Champlain's Dream
Page 21
He quickly discovered that the coast of Maine could be a hard school for a new commander. At the mouth of the Sainte-Croix River, he found Poutrin-court’s vessels lying at anchor and unable to sail for France “on account of bad weather and contrary winds”—probably a nor’easter of the sort that often blows hard on this coast. Champlain anchored and waited for the weather. Three days later he was on his way and enjoyed clear sailing—for all of two or three leagues. Then he ran into a rolling fogbank of a kind that suddenly appears on the coast of Maine. It was so thick that Poutrincourt’s ships vanished from sight.
Champlain pressed on through the fog and stood out into the Gulf of Maine to get clear of the coast. He was a bold explorer, but prudent in the way he managed risk. He made frequent use of the lead line, and discovered “sandbanks, shoals, and rocks in some places projecting more than four leagues out to sea.”10 With more sea room, Champlain steered southwest on the outer side of “a great number of islands.” He gave them names with the help of his Indian guides. A cluster of rocky islets were called the Isles aux Perroquets after a large colony of Atlantic puffins—thousands of wonderful birds with glossy black coats, white pigeon breasts, hooded eyes, and big red and yellow parrot beaks. Today these rocks are called Machias-Seal Island and claimed by two nations. The puffin colony is still there—much reduced, but the only rightful owners.11
Champlain sailed on, past another group of islands with their seaward faces all in a row. He called them the Isles Rangées, the Ordered Islands. Next to them is Roque Island, one of the most beautiful on the Maine coast, with a crescent beach of white sand and blue-green water inside a perfect half-moon cove.12 Further south, he steered closer to the mainland, studied the rocky coast of Schoodic Peninsula and found “many harbors that are beautiful, but not good for settlement.”13 Champlain did not tarry in these places. He rounded Schoodic Point, crossed the handsome sheet of water now called Frenchman Bay, and “on this same day,” September 5, 1604, “passed very near an island which was four or five leagues long.” It was an extraordinary sight: an island twelve miles in diameter with many mountains, “very high and cleft in places,” and peaks as high as 1,500 feet above the water. At first sight Champlain counted “seven or eight mountains, one alongside the other,” and then many more came into view, twenty-seven peaks in all. He noted: “The tops of most of them are bare of trees, because there is nothing but rocks. The woods consist only of pines, firs, and birches.”14
Champlain named this place l’Isle des Monts-Déserts, today’s Mount Desert Island. He often used the adjective désert in his writings to describe an uninhabitable wilderness that he regarded as “terre fort mal plaisante; a very unpleasant place.” Champlain’s idea of natural beauty was a garden rather than a wilderness—an attitude different from our own. But then again his “désert” described the bare mountaintops, and not the island. Champlain was fascinated by this place, as many visitors have been through the centuries.15
On the afternoon of September 5, 1604, he approached from the east and sailed north to the head of Frenchman Bay, far enough to discover that Mount Desert was an island, separated from the mainland by “less than a hundred paces.” All earlier charts had shown it as a peninsula. He was the first to map it for what it was.16
At the head of Frenchman Bay, Champlain came about and sailed down the rocky eastern coast of Mount Desert Island, ferreting in his usual way, very close to the shore. The hour was late and the sun was low in the western sky. The east side of Mount Desert Island lay in the shadow of its mountains. Champlain tells us that since early dawn they had sailed twenty-five leagues.17 It had been a long day, and the lookouts may have been less alert than usual, or more alert to other things. Perhaps they were studying the dramatic scenery of the island as they sailed past a ridge now appropriately named Champlain Mountain. They may have noticed the falcons that breed on its steep seaward cliffs and are sometimes seen swooping overhead at incredible speed, so nimble in the air that they pass food in mid-flight. Just to the south, these Frenchmen might have seen families of sleek otters playing in the sea near what is now called Otter Point.18
As Champlain ferreted along that spectacular coast, he felt a sudden jolt and heard the painful grinding sound that sailors dread. His patache had run on a granite ledge and slipped off again with a hole in her wooden bottom. Champlain wrote, “We were almost lost on a little rock, level with the surface of the water.” Islanders have long surmised that he hit an infamous ledge off Otter Point that has long taken a toll of local traffic. At low water, it is visible with the sea breaking over it; at high tide it lurks below the surface for unwary mariners.19 The blow was a heavy one, and the patache began to sink. The crew must have pumped and bailed while Champlain looked for a place of refuge. Just beyond Otter Point he came to an inlet called Otter Cove, with a broad tidal flat of rounded pebbles that the English call a shingle beach. As the tide flowed out, Otter Cove was a perfect place to careen his vessel. They brought her in with the high tide, and eased her gently on her side as the water ebbed. Champlain and his carpenter splashed through pools of water, studied the ship’s bottom, and found a hole near her keel. Luckily the keel itself and the rudder were undamaged.20
While some of the crew made repairs, others probably foraged on the shore for something to eat. There were birds to shoot, shellfish to gather from tidal pools, and berries in profusion. Today a small stand of wild chokecherry trees stands near the tide line on Otter Cove. In late August and early September they bear abundant fruit, which several generations of this historian’s family have happily harvested. Champlain made a point of supplementing his crew’s rations with fresh food wherever he could find it.
The next day, September 6, 1604, the patache floated on the rising tide, and Champlain resumed his voyage. He sailed southwest, around the bottom of Mount Desert Island, past the present site of Seal Harbor, where summer cottagers in 1904 erected a small monument of granite and bronze in his honor. Champlain continued about two leagues and “caught sight of smoke in a cove which was at the foot of the mountains above mentioned.” This would have been Somes Sound with mountains on both sides, and the safe havens of today’s Northeast Harbor and Southwest Harbor on either side of its entrance.
Several Indians came out in their canoes and studied Champlain’s patache, but were careful to keep a musket shot away. Champlain sent his Indian companions to “assure them of our friendship,” but “the fear they had of us made them turn back.”21 Champlain implies that he spent that day and another night near the island. Probably he explored Somes Sound, which some describe as one of the few fjords on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean. Had he done so, he would have seen crystal-clear mountain streams tumbling from steep mountainsides into the deep water. One of them, now called Man O’War Brook, was a perfect place for a ship to come alongside and fill her water-casks.22
The following morning, September 7, Champlain was still at Mount Desert Island when the Indians returned in their canoes. They came alongside his patache, talked with Champlain’s Indian companions, and exchanged presents: Indian fish and beaver for French biscuit and “sundry other trifles.” The Indians offered to take Champlain to their chief, named Bessabez, on a river they called Pentegouet, now the Penobscot. Off they went through the Western Way, into Penobscot Bay. Champlain wrote, “Almost midway between them, out to sea lies another high and striking island.” He called it Isle au Haut, which it remains today.23
The scenery was spectacular as he sailed into Penobscot Bay, with Deer Island and Castine to his east, Islesboro to the west, North Haven and Vinal-haven dead ahead. Champlain was working without a chart, and he tells us that he threaded his way through many rocks and shoals, “lead line in hand.” He delighted in the beauty of the place. “Entering the river,” he wrote, “one sees fine islands, which are very pleasant on account of their beautiful meadows, belles prairies.” Here again he was more apt to comment on the beauty of open land than dense forest.24
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sp; Champlain called it the Norumbega River. He sailed north through its magnificent narrows, with high wooded headlands on both banks towering above his patache. He admired the present site of Bucksport, sailed on as far as the water could float his patache, and came to a big waterfall, two hundred paces wide and seven to eight feet high. He had reached the head of navigation on the Penobscot River in what is now the center of Bangor, Maine.25 “Below the fall,” he wrote, “the river is beautiful, and unobstructed as far as the place where we anchored. I landed to see the country.” He went hunting, probably with his Indian guides, and “found the part I visited most pleasant and agreeable.” Near the river, he found a fine grove of old oaks where “one would think the oaks had been planted there for pleasure.” It is now Bangor’s Oak Street, a neighborhood severely blighted by urban renewal, and a sad commentary on our stewardship of this very beautiful place.26
Indians began to gather, and Champlain’s guides told them that the French came in peace. More Indians arrived, a band of thirty and then the sagamore Bessabez, a leading presence in the region. He would later become well known to other Europeans, who variously called him Betsabes or Bashaba, and they were very much impressed. A Jesuit missionary met him in 1611 and described him as a “man of great discretion and prudence.” He added, “I must confess we often see in these ‘sauvages’ natural and graceful qualities, which will make anyone but a shameless person blush, when they compare them to the greater part of the French who come over here.”27
The Indians also held Bessabez in high esteem. Champlain observed that when he arrived “they all began to sing, dance and leap, until he had landed.” Then they sat in a circle “according to their custom, when they wished to make a speech or hold a festival.”28 Another group arrived with a chief named Caba-his and “twenty or thirty of his companions.” They “kept by themselves” and sat apart from the Indians who followed Bessabez. Clearly there had been trouble between them, but they joined in welcoming Champlain. “All were much pleased to see us,” he wrote, “inasmuch as it was the first time they had ever beheld Christians.”29
The meeting place was a stretch of level ground where the Kenduskeag River joins the Penobscot. Champlain came forward with two Frenchmen and two Indian interpreters. Unlike other French explorers, he made a point of approaching the Indians with only a small party, so as not to seem threatening. Champlain acted with extraordinary boldness, but made clear that he came in peace. In his usual way, he quietly prepared for the possibility of trouble. “I ordered the crew of our patache to draw near the Indians,” he wrote, “and to hold their weapons in readiness to do their duty in case they perceived any movement of these people against us.” But the weapons were kept out of sight, and there was no sign of hostility on either side.30
His approach won respect and trust. Bessabez beckoned to Champlain and his companions, and “bade us sit down.” They began the long ritual of a tabagie, and started to smoke together, “as they usually do before beginning their speeches.” Gifts of American venison and waterfowl were exchanged for French biscuits and peas. Then they began to talk. Champlain spoke through an interpreter. He said that he wished to visit the people of this beautiful country, and to be in amity with them, and to promote peace between them and their enemies the Souriquois and Canadiens. He also hoped “to settle in their country and show them how to cultivate it, so that they might not lead a life as miserable as theirs.”31
Bessabez made a graceful reply. He said they were “well content” with what Champlain had said and that “no greater benefit could come to them than to have our friendship.” The Indian leader added that he wanted the French to live in his country, and his people wished to live in peace with their Indian enemies, so that they could hunt the beaver more than they had done before and exchange pelts for useful things. After the speeches, Champlain made presents of “hatchets, rosaries, caps, knives, and other little things.” The remainder of the day was given to song and dance and good food (bonne chère).
The celebration continued through the night. Champlain appears to have had an important asset in these meetings—a remarkable gift of social stamina. When dawn came, the Indians and French bartered beaver skins and trade goods in a spirit of amity and peace, with the promise of serious commerce to follow. Then they parted. Champlain wrote that Bessabez and his companions went in their direction, and “we in ours, well pleased to have made the acquaintance of these people.”32
The next day, Champlain took out his instruments and reckoned the latitude at 45 degrees, 25 minutes north. He was about thirty-seven miles off the mark, not bad for a hard-partying navigator with a traveling astrolabe.33 Then he was off again in his patache, sailing down the Penobscot River with the sagamore Cabahis aboard as his guest. They went twelve leagues to a “little river,” probably the Passagassawakeag River near today’s town of Belfast, with a handsome shoreline and long views across a broad bay.34
Champlain quizzed Cabahis about a mythical place in the interior called Norumbega, which a European traveler had reported to be a city of gold. Probably the word came from the Wabenaki nolumbeka for a mix of rapids and quiet water, of which there are plenty on the upper Penobscot, but no city and no gold. Champlain was quick to dismiss that report as a fable. Gold was not his object in North America.35 He was more interested in the rivers themselves. The Indians told him of portages from the head of the Penobscot to a tributary of the St. Lawrence River. Champlain also asked about the next big river to the south, which the Indians called Qui-ni-be-quy, today’s majestic Kennebec, which also had a short portage to the St. Lawrence. These conversations gave him a clear idea of the region.36
At the present site of Belfast, Champlain parted company with Cabahis and continued down the Penobscot River, which broadened into a great bay. He passed the high ground called the mountains of Bedabedec, today’s Camden Hills, anchored perhaps in Camden Harbor, and sailed on to what is now the town of Rockland.37 Then he turned south along the coast, heading for the Kennebec River. He went about ten leagues, but the wind was against him, the weather turned foul, and his supplies were running low. It was time to turn around. Champlain wrote, “In consideration of the scantiness of our provisions, we decided to return to our settlement [at Sainte-Croix] and to wait until the following year, when we hoped to come back and explore more fully.” On September 23, he ordered the helmsman to come about and head for home. They made good time, running downwind along the coast with the prevailing westerlies behind them—the origin of the expression “down east” in Maine. On October 2, 1604, one month to the day after his departure, Champlain was back at Sainte-Croix Island.38
Champlain had failed to find a site for settlement, but in other ways his cruise was a great success. His meeting with the Indians at Kenduskeag was an important event in the history of this region. Once again, Champlain and other groups of Indians led by Bessabez and Cabahis built a firm foundation for friendship on a basis of mutual interest and reciprocal trust. The result, as at Tadoussac, was another enduring Franco-Indian alliance. It began on the banks of the Penobscot River in 1604 and continued for the better part of two centuries. Champlain had a genius for this work and a rare gift for getting on with others. He had a straight-up soldier’s manner, and Indian warriors genuinely liked and respected him. He did not approve of their religion or their law, and probably he let them know that. But always he treated them with respect and they worked together to reconcile vital interests.39
Unhappily, others did not do it that way. Eight months later, after the hard winter at Sainte-Croix Island, another coastal voyage followed in the spring of 1605. This time the sieur de Mons went along “in search of a more suitable site for settlement, and one where the climate was milder.” De Mons decided to command the mission himself, with Champlain at his side. He brought “several gentleman-adventurers” of “high rank,” and others to a total of about thirty souls. All squeezed into a vessel similar to Champlain’s patache, with provisions for six weeks.
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bsp; With them were two Indian translators. One was an Etchemin trader named Panounias, who could speak with the northern Indians. The other was his Almouchiquois wife, who could talk with nations to the south. We do not know her name, but this woman of Panounias must have been an extraordinary person. She was the only female whom Champlain mentioned as going with him on an exploring voyage, and he wrote of her with respect. Later, he embellished one of his maps with an Almouchiquois woman of striking grace and beauty. One wonders if she might have been the woman of Panounias.40
An Etchemin warrior appeared on the title page of Champlain’s Voyages in 1619. It might have been the warrior Panounias, who sailed with Champlain as an interpreter.
From the start, Champlain and the sieur de Mons differed on the plan for this cruise. Champlain proposed to sail directly to the Kennebec and start ferreting where the last voyage had stopped. But the sieur de Mons wished to see the northern coast, and his will was done. Champlain was a loyal subordinate to his commander, but an undercurrent of frustration flows through his written account.
These two good friends had different styles of leadership. Champlain ran a taut ship, centered his missions rigorously on the task at hand, and pushed hard to his objective. The sieur de Mons was an excellent leader in other ways, much liked by those who served with him. He appears to have been more relaxed and easygoing. Under his command, they sailed slowly down the coast, lingering at attractive islands that could serve no serious purpose. They visited an island called Head Harbor, a curious place with an inner basin so tight that down-east sailors still call it the Cow’s Yard.41 Champlain noted that the island was inhabited only by “a great multitude of crows.” The gentleman-adventurers amused themselves by slaughtering large numbers of them, and de Mons allowed them to remain several days for the sport. Champlain named it He aux Corneilles, or Crow Island.42