Northland_A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border

by Porter Fox

  Champlain’s first expedition deep into America’s northland headed upstream on June 18, 1609. He and a crew of twenty sailed a shallop with a leadsman sounding for depth against a strong spring current. A crew of Montagnais Indians followed in canoes, and a few days in, the group met three hundred Algonquin and Huron Indians. Several chiefs considered joining Champlain but wanted to know more about him. Specifically, they were curious about his fighting spirit, his orenda. Iroquet of the Algonquin Petite Nation and Ochasteguin of the Arendarhonon Huron met with him first. The two chiefs then spoke at length with each other, smoked tobacco, and paddled from the shore to Champlain’s shallop. There they smoked more, meditated, and suddenly declared the mission worthy, signaling to their warriors onshore to prepare to move.

  By the time the expedition started paddling upstream for Mohawk country again, it included two French shallops loaded with men and more than four hundred Indian warriors. It took a week to reach the Richelieu River, the eastern border of Iroquois country, thirty miles downstream from present-day Montréal. The first leg was longer than Champlain had anticipated, and, worried about a British attack while he was gone, he sent some of his soldiers back to Quebec. Seeing the diminished force, many more headed home as well.

  Terrifying stories of what the Mohawk did to captives didn’t help morale. The Mohawk numbered about eight thousand and guarded the eastern expanse of Iroquoia, which included most of the northland south of the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. They rarely lost a battle, and those they defeated were heinously tortured. Many northland tribes considered torture a way to commune with the gods. Some war parties mutilated victims after they died; some took care to keep them alive as long as possible. Male and female torturers pulled out captives’ fingernails and burned their genitals with hot coals. They cut open arms and pulled the muscles out, scalped victims’ heads and poured boiling tree sap on them. When a prisoner finally died, they often cut off his arms and legs, threw his entrails in the water, and forced his fellow tribesmen to eat his heart.

  When Champlain paddled up the Richelieu River to Chambly Basin, he had just two soldiers left and a few dozen Indians. One soldier was de Mons’s former bodyguard, who had been with Champlain since his first voyage to New France. Champlain carried a small, brass astrolabe and recorded his latitude daily. He was entering terrain that no European had ever seen. The Richelieu had been difficult to navigate in the shallop. Champlain studied how the Indians paddled whitewater and “tracked” canoes upstream by hauling them with a long cord. The crew took turns rowing, then left the ship for canoes and portaged around the rapids at Chambly.

  The war party was well into Mohawk territory at that point, on what was beginning to look like a suicide mission. Champlain wrote extensively in his journal about how his Indian friends felled trees at night to build barricades around their campsite and waited for the full moon to pass before advancing. When the group finally reached Lake Champlain, the Frenchman gazed at the scene in awe. He could see the Adirondacks and Green Mountains. He drew sketches and studied minerals, rocks, and soil along the shoreline. He wrote about prodigious game wandering through the forest and the diversity of the environment. The lake was the only site he ever named after himself.

  From there, the group stopped using fires and consulted medicine men to determine when and where they should attack. Champlain wrote about how the remaining chiefs used sticks to model a battle plan: “All the savages watch carefully this proceeding, observing attentively the outline which their chief has made with the sticks. Then they go away, and set to placing themselves in such order as the sticks were in.” Warriors spoke about their dreams and considered them portents of how the battle would go. They continually asked Champlain about his dreams, but he didn’t have any to share. When he finally dreamed about Mohawk braves drowning in front of a large mountain, the warriors rejoiced, saying that they knew the place and could now attack.

  The mountain in Champlain’s dream was in the south, near the falls at Ticonderoga. The expedition met the Mohawk there the next night. Both sides were in canoes and let out with battle cries when they spotted each other. It was a confusing moment. The Frenchmen and their allies paddled into the middle of the lake to regroup while the Mohawk took up a defensive position onshore. Champlain documented in detail what happened next. The chiefs sent two canoes to ask the Mohawk if they wanted to fight. The Mohawk said yes. The two sides decided to fight at dawn, when they would be able to distinguish each other. The Mohawk built a barricade around their camp. The Montagnais, Algonquin, and Huron paddled ashore to prepare. They kept Champlain and his soldiers hidden in the bottom of the canoes until they landed. At dawn, they formed ranks to march on the Mohawk, keeping Champlain hidden in the middle of the formation. Champlain’s two soldiers crept through the woods around the Mohawk’s flank. The Frenchmen carried short-barreled arquebuses, good for short-range fighting, and packed four balls at a time in the muzzle for a more devastating shot.

  Champlain’s allies fired first, killing a Mohawk scout near the barricade with an arrow. Mohawk warriors appeared moments later, clad in wooden armor. The two sides marched through the forest at each other until they were fifty yards apart. Champlain’s group then parted into two columns, allowing the Frenchman to emerge. He walked fifty feet in front of them. The Mohawk stopped. It was likely the first time they had seen a European. One of three Mohawk chiefs raised his bow and aimed it at Champlain. Champlain fired, killing two of the chiefs at once and wounding a warrior. The Montagnais, Algonquin, and Huron let out a cry, and the two sides exchanged a volley of arrows. The two French soldiers then fired into the Mohawk’s flanks and killed a third chief, along with several warriors. Confused and afraid, the Mohawk force disassembled and ran for cover.

  Within a few hours the Mohawk fort had been ransacked, a dozen prisoners were taken captive, and shrieks from those being tortured filled the forest. The trip downstream to Quebec was fast. The boats averaged sixty miles a day and made it home in just over a week. There, Champlain was celebrated as a hero among the Indians. There was no time to celebrate, though. He transferred his command to a young nobleman and boarded a ship bound for France. He arrived in October, bringing to the king remarkable tales of New France, a pair of scarlet tanagers, and a porcupine quill belt.

  Henri and de Mons were pleased with the news and sent Champlain back to Quebec to continue his campaign. Montagnais and Huron chiefs were waiting for him when he arrived in June 1610. They wanted to make another assault on the Mohawk. Champlain agreed, but on two conditions. The first was to have the Indians’ assistance with extending New France’s fur trade to Hudson Bay. The second was to receive help with extending the border of New France farther west, past Iroquoia, all the way to the sweet-water seas.

  3

  FROST CIRCLED THE CUFF OF MY SLEEPING BAG. Sunlight moved through the trees and lit a curl of smoke rising from the fire pit. I could see the river now, the opposite shore, ripple lines, rocks, and eddies. Looking at the whitewater rushing down the middle, I realized the current was too strong for my engine to fight.

  I decided to use the car to portage twenty miles to Spednic and East Grand Lakes instead. The river and border run through the lakes, and I could make better headway there. I tossed pine needles and kindling in the fire ring and made coffee. Watching the river was mesmerizing, the same way that watching a fire is mesmerizing. The current never stops. At night when you fall asleep, in the morning when you wake up. Summer, fall, winter, spring. The clouds stop, the wind stops, light from the sun and moon stops, but the river keeps going.

  An osprey strafed the treetops, and golden maple and oak leaves spun south. The air temperature was thirty-five degrees. No wind. Sea smoke on the water. Bubbles rising from springs near the canoe erupted into tiny columns of vapor. The mist downstream was so thick I could barely see the next bend.

  I packed the canoe and let the current swing the bow around. It felt good to use a paddle instead of the engine. The h
ull slipped between rocks and accelerated through the channels. The boat seemed to know where to go, naturally following the path of least resistance.

  Nature in the northland carves its own path as well. An invisible wall along the northern border has kept it pristine, and species survive where they would have otherwise been wiped out. Entomologists considered the Tomah mayfly extinct in the 1930s, until a University of Maine student found one buzzing on the Saint Croix. Nine other endangered species live on the river: the rufa red knot, black tern, Canada lynx, common nighthawk, chimney swift, pygmy snaketail dragonfly, Saint Croix snaketail, winged mapleleaf mussel, and the deadly eastern cougar.

  The Saint Croix sustains members of an ancient Indian tribe as well, Donald Soctomah told me. I’d met Donald my first day in Lubec, in a small building marked by a hand-painted sign that read, “Indian Township Museum 93.” His official title is Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Passamaquoddy tribe, but his contributions to the tribe transcend office. Over the last forty years, Donald helped lead the effort to document and rebuild Passamaquoddy language, sovereignty, culture, landholdings, civil rights, tradition, and history. He is a modern-day wampum keeper, a title his great-great-grandfather once held.

  Donald told me that the Passamaquoddy tribe was born from the Saint Croix and has always lived on it. Origin stories set in the watershed describe how the Great Spirit mixed clay with his own blood to mold people. Another says he shot an arrow into a tree, and out stepped man and woman. “Everything about our creation comes from the earth, comes from right here,” he said.

  The tribe has lived on the Saint Croix for more than twelve thousand years. Borders in the early days were rivers and watersheds. The Passamaquoddy portaged from river to river in the Penobscot, Machias, Saint Croix and Saint John River systems—covering as much as forty thousand square miles of territory between Bath, Maine, and Saint John, New Brunswick. In the summer, they took thirty-foot birchbark canoes into Passamaquoddy Bay to spear porpoises and pollack. They wove nets to catch spawning alewife and blueback herring in the estuary and at Salmon Falls. They ate bird eggs, clams, oysters, eels, fish, and game and lived in dome- and triangle-shaped wigwams. Women made maple syrup from sap in the spring and steamed lobsters by dropping hot stones into watertight birchbark baskets.

  The Passamaquoddy had no written language until fifty years ago, so place names acted as signposts, describing river features and landmarks. Matawamkiyak (Mattawamkeag) means the “raised gravel bar” at the confluence of the Penobscot and Mattawamkeag Rivers. Meqtoqek translates as “where the river is red,” and sakotiyamkiyak indicates a long, straight sandbar. The Passamaquoddy left pictographs on birchbark near Prince Edward Island to guide lost fishermen. Some petroglyph road signs in the watershed are three thousand years old and depict canoes, river contour lines, and the vector of the current.

  Donald led me through a maze of mismatched tables in the museum’s showroom, pointing to centuries-old Passamaquoddy wampum, delicate alder bows, and knives carved from deer antlers. It was late afternoon and already getting dark. There were no other guests. No staff. The only light came from a row of windows facing the road. A dozen handwoven baskets hung from a back wall, and a stack of antique photos of Passamaquoddy men and women wearing robes, wampum, headdresses, and top hats sat on top of a table.

  Donald stepped among paddles, blankets, and display cases, then pulled out a chair in a back room and sat down. He had salt-and-pepper hair and the guarded demeanor of a man who had seen a lot of things that didn’t make sense. The day we spoke, he wore a camouflage baseball hat and steel-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

  Most of Donald’s sixty-three years have been spent convincing federal and state officials that his tribe has existed in the northland for thousands of years, and that that history—in addition to agreements made with the government—affords his people certain rights. The Passamaquoddy tribe once controlled three million acres—half east of the Saint Croix, and half to the west. After the Revolutionary War, the US and Canada handed out two-hundred-acre parcels of Passamaquoddy land along the Saint Croix to veterans—ostensibly, to protect the border. State officials, back when Maine was a district of Massachusetts, set aside two plots for the tribe to live on. In the 1800s, the newly formed state of Maine forbade the Passamaquoddy from cutting trees or hunting on their land—so that non-Indians could. Industry and mill dams on the rivers wiped out fish populations, forcing tribal members to rely on government rations. In the 1900s, state Indian agents took control of food, medical care, heating oil, housing, and family services on the reservations.

  Donald was taken from his family in 1964, when he was nine. Maine encouraged adoption on reservations at the time, a not-so-subtle effort to depopulate tribal land. Donald’s sister and her husband, who was in the military, became his guardians. He attended thirty schools between Maine and Hawaii over the next decade. He thought about his home on Passamaquoddy Bay every day, and when he was nineteen, he pointed a one-hundred-dollar car east from Wisconsin, where the family was living, and never returned.

  Donald has since stood two four-year terms in the Maine House of Representatives as a tribal representative, served on the St. Croix International Waterway Commission, managed 120,000 acres of land for the tribe, worked on the tribal estate commission that manages land claims in Maine, and sat on the board of the national Intertribal Timber Council, in addition to a dozen others. In the 1980s, he was a key advocate in a lawsuit that returned a hundred thousand acres of trust land—that had been illegally seized by the government—to the Passamaquoddy tribe. He has written five books about his ancestors, collaborated on movies and TV shows, and personally preserved hundreds of hours of Passamaquoddy songs and language on tape.

  Light faded outside and an overhead fluorescent light hummed as Donald spoke. Indian Township is a silent place in October. I didn’t see a store, a person, or even a pet when I drove through. Most of the homes are one story. Many are placed on identical squares of land. The reservation is close enough to the ocean that you can smell the sweet scent of tidewater on a southern breeze. Outside the museum, gulls circled above red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, and barn swallows.

  Reservations that hug the US-Canada border have particularly difficult relations with both governments. Until 2001, US Customs and Border Protection and the US Coast Guard allowed Passamaquoddy tribal members to travel by boat between Canada and the US—as they had been doing for thousands of years. The Jay Treaty explicitly states that Indians have the right “freely to pass and repass by land or inland navigation, into the respective territories and countries of the two parties.” But since 9/11, border authorities have hindered water travel and mandated that tribal members carry a US passport—a document that is, unsurprisingly, difficult and expensive to get for a member of a sovereign nation.

  As with forty other tribes across America, and twelve reservations that straddle the northern border, the US-Canada boundary divides the Passamaquoddy tribe, stranding some two hundred members east of the line. Until recently, in a bizarre act of diplomacy, Canadian officials refused to recognize the tribe’s existence. Travel restrictions by both countries, Donald said, have limited access to cultural and sacred sites. “If you had a boat out there, they would probably end up stopping you,” he said. “If you try to cross the border and they don’t think you’re all-white, then you are going to get pulled over and get checked.”

  By 2002, every Indian traveling to Canada or back was searched, in both directions. Some were detained, others harassed or turned away. “So we did a peaceful march starting in Calais,” Donald said. “We had about fifteen native people and a few nonnative supporters. We marched right across the international border without stopping, holding up all the traffic, to say this is our land. And we don’t like this racial harassment. Anybody with tribal plates would be stopped. So we marched back across. We didn’t stop at the border again. We stopped in the middle of the international bridge and we stayed
there for thirty minutes. Just to make a point. We don’t recognize the boundary. And once we do recognize the boundary, we are losing half of ourselves. Because our ancestors say this is all our land. That border, we don’t recognize it. It’s there for these two powers.”

  WATER BUGS AND LILIES, plus a few submerged logs left over from the timber industry, floated in the flowage that morning. A hunter in a matching Grand Laker square stern motored in the opposite direction. The boat had almost the exact dimensions as mine but was fatter in the middle, with wooden ribs. A pile of duck decoys filled the bow, and a double-barrel shotgun leaned on the middle thwart. The hunter was supersized. His beard reached halfway down his chest, and his belly erupted from a pair of green wool pants. He made the canoe look tiny and greeted me with a flick of his index finger when we passed twenty feet from each other.

  It took less than ten minutes to load the canoe onto the car and an hour on Route 1 to reach Spednic Lake. The landscape along the way was desolate: empty roads, empty trampolines, frozen kiddie pools, and gray skies. This was the northland that I knew: tobacco-stained beards, junkyard trucks, chainsaws, a weald of dense woodlands broken only by an occasional general store selling pickled eggs and whoopee pies.

  As the land climbs the western edge of the state, the population thins from 114 people per square mile to 4. Maine was the third poorest state in the Union in 2011—it recently rose to nineteenth—and the northland is its poorest region. One in five houses was either falling down or for sale. The Esso station near Topsfield had been closed since gas was $1.04 a gallon. I stopped at a general store and asked a middle-aged man surrounded by a sphere of frizzy gray hair where I was. “Wait,” he said. Trucker hats in the general store spelled it “Waite.” A blaze-orange sign outside read, “Welcome Hunters Miller Light.” The place first opened in 1911, when William Howard Taft was president and World War I was still three years off. The store was the only business around for miles back then, and it still is today.