Part 9

Whereat he replied in a tone of surprise, though perhaps not of ill humor: “What you ask me that question for? Suppose I stretch ’em, you see ’em. May be your way talking, may be all right, no Indian way.”

I had observed that he did not wish to answer the same question more than once, and was often silent when it was put again, as if he were moody. Not that he was incommunicative, for he frequently commenced a longwinded narrative of his own accord--repeated at length the tradition of some old battle, or some passage in the recent history of his tribe in which he had acted a prominent part, from time to time drawing a long breath, and resuming the thread of his tale, with the true story-teller’s leisureliness. Especially after the day’s work was over, and he had put himself in posture for the night, he would be unexpectedly sociable, and we would fall asleep before he got through.

The Indian was quite sick this morning with the colic. I thought that he was the worse for the moose meat he had eaten.

We reached the Mattawamkeag at half past eight in the morning, in the midst of a drizzling rain, and, after buying some sugar, set out again.

The Indian growing much worse, we stopped in the north part of Lincoln to get some brandy for him, but, failing in this, an apothecary recommended Brandreth’s pills, which he refused to take because he was not acquainted with them. He said, “Me doctor--first study my case, find out what ail ’em--then I know what to take.”

We stopped at mid-forenoon on an island and made him a dipper of tea. Here, too, we dined and did some washing and botanizing, while he lay on the bank. In the afternoon we went on a little farther. As a thunder-shower appeared to be coming up we stopped opposite a barn on the west bank. Here we were obliged to spend the rest of the day and night, on account of our patient, whose sickness did not abate. He lay groaning under his canoe on the bank, looking very woebegone. You would not have thought, if you had seen him lying about thus, that he was worth six thousand dollars and had been to Washington. It seemed to me that he made a greater ado about his sickness than a Yankee does, and was more alarmed about himself. We talked somewhat of leaving him with his people in Lincoln,--for that is one of their homes,--but he objected on account of the expense, saying, “Suppose me well in morning, you and I go Oldtown by noon.”

As we were taking our tea at twilight, while he lay groaning under his canoe, he asked me to get him a dipper of water. Taking the dipper in one hand, he seized his powderhorn with the other, and, pouring into it a charge or two of powder, stirred it up with his finger, and drank it off. This was all he took to-day after breakfast beside his tea.

To save the trouble of pitching our tent, when we had secured our stores from wandering dogs, we camped in the solitary half-open barn near the bank, with the permission of the owner, lying on new-mown hay four feet deep. The fragrance of the hay, in which many ferns, etc., were mingled, was agreeable, though it was quite alive with grasshoppers which you could hear crawling through it. This served to graduate our approach to houses and feather beds. In the night some large bird, probably an owl, flitted through over our heads, and very early in the morning we were awakened by the twittering of swallows which had their nests there.

We started early before breakfast, the Indian being considerably better, and soon glided by Lincoln, and stopped to breakfast two or three miles below this town.

We frequently passed Indian islands with their small houses on them. The Penobscot Indians seem to be more social even than the whites. Ever and anon in the deepest wilderness of Maine you come to the log hut of a Yankee or Canada settler, but a Penobscot never takes up his residence in such a solitude. They are not even scattered about on their islands in the Penobscot, but gathered together on two or three, evidently for the sake of society. I saw one or two houses not now used by them, because, as our Indian said, they were too solitary.

From time to time we met Indians in their canoes going up river. Our man did not commonly approach them, but only exchanged a few words with them at a distance. We took less notice of the scenery to-day, because we were in quite a settled country. The river became broad and sluggish, and we saw a blue heron winging its way slowly down the stream before us.

The Sunkhaze, a short dead stream, comes in from the east two miles above Oldtown. Asking the meaning of this name, the Indian said, “Suppose you are going down Penobscot, just like we, and you see a canoe come out of bank and go along before you, but you no see ’em stream. That is _Sunkhaze_.”

He had previously complimented me on my paddling, saying that I paddled “just like anybody,” giving me an Indian name which meant “great paddler.” When off this stream he said to me, who sat in the bows, “Me teach you paddle.”

So, turning toward the shore, he got out, came forward, and placed my hands as he wished. He placed one of them quite outside the boat, and the other parallel with the first, grasping the paddle near the end, not over the flat extremity, and told me to slide it back and forth on the side of the canoe. This, I found, was a great improvement which I had not thought of, saving me the labor of lifting the paddle each time, and I wondered that he had not suggested it before. It is true, before our baggage was reduced we had been obliged to sit with our legs drawn up, and our knees above the side of the canoe, which would have prevented our paddling thus, or perhaps he was afraid of wearing out his canoe by constant friction on the side.

I told him that I had been accustomed to sit in the stern, and lift my paddle at each stroke, getting a pry on the side each time, and I still paddled partly as if in the stern. He then wanted to see me paddle in the stern. So, changing paddles, for he had the longer and better one, and turning end for end, he sitting flat on the bottom and I on the crossbar, he began to paddle very hard, trying to turn the canoe, looking over his shoulder and laughing, but, finding it in vain, he relaxed his efforts, though we still sped along a mile or two very swiftly. He said that he had no fault to find with my paddling in the stern, but I complained that he did not paddle according to his own directions in the bows.

As we drew near to Oldtown I asked Polis if he was not glad to get home again; but there was no relenting to his wildness, and he said, “It makes no difference to me where I am.” Such is the Indian’s pretense always.

We approached the Indian Island through the narrow strait called “Cook.” He said: “I ’xpect we take in some water there, river so high--never see it so high at this season. Very rough water there; swamp steamboat once. Don’t you paddle till I tell you. Then you paddle right along.”

It was a very short rapid. When we were in the midst of it he shouted, “Paddle!” and we shot through without taking in a drop. Soon after the Indian houses came in sight. I could not at first tell my companion which of two or three large white ones was our guide’s. He said it was the one with blinds.

We landed opposite his door at about four in the afternoon, having come some forty miles this day. We stopped for an hour at his house. Mrs. P. wore a hat and had a silver brooch on her breast, but she was not introduced to us. The house was roomy and neat. A large new map of Oldtown and the Indian Island hung on the wall, and a clock opposite to it.

This was the last that I saw of Joe Polis. We took the last train, and reached Bangor that night.

THE END

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

U. S. A

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Joe Aitteon was Thoreau’s guide on the second of his three excursions into the Maine Woods. He was an Indian whose home was on the same island where Polis lived.

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