape and Beothuk's practices of using ochre to paint their skin red (EDIT: This etymology is a story often told, but its true origins might be unclear. Take it with a grain of salt.).
I remember reading in Garrick Mallery's Picture-Writing of the American Indians (written in 1893, so it's a little dated) of depictions and descriptions of various pictography used by the Abenaki and Passamaquoddy that was more practical and semantic than others, including a few accounting-like drawings that people used to keep track of items sold or animals hunted during a certain time. I was also intrigued by the Passamaquoddy's style of trail markers/'notices' with a long stick stuck in the ground at an angle, pointing in the direction where its creator went and vertical stakes placed under the angled one that indicated how many days' worth of walking that person would be going.
The Ojibwe and other Anishinaabeg that live in Michigan and the upper Great Lakes area trace their ancestry to the Abenaki in the east; this appears to be supported by linguistics, archaeology and probably their use of a more elaborated form of standardized pictographs; which were mainly used as mnemonics for songs and genealogies, but sometimes stories and simple messages. The Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi were organized into a powerful 'Three Fires' confederacy that kept the Iroquois, Sioux and the British at bay (though they would later be occupied by the United States).
The Abenaki and other tribes of Maine were a part of their own confederacy as well; the Wabanaki (or Dawnland) Confederacy, established in 1606 and consisted of the Western and Eastern Abenaki, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and the Mi'kmaq of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (who also appeared to have an elaborate, writing-like mnemonic pictography, but its history and nature is incredibly blurry and debated over). The Wabanaki confederacy allied itself with the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolutionary War in the first U.S-Native American treaty ever signed, and aided the Americans in protecting Maine and destabilizing British footholds in New England.
Let me know if this answered your questions!
