Part 2 of Tracking Passaconaway
READ: The poem by John Albee
SEE: Aspinquid Statue in Lowell
There was no Saint Aspinquid. The 19th century Native American leader reportedly buried with great pomp on Mount Agamenticus in York, Maine is simply make-believe. He did not spread the Christian gospel to 66 tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the 1600s. Over 6,000 wild animals were not sacrificed at his farewell feast in 1682. The story is an exaggeration, a literary device, or perhaps a hoax. Indian folklorist Fannie Hardy Eckstorm published that conclusion back in 1924, hoping to prevent this popular Seacoast fiction from being mistaken for fact.
Yet the "legend" of the praying Indian of Agamenticus persists. There is an Aspinquid Inn today near the beach in Ogunquit and a St. Aspinquid Masonic Lodge in nearby York. Local historians still quote from Edward Moody's "Handbook History" of York (1914) that offers precise, but wholly unsupported, details of Aspinquid's life and death. One local tourist web site says that Aspinquid jumped to his death from the peak of Agamenticus, not an easy thing to do at this sloping 600-foot hill. The writer has confused that story with the legend of Chocurua in the White Mountains.
Historians generally agree that Aspinquid (sometimes spelled "Aspenquid") is a fictionalized version of the authentic Indian leader Passaconaway (see previous article in NH Gazette). The name "Aspinquid" itself, one scholar has suggested, may be a European mispronunciation of Papasiquineo, the Abenaki term for "son of the bear" that has today been standardized as Passaconaway. He was the revered leader of the peaceful Penacook Confederation in 17th century New Hampshire and South Coast Maine.
It’s an innocent mistake. The danger of the Aspinquid story, however, is that it muddies the waters; it distracts from the already difficult search for the historic Indian leader himself without adding detail. This is a white-man's Indian -- savagely romantic, culturally fascinating, potentially dangerous, even sexy -- but ultimately powerless, obedient and contrite.
In an exhaustive study of library records, Eckstorm was unable to find a single mention of Aspinquid in the history of Southern Maine, although he was reportedly a revered leader there for over 50 years. Eckstorm could trace the Aspinquid legend back no further than an 1833 account in "The Book of the Indian" by Samuel Gardner Drake. Drake, who opened the very first antiquarian bookstore in Boston, was fascinated by Native American lore. His son, Samuel Adams Drake became an enormously popular New England historian with a special fondness for tales of devils, witches, ghosts and colorful superstitions that have fueled readers and writers ever since.
According to S.G. Drake, St. Aspinquid was born in May of 1588 before white settlers arrived in droves, and died in May 1682. He was reportedly converted to Christianity by the missionary John Eliot in 1631. This is unlikely, says Eckstorm, because Native Americans of that era were wholly unaware of years and months as recorded by the European calendar. John Eliot, who arrived in New England in 1631, did not begin preaching and "converting" Indians until 1646. As a staunch Puritan, he would never have sanctioned the concept of a Catholic Indian "saint".
Moody likely picked up the Aspinquid story from Drake, whose son was still recycling versions of it until the turn of the 20th century. Moody assembled his "history" for the Aspinquid Lodge that still maintains a sign near a pile of rocks at the summit of Agamenticus summarizing the legend. Moody claims that there was a tombstone there in 1780 that read: "Present Useful, Lived Desired, Absent Wanted, Died Lamented." Writers have been puzzling over that epitaph ever since.
By the late 1800s the legend had picked up scientific-sounding detail, including a precise list of the number and species of wild animals sacrificed at the sachem's funeral. The accounting of animals killed varies in different accounts with totals running from 3,000 to 15,000. Moody lists 6,712. It is unclear whether the animals are simply burned, or eaten. In some accounts they are sacrificed at Aspinqui'd's funeral. In others, he is in attendance and speaking.
Eckstorm points out that a number of the animals listed bore names used only by Europeans, not Indians. She is especially skeptical of the large number of buffalo, unknown in these parts, that were somehow dragged to New England from the Midwest. It is laughable, she implies, to think that Indian runners spread the story of Aspinquid's impending death across the continent and returned with animals and mourners in less than a month, as the legend claims. Eckstorm also notes that no local records mention the sudden arrival of hundreds, some (one account says thousands) of Native Americans to a gigantic funeral ceremony at Mt. Agamenticus. This was during the peak of the Indian reprisals when white settlers across the Seacoast were brutally killed by raising parties. No one in York, it appears, noticed the enormous funeral.
CONTINUE with the Imaginary Saint
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