PREFACE.

WITHIN a few years, several of the States, awakened to a just sense of the value of their legislative records, and archives, as indispensable to an accurate knowledge of our institutions, their origin and developement, safeguards and dangers, have adopted means for their collection and publication. The voluminous collections of New York, edited with distinguished judgment and learning, are of national importance; Connecticut emulates the great example; Rhode Island publishes her proud annals, enriched with illustrative contemporary documents; Massachusetts presents a rigid copy of her Colonial records, in the costliest style of typographic art; and Maine yields to the noble impulse, by judicious aid to her Historical Society.

By this beneficent act of the State, we have a collection of original documents, touching one of the most interesting portions of our territory, of of which ANCIENT PEMAQUID was, in fact, the Capital.

I have not attempted a *town history, a task said to be already taken in hand by Mr. Johnston, a faithful son of Pemaquid, but rather a general review, dwelling on the more salient points, illustrating our ante-colonial history; on the nature, and design of her settlements, the political and social theories tested by them, and the relations of the Colonists, to the French Papists and their Indian allies on the North and East, and to the Puritans on the South; the effects of European politics, reaching even these distant and obscure hamlets, and on the position of Pemaquid, the Capital of the East, as the great outwork of Protestantism, at whose base surged the waves of savage passion, stirred by Jesuit intrigue and brutality.

*"The genuine history of a country can never be well understood without a complete and searching analysis of the component parts of the community, as well as the country. Genealogical inquiries and local topography so far from being unworthy the attention of the philosophical inquirer are amongst the best materials he can use; and the fortunes and changes of one family, or the wants of one upland township, may explain the darkest and most dubious portions of the annals of a realm."

Palgrave's Preface to the Parliamentary Writs.

It would be difficult to find a history so romantic, and replete in examples, distinct in their teachings, as is that amid the ruins of Ancient Pemaquid. The citations are chiefly from original authorities, so far as they have been within my reach, and the favors of correspondents, which are gratefully acknowledged, are particularly noticed in the appropriate notes. I am indebted to my friend Samuel F. Haven, Esq., for the privilege of verifying my copy of the Pemaquid Charter, by that in possession of the American Antiquarian Society, and to the Rev. John L. Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College, for valuable references.

APRIL, 1857.

CHAPTER I.

The first voyagers-a Spanish shallop left at Pemaquid, before 1607-Samaset, Sagamore of Pemaquid, speaks English-welcomes the Pilgrims— Fishermen early at Pemaquid-Codfisheries and Colonization.

On the ourskirts of our historical panorama, we can just descry, here and there, wanderers along the solitary shore; but their foot-prints were effaced by the tide, before the Chronicler appeared, and even the names of these earliest voyagers are lost in the twilight of history.1

They were among those adventurous spirits, who are the forerunners in every realm of discovery, but scarce leave a shadow behind them. We only know that they were here.

Thus, on Gosnold's visit to the coast in 1602,2 some of the aboriginees stepped upon the deck of the "Dartmouth," clothed in European apparel, and with a boldness, in striking contrast to the awe excited by the ships of Columbus;

1 In Captain Smith's "Historie " he entreats pardon for omitting to mention "divers others that have ranged those parts whose true discriptions were concealed or died with their authors. He had purchased six or seven different maps of the coast, but true neither to each other, nor to the country." Lib. vi, fol. 207. Perhaps one of these lost worthies may have been Capt. Hanam, in 1606—see Maine H. C. iii, 297.

2 iii Hakluyt's Voyages, Lond. Ed. 1810.

and in 1607,1 Popham and Gilbert had not been at anchor, near Pemaquid, two hours, when they were visited by a party of savages, in a Spanish shallop, a part of whom remained on board all night.

So the Pilgrims at Plymouth,2 were surprised to hear their mother tongue from the lips of the Indian, Samoset, in the pleasant greeting of "much welcome Englishmen !"

This man, so celebrated from this incident, was "a Sagamore towards the North, where English ships came to fish, from a very early period." Those fishing vessels sometimes took savages to England, as curiosities. At that time, says Shakspeare,3" when they would not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they would lay out ten to see a dead Indian."

It has been well suggested, that this welcome from Samoset leaves no unfavorable impression of the early English fishermen, and visitors at Pemaquid, and its vicinity, and tends to relieve the dark shades of character sometimes given to them.

Recent collations of the early historical narratives demonstrate, that the progress of geographical discovery in

1 Maine H. C. iii, 293.

"Mourt's Relation, Bradford's Hist. of

2" Wonder working Providence," 1654, ch. viii. New York Ed. 1848, p. 57. Smith's Historie p. 233. Plymouth Plantation, p. 93; for a brief notice of the discovery of Bradford's Mss., and the singular and very honorable appropriation of it by another, see the N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg, October 1856, vol. x, 353,354, compare with p. 5 of the "Editorial Preface" of Bradford.

3 Tempest, Act ii, sc. ii, acted at Whitehall, Nov. 1, 1611. About 1615, Epenow an Indian, from Martha's Vinyard was shown up and down London for money, as a wonder. Smith, fol. 206. Drake's Book of the Indians, p. 72. Strakey refers to "the Salvadges at this tyme showed in London from the river of Canada."