M Stevens-David
The Indians
By Martha Stevens-David
May 13, 2008 - 11:18:39 AM

In nineteen fifty-three, there were still many Indians in and around our home in Ashland in Aroostook County, Maine. There were numerous small settlements of Penobscot and Maliseet around the Masardis and Fort Fairfield areas and a rather large settlement of Micmacs along the border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada.

Every now and then, a small group of Indians would leave their family camping grounds and strike off on their own. They'd find an area that had a good water supply and ample food and settle there for a while. When they'd depleted the fish and game or if civilization encroached upon their territory too much, they'd pull up stakes and move on. Normally, these small bands weren't a problem to the local people, but every now and then, one of the tribe members would have a little too much fire-water and the sheriff's office would have to pay a visit to quiet the offender down or take one of them to the hospital for stitches.

Every fall, during potato harvest, a small band of Micmac Indians, who lived across the boarder in New Brunswick, moved down to the area of Ashland where we lived. They'd settle into a small camp on Uncle Hal's property, up in the back of the Rafford place on the Goding Road. They'd stay there till potato harvest or hunting season was over and then return for the winter to their native camping grounds across the border in Canada.

We only knew them by their first names of Vangie and John. Sometimes an old bent-over squaw would come with them and we learned that she was Vangie's mother. We used to count the days until they arrived and then we'd rush down the dirt road to see them. Their family had been camping on that land for as long as any of them could remember and they were never a problem to anyone.

The old woman's skin, the color of strong tea, was seamed and wrinkled but that wasn't what you remembered about her. It was her eyes that you remembered, they were almond shaped and bright brown and she never took her eyes off us. She'd look and look at our bright hair and white faces as though she couldn't get enough of seein us.

She'd sit cross legged on the floor of the porch in a loose, hand woven shirt and a faded pair of men's work pants. On her feet, she wore a pair of run-over men's slippers and a man's felt hat was pulled down low over her weathered brow. Every now and then; she'd reach up and push a long strand of steel gray hair back under the brim.

She had an "earthy" smell that wasn't unpleasant or unclean, it was somewhere between moss and freshly dug earth. She always smoked a long-stemmed pipe that she held firmly gripped between the black nubs of her teeth and every now and then, she'd let out a loud, shrill yell that would take us completely by surprise and scare the friggin daylights out of us. When we asked John, her son-in-law, why she did this, he'd smile and say, "Old Mother is happy. She is traveling to her ancestor's hunting grounds and talking with all the spirits who have gone before and are waiting there for her."

We'd ask him where the hunting grounds were and he'd point with a long, brown finger to the West, to a bright, blue patch of sky and say "There, there, above the trees." Try as we might, we could never see anything except blue skies and white clouds.

Every once in a while, our mother would give us some of her wonderful molasses cookies to take to them but, it was a long walk from our home to their camp and there'd only be a few left by the time we got there. The old squaw would reach over and grab the package of cookies out of Jake's hands and smile her black-gummed grin. She'd stuff her mouth full, chew the cookies and make guttural sounds that sounded like "um," "um" "um" to us. 

Jake, who was sixteen months older and thought he was the smartest, turned and translated to me that those sounds must mean "Good!" "Good!" "Good!" We knew that when we finally went home and told our mother how much the old squaw liked her cookies, it wouldn't be too long before mother would be sending the old woman some chocolate doughnuts or some of her homemade yeast bread or fluffy biscuits.

We'd spend as much time as possible at the Indian camp and they never seemed to tire of our visits or us. John and Vangie always tried to teach us the old Indian ways and we learned how to make a corncob pipe, which Jake immediately filled with Indian tobacco and tried to smoke. We learned how to make a fishing pole out of an Alder branch and how to trap small animals without using a "white man's" trap. We watched wide eyed as John skinned whatever animal that had wandered into his trap and Jake especially liked it when he rubbed wood ashes into the animal skins to cure the pelts. We learned how to dry fish and game on a rack over a slowly burning hickory wood fire and to find herbs and wild grasses that Vangie wove into small containers that held their drinking water.

We also were introduced to all kinds of different food during some of our visits to the Indians. Jake was the only kid in our entire family who had ever eaten anything that we considered "exotic." He loved a good mess of fried frog's legs every now and then but mother, used to just regular meat and potatoes refused to cook them for him. She'd always make him go outside to cook that "stuff" on his makeshift grill behind the woodshed.

But, John and Vangie were different and there was no way that we could refuse their hospitality. So we learned to eat beaver, muskrat, rabbit, bear,

moose and many other suspicious things that we never quite recognized and were too intimidated to ask what they were. We'd eat our fill of these unknown dishes and on the way home; Jake would reel off a list of "things" that the food might have consisted of. "Things" like snakes, skunks, porcupines, grubs, rats or weasels.

By the time we got home, I'd be so turned off food that when it was time for our regular home-cooked meal, I didn't want to eat. But, Jake, even after having made a glutton of himself at the Indian's camp, would fill his plate with whatever mother had cooked that day and eat until his belly rebelled and his desire for the exotic had been satisfied.

We really loved it when John or Vangie would find a streak of colored clay along the brook. We'd rush down the bank and dig the red, black and gray clay out with our fingers and smear it all over our faces. Then we'd tear up the trail behind their camp, yelling and whooping just like we'd seen the Indians doing in the movies. We were on the warpath! John and Vangie would laugh when they saw us and join our little war party, whooping and dancing right along with us. At times like those, we often wished that these two lovely, giving people were our real parents.

Sometimes, Vangie would take out a handful of young, green pinecones and drop them into a pot of boiling water. When the water had boiled for a while, she'd take the cones out and throw them into the fire where they'd sizzle and snap until they'd dried out enough to burn. When the boiling water had cooled enough, she'd dip a soft cloth into the warm emulsion and wipe it all over her face, neck and arms. She'd hand the saturated cloth to Old Mother and she would do the same.

One day, after having thoroughly cleansed her skin, the Old Mother motioned for us to come closer and she grabbed Jake with her brown, clawed hands and rubbed the wet cloth all over his freckled face. Jake stood there quietly in her grasp until she'd finished and then he turned to John and asked him what she was doing. John laughed and said that the old people used the boiled green pine cone water to clean their skin and that the old squaw was only trying to wash the freckles off Jake's face.

For weeks after that, every time Jake passed a mirror or a window, he'd check to see if the freckles were still there, and they always were. Discouraged, he finally decided that maybe the stuff just didn't work on us freckled, white-skinned kids.

  Sometimes, when we'd been gone too long and mother was worried and angry, she'd give our bottoms a good tanning. Jake would wipe the tears out of his bright, blue eyes, stick his chin out and say, "Someday, I'm gonna run away and be an injin just like John and Vangie!" Hearin this, Mother's dark eyes would flash and snap and Jake would head out the kitchen door until his bottom had cooled off.

John and Vangie were well-known in our area for their exquisite basket weaving and our great Uncle Hal bought all the baskets that John and Vangie made each fall and some of them were truly works of art. Usually Jake and I got our own personalized baskets with intricate Indian designs woven into the sides. We'd grab our treasures and strut around the potato fields with them, knowing that all the other kids would be jealous. It was such a delight to be given a brand new, creamy basket on the first day of picking but after picking dirty potatoes all day, the basket didn't stay new looking or creamy too long.

  During the potato harvest, Vangie and John and other Indian families were often asked to help pick the potatoes for many of the local farmers. We often met them walking along our dirt road either coming from or going to work in a local potato field.

Sometimes, upon seeing us Stevens' kids with our red, brown and blond hair, they'd stop us and laugh and touch our heads. Jake, who was red headed and blue eyed, me, who was blond haired and blue eyed, Bub, who was auburn haired and brown eyed and Helen, who was blond haired and brown eyed, would whisper that they were really measuring our heads so that they could come back and scalp us later.

My most memorable experience involving Indians was in the fall of nineteen fifty-three when I was just nine years old. Potato harvest was finally over and mother and dad had gone on a two-week hunting trip up to Moosehead Lake. There were six of us kids still at home, so mother asked one of her sisters to come and stay with us till they got back.

The first week flew by and it was Saturday night. We'd just finished supper and done the dishes. The youngest kids were coloring on the kitchen floor and we older kids were sitting around the kitchen table playing a card game that dad had taught us called sixty-three. Walt and Jake were partners against auntie and me.

Directly behind the kitchen table was a pair of double windows that overlooked our front porch and the dirt road in front of the house. We'd been playing for nearly an hour when auntie looked up and said, "Okay, it's time for you little kids to go to bed." Bub, who was about five, looked-up from his coloring, thrust his lower lip out and said that he didn't want to go to bed. He was adorable with his curly, auburn hair and large brown eyes. Bub, who had invented the word "temper," danced around the kitchen and howled until auntie sighed and told him that if he was real good, she'd make us some fudge but then he had to go to bed. Hearing that, Bub settled down to color another page in his coloring book.

True to her word, auntie made fudge and by the time she'd finished, it was nearly nine o'clock. This time, she told all of us that it was time for bed. She went over to the little kids and washed the chocolate off their faces. Bub was really missing mother because this was the first time that she'd gone away for such a long period of time.

Just as auntie swiped the warm washcloth across Bub's face, he stiffened out straight and let out a blood curdling yell! Shocked, auntie cuffed him on the back of the head and said, "Stop that, you little spoiled brat! I'm not hurting you. Besides, that wash rag wasn't even cold!"

Bub, white faced and trembling, pointed towards the kitchen window and then he pulled his skinny arm free of her grasp and screamed again. He flew across the kitchen floor, through the living room and up the stairs to his bedroom.

It was then that we saw what had scared him half to death. We screamed too when we saw the two Indians with their faces pressed against the porch windows. They would have been scary enough in the daylight but it was worse because it was pitch black outside and their faces were pressed up real close against the windows which distorted their otherwise nice features. The rest of us kids flew up the stairs behind Bub. It wasn't until later the next day that we learned why they'd paid us a visit.

A couple of Indians had been walking past our house that night and through the kitchen windows, they'd seen us all gathered around the kitchen table. Being curious about how a white family, with a lot of kids, spent their evening, they'd come up onto the porch to have a better look.

The next morning, auntie tried everything she could think of to try and entice Bub out from under the bed but he wouldn't budge. He'd only come out to use the potty and then he'd skeedaddle right back under the bed. Jake, afraid that he'd starve to death, kept Bub supplied with all kinds of goodies until mother and dad got back a couple of days later.
 
Mother and dad had a good laugh when they learned what had happened and mother said later that it had taken Bub a good week before he'd let go of her dress for any length of time.

When Uncle Hal came for a visit to hear about their hunting trip, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation and asked if dad had any little bundles of deer meat for him. Dad shook his head and then he said, "Nope, we didn't see a thing." But mother had a little bundle of her own when our lovely, redheaded sister, Norma, was born the following June.
 
Copyright (1st Rights) retained by the author, Martha Stevens-David, who can be reached at lmdmsd@megalink.net.