Free Arundel by Kenneth Roberts Page A

throughout our eastern country.
    The Abenaki nation is a confederation of tribes living in the river valleys of our beautiful province of Maine, moving up the rivers in the autumn to hunt and gather furs, and down the rivers in the spring to fish and be cool. Between times they plant and harvest their crops on fertile spots along the rivers. The Micmacs of Acadia belong to the Abenaki Confederation as well. They are a coarser breed than our true Abenakis because of mixing their blood with slant-eyed, round-faced Indians from the cold countries. The same is true, to a less degree, of Abenakis living in the eastward of our province—the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies. They, too, are inclined to be ruder and rougher than the rest of the Abenakis, as a man from the deep woods is ruder than one from the settlements. I think it’s because they’re adventuresome, and have traveled among the wild tribes in the north, intermarrying with them.
    However that may be, there is a relationship between all Abenakis. The land of our province belongs to all of them in common, so that a Passamaquoddy may hunt in the valley of the Kennebec if it pleases him, and a Kennebec may hunt on the Penobscot if so inclined. There’s a similarity in their speech, so that an Abenaki from the valley of the Saco can understand an Abenaki from the valley of the Penobscot, though he may have difficulty. Thus, a Kennebec Abenaki calls a salmon cobbossee, whereas the Penobscot word for salmon is karparseh. The words are the same: yet they are a little different.
    Our chief rivers, going from Boston toward the easternmost end of our province, are the Merrimac in Massachusetts; then the Saco; then the Androscoggin and the Kennebec together, the Androscoggin flowing into the Kennebec at the pleasant inland tidal lake known as Merrymeeting Bay; and finally the beautiful Penobscot.
    In the Merrimac Valley were the Pennacooks, who went early to Canada to live on the St. Francis River because of the manner in which white men crowded them. In the valley of the Saco live the Sokokis, the Abenakis who come to Arundel for the summer fishing. In the Androscoggin Valley are the Assagunticooks, and in the Kennebec Valley dwell the Kennebecs, sometimes called the Norridgewocks, because the largest of their towns is at Norridgewock on the Kennebec. To my mind the Sokokis, the Assagunticooks, and the Kennebecs are the finest of all Abenakis, just as the Abenakis are the finest of all Indians.
    Farther to the eastward, in the Penobscot Valley and on the shores of Mt. Desert, which places have no equal for beauty in any of our provinces, live the Penobscots. Beyond them, along our wildest and foggiest shores, are the wigwams of the Passamaquoddies. All of them together, with the Micmacs of Acadia, which is also called Nova Scotia, form the Abenaki Confederation.

    It has been one of the peculiarities of our colonists that they have never kept faith with Indians. They have either stolen their lands outright, or made the Indians drunk and persuaded them to sell vast stretches of territory for a few beads and a little rum and a musket or two; and they have made treaty after treaty with them—treaties which have always favored the white men; and never has there been a treaty that the white men haven’t broken.
    Everywhere throughout New England the colonists lied to them, cheated them, robbed them—an easy matter, since the Abenakis are brought up from childhood to think that all their possessions are safe; that no locks or bars are necessary to guard them. In trade they are fair and honest. Nothing causes them greater astonishment and perplexity than crimes white men commit in order to accumulate property.
    For an Abenaki to tell an untruth to a friend, except in jest or in the making of medicine, is accounted a crime. When an injury is done to one of them, all his friends make common cause against the guilty person. In friendship they are faithful and ardent, and grateful for