B A C K T H E N
Passamaquoddys of the 1880’s
Photo: National Archives
The Passamaquoddy Indian reservation at Pleasant Point, Perry, about 1880. In 1861, it was noted that while a few years previously there had been more than one hundred wigwams at Pleasant Point, there was then not a single one. Some Indians’ houses were said to “compare favorably with those of their more pretentious white brethren.”
The 1880 census reported 523 tribespeople living at Pleasant Point, at Peter Dana Point (in Indian Township), and in Calais. The tribe’s population was believed to be at its historical peak.
Peter Dana Point men worked during the winter as woods cooks and axemen, and in the summeron the booms, in sawmills, or as guides. In the summer, Pleasant Pointers hunted porpoise; during the winter, the men got out basket stuff, and the women made baskets. Of course, the men also hunted and trapped. Wilbur Day, famed white poacher of Wesley, recalled:
The first hunt that ever I had with an Indian, I was quite a young boy [in the ‘70s], and the Indian’s name was Lewis Snow. I think he was governor of the Passamaquoddy tribe, and he lived at Pleasant Point near Eastport. This man was a prince. Six-feet six-inches tall in his stocking feet and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. He had not an ounce of useless flesh. A perfect model of a man.
The Indians in those days were allowed to kill game at any time. And very often in winter, when the snow got quite deep there would be Indians come from Pleasant Point to get themselves a supply of meat. But unlike the white man, the Indians were not piggish or destructive, but when they got what they needed, they would quit, build a mooserunner hand sled, load their meat, and start on the long journey to Pleasant Point. [Mr. Snow] carried no arms whatever except a knife, depending wholly upon his speed and strength to catch the deer and kill him.
By 1882 the controversial enforcement of game laws against Indians, and lack of game, created winter hardship. In 1885, protesting the Indians' sufferings, the St. Croix Courier declared: “There are in the world no people more gentle, none more harmless and law-abiding, than the Indians of Maine.” Wishing to turn hunters into farmers, the state offered bounties for Indian crops, overlooking shortages of land and manure and the Indians’ aversion to field labors. By 1875 some families were spending the summer at Mt. Desert, selling wares: In 1883 the agent complained that the growing resort trade, by encouraging the Indians to sell baskets, sea gull breasts, canoes, etc., discouraged farming. In November 1885 gull breasts brought $4.50 per dozen for hat and cloak trimmings. In the fall Joe Lola traveled to New York to negotiate with fashion buyers for a rate of $6.50 per dozen.
In January 1887 enterprising tribal governor Joseph Tomah and Charles Lewey left for Florida with two canoes and a large stock of “Indian novelties” to sell to tourists. h
Text by William H. Bunting from A Days Work, Part 2, A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860-1920 , Part II. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, Maine, 800-582-1899.