Mooning Norumbega

by Mike Crowe

Between the automobile and television, walking seems to have become a kind of nuisance for some people when they can’t be seated. While some who see walking as a bother do make exceptions for walking around a mall, others find the motorized shopping cart essential. Walking as an “activity” or a “sort of” athletic thing, with clothes and shoes for the serious walker is a new spin.

David Ingram walked from Veracruz, Mexico to Maine in 1568. He probably didn’t have shoes, (sailors didn’t wear them), a com-pass, map or much for clothes either. Not a lot is known about Ingram, but this was definitely not a recreational walk to lower his blood pressure or extend his golden years.

A crewman on a slave ship bringing slaves to the West Indies, he would see a radical shift in scenery. By 1520, sugar production in the Caribbean, had already increased the demand for plantation slaves. After leaving slaves in the Caribbean, his captain, John Hawkins, along with the not yet Sir Francis Drake and 400 men had sailed six ships, into a port near Veracruz, Mexico in 1568. How-ever, this was Spanish territory and they were soon attacked by a Spanish naval force. Four ships were sunk. Drake fled and Hawkins, overloaded with crewmen from the sunken ships, let 100 men ashore before fleeing. Most of those left on shore went south, but a few went north.

Ingram, 40 years old, was among those who walked the coast north and east through hostile, Spanish occupied Mexico. He was chosen to be the leader of this group. He knew Europeans fished in the northeast and hoped to connect with a ship there. This made him the motivator who kept them moving. Hostility, disease and the inevitable individuals who were sure the best route was the other fork and set off to prove it, took their toll on the group. At one point Indians robbed them of their clothes. Soon it was just three, David Ingram, and two others named Brown, and Twide, following Indian trails along what is now the south eastern coasts of the U.S. On this in-credible journey, they passed through hundreds of Native American villages, meeting hundreds, probably thousands of Indians.

It was 75 years after Columbus arrived. The news Columbus brought back set the stage for all kinds of ships making the trip. It also spread European diseases that would decimate the native populations. But much of the highly developed, centuries-old native societies with large areas of cleared farmland, trade, interconnecting trails, and villages between the Carolinas and Southern Maine, would likely still have been in tact. Recent research suggests that the native population of America before Columbus arrived was larger than the population of Europe at the time.

Diseases, particularly small pox, brought by early explorers, moved ahead of the early settlers and emptied lands of natives. It has been estimated that as many as 50 of the earliest European settlements in North America were on land that had been cleared and farmed by natives before the settlers found them empty of inhabitants where upon they decided to move in.

The length of Ingram’s journey was from 11 months to two years, depending on the source. Eleven months is probable, if the natives who lived there for centuries had the established trail systems that some have noted. He also told of, at times, traveling in canoes given to him by various natives along the way. A network of good trails and intermittent canoe travel would have enabled him to make the trip in 11 months as more than one account claims.

They made it to Maine, which had been described by Verrazzano in 1524 as “the land of bad people.“It may have slipped Ver-razzano's mind that European “explorers” considered any native population ripe for harvesting for the slave trade and had taken many people off the coast of Maine. Historical references to a couple of “natives” being brought back to Europe by explorers as “artifacts” belies the fact that slavery was big business and anyone the European superpowers so defined, was considered marketable. Verrazzano had been hired by the king of France to find a northwest passage to the east in 1523. He found the coast north from the Carolinas to Maine densely populated. But the Abenaki’s of Maine had already seen enough European contact and they would not allow Verrazzano's crew to land. Instead they traded by transferring baskets of goods by rope from a cliff to the ship. The Abenaki’s also refused to touch the Europeans. They may have already known of the disastrous results of contact and small pox.

Verrazzano said the Abenaki were rude in ways, “such as exhibiting their bare behinds and laughing immoderately” at the Europeans. But mooning the explorers angered him less than the arrows they rained on some ships. Maine’s Abenaki greeted him with whoops, hollers and arrows. Natives were generally known to have been friendly toward European explorers. Abenaki were also known to have changed their policy after having family members disappear aboard the visitors ships. In one instance more than 50 Abenaki had been taken.

Ingram spent time with Indians in Penobscot Bay where, as he had in the south, observed local game. No Charles Darwin, Ingram would relate some peculiar descriptions of the game he saw, combining the features of different animals. This led some to question his credibility. More peculiar was his reporting on what the natives told him about what would become The Lost City of Atlantis on the Penobscot, known as the gilded city of Norumbega. Continuing on to Canada, the three were picked up by a French fishing boat near what is now St. Johns, New Brunswick and returned to Europe.

The three Englishmen, walking and paddling, must have relied, for the most part, on the hospitable nature of the natives, for their food, canoes and directions. They would have met hundreds of natives with whom they stayed and were likely referred to relations further up the trail.

Today it would not be the changed view of walking that would make such a trip impossible, but the changed view of property. If the trip were attempted in 1968 rather than 1568, the three hearty souls would still be in the southern U.S. getting busted every time they stepped on someone’s 75 feet of private beach. Unemployed, they would be vagrants for a second charge to defend themselves against. Floridians wouldn’t likely offer up any Carolina skiffs, so exposure to trespassing charges would increase. Between jail time and earning money for fines, they would likely be too old to finish the trek.

But, for the sake of argument, lets say all that walking had lowered their blood pressure and extended their golden years enough that they made it to Maine. If they had passed the western Maine coast by 1971 they might have had a chance of making their way easily, but not in the twenty first century, which is about the time they would likely have arrived. By then the coast to Portland would have effectively gone back to Massachusetts and the social and cultural traditions been replaced with the Daytona Beach model. Once past Portland they would be slowed by N.U.M.B. (Not Upon My Beach) strictures. The philosophy of capital investment over community reality would be moving ahead of them down the coast faster than our three could make it on their walkers.

In coves east of Pemaquid they might occasionally be given an old skiff and oars. But even as far east as Blue Hill they could be subject to being assaulted on the beach by vigilante shorefront owners. Eventually, they would be east of Ellsworth, where fewer of their meals would be served in jail. Some nights might be spent under the roof and around the fire of local natives. By the time they were at Milbridge they could be putting on a little weight.

Then on to Jonesport and Beals, towns they would have heard about since passing Portland. There would be boats aplenty, and being offered one, they might be shown the way over an ancient clammer’s path to the water, for the next leg of their journey. However, even here, should one of the trio put out a smoke on the trail, unaware of how appalled the new stewards are at the sight of a cigarette butt on what would now be “their” beach trail, there could be trouble, and delays. But, if they made it to the waters edge before the chain link fence company arrived, they’d be on their way to Machias. Once there, they would be sleeping mostly indoors and maybe offered a canoe or two. On the water they would make better time, avoid property lines and be able to enjoy a smoke, while remaining to a few on shore, impediments to the perfect view.

By now they’d know that the distance between Kittery and Eastport is a lot further than it is on the map in 2005’. Their way would be eased through Trescott and Lubec. At the top of the tide they could just drift into Canada from Lubec. However, there won’t be any French fishing boats there to pick them up for a return trip to Europe. In fact, there won’t be many offshore fishing boats of any kind. And there definitely won’t be any offers from 80’ yachts for a free ride across the pond. But, on the other hand, Canada does have a National Health Care system and that is a good thing for the majority of old guys.

David Ingram made it back to England back in 1571 and met with John Hawkins. He spent the rest of his days relating various and embellished versions of his tour of North America in England’s pubs. It became a kind of paid pub crawl, where the last beer of the night no doubt brought out the more fantastic versions of the tale. But a most fantastic journey it was. He very likely saw more of the continent than any European who had returned to tell their tale. He met and spent time with more native Americans than any European had until then. He may have been one of the few Europeans, to see so much of Native American society as it was before microbiology made it what we thought it always had been. Today he would have to travel to another planet to find something so unknown, different and relatively distant.

Ingram’s time spent around Penobscot Bay was particularly important, both to his tale and the legacy it left. The Indians there told of a city on an island in the Penobscot called Norumbega. Ingram said he was told the wide streets were paved with gold, the houses had pillars of precious stones, and the people had gobs of thumb sized pearls, etcetera. Coincidentally, that was exactly what the explorers were looking for, the pot of gold, the mother load, something to wow the investors who had bought the ships. Ingram, the detached traveler, and some the explorers who followed, poking their heads in wigwams looking for pots of gold, might also be considered tourists. Ingram told his pub audiences of Norumbega, spreading the word. Penobscot Indians had had European contact by at least the early 1500’s. Some were European fishermen who had been coming to the banks for untold centuries.

In what might have been the first goof on tourists to arrive on their shores, the Native Americans may have been telling the Europeans what they wanted to hear in relating the tale of the great city of Norumbega. Natives didn’t have “broad streets” and “pillared houses,” but Europeans did. The Penobscots may have had a few laughs as the “explorers” raced off drooling and falling over each other at the thought of finding the mother of all free meals. The Norumbega story spread through Europe, funding more than a few exploratory trips to the northwest Atlantic coast.

More explorer/investors came and settlers soon followed. The government instituted a system where money paid for land and taxes on the land. The Native American barter economy could not come up with the money. Ironically, the Norumbega syndrome has, in a way, been realized, in part through federal and state tax policy that has encouraged the rising price of real estate, soaring taxes on coastal property, and second home mansions. The government enjoys the revenue stream, but the gilded Norumbega fantasy is again driving out the natives. The natives-lobstermen, fishermen, traditional scale homes and businesses and community members-can not come up with the kind of money it takes to live in their own towns anymore. Being between a rock and a hard place, some in their hearts are no doubt mooning Norumbega.