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Maine is famous for its lobsters, its taciturn New Englanders and its dense forests. But it is also home to a substantial-and often overlooked-community of Native Americans, the Wabanaki (People of the Dawn), consisting of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac tribes. Visitors traveling the Wabanaki Trail can follow the ancient routes of birch-bark canoes down pristine rivers, use pack baskets to hike the sacred mountain Katahdin (The Great One) or gather with traditional Native basketmakers, who showcase and sell their famed brown-ash and sweet-grass baskets at annual events.
The route begins in the Penobscot River Valley, at Indian Island, home of the Penobscot Nation, whose first contact with Europeans came in 1604. In an area near the city of Old Town, a half-hour north of Bangor, tribal basketmakers, carvers, canoe makers and guides have long made their living working with materials from the deep woods of Maine. Here you can explore the ancestral home of the Penobscots by taking a guided tour of the river from master carver, Stan Neptune and son, Joe Dana, tribal members and owners of Eagle Watch Canoe Trips. While paddling the waterway that their people have always called home, they may pause to point out clan animals, such as moose and eagles, as depicted on their carved birch and poplar walking sticks and root clubs. The small, but informative Penobscot Nation Museum at Indian Island will whet your appetite for contemporary Native art with its extensive collection of Penobscot artistry, including baskets, beadwork, birch-bark art and root clubs. To satisfy another kind of hunger, drop into Babe's Café-serving breakfast, lunch and Saturday dinners-for some American fare or Native foods.
Located on Marsh Island to the south, is the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine in Orono. The museum displays Wabanaki arts, as well as an extensive collection of anthropologist Frank Speck's photographs of Penobscot people. An interactive Penobscot language exhibit provides an invaluable resource to scholars and tribal people alike. Each December, the Hudson Museum hosts the Maine Indian Basketmakers Holiday Show, which draws collectors of Native American baskets from all over the Northeast.
To the northeast, the trail enters the lovely coastal forests, salty sweet-grass shores and blueberry-barrens landscape of Washington County, home of the Passamaquoddy tribe. The rugged, wild coastland contains two reservations: Pleasant Point (Sipayik) on the coast, and further inland, Indian Township (Motahkomiqkuk). Here on their ancestral lands, the Passamaquoddy Tribe has kept its language alive through a successful bilingual program and series of publications sponsored by the Waponahki Museum and Cultural Resource Center at Sipayik. Stop here to learn more about Passamaquoddy culture and the famed early 1900s birch-bark artisan, Tomah Joseph. Each summer, Passamaquoddy basketmakers and their families flock to their traditional sweet-grass picking grounds on the rock-bound coast of Maine. Also at Pleasant Point, you'll find Cozy's Basket Shop, filled with fanciful baskets you must see to believe. If you are planning a trip around the first weekend in August, make sure to visit the Sipayik Annual Indian Days Celebration. The event is the longest continuous Wabanaki celebration, and features traditional dancing, singing, drumming and art.
The Aroostook forest is an important resource for Native basketmakers. Members of the Micmac and Maliseet tribes still "hunt" for brown ash, known as "the basket tree." Here you can purchase many styles of work baskets, including the region's renowned potato baskets, still used on some farms and made nowhere else in the world.
At the heart of the Wabanaki
homeland is Mount Katahdin. The spirit of this massive mountain,
more than a mile high, is honored every year at an annual run
from Indian Island to the base of Katahdin in Baxter State Park.
Barry Dana, Governor of the Penobscot Nation and master birch-bark
canoe builder, runs in the "Katahdin 100" each year.
At the Center for Wabanaki Arts and Culture in Solon, where he
is director, Dana teaches birch-bark canoe making, shelter building,
Native gardening, basketry, stalking and other traditional lifeways.
"We call these wilderness living skills," Dana explains,
"but they are not survival skills for us, they are a way
of life."
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Resources
Pow-Wows June 23 "Tribes" Native American Celebration and Tipi Lodge Gathering, Capitol Park, Augusta, ME 207/685-3024 June 910 2nd Annual Anasagunticook Intertribal Fest Pow-Wow, Oxford Fairgrounds, Oxford, ME 207/345-3574 July 68 Wesget-SiPu: Gathering Intertribal, Riverside Park, Fort Kent, ME 207/834-6202 July 78 Mato & Night Feather: Eastern Woodland Intertribal Pow-Wow, River Rd., off Route 202, Lebanon, ME 207/468-3525 July 2829 4 Feathers Festival & Pow-Wow, Rte. 106, Riverbend Campground, Leeds, ME 207/872-5754 Aug 45 Black Feather & Lone Elk Pow-Wow, Moody Beach, ME 508/867-4332 Aug 1012 Passamaquoddy (Sipayik) Tribe Indian Day Celebration, Pleasant Point Reservation, Perry, ME 207/853-2600 Aug 1112 Lou Two Hearts Dance by the Sea Pow-Wow, Veteran's Memorial Park, Old Orchard Beach, ME 207/324-9297 Aug 1719 Mawiomi of Tribes, 5th Annual, Spruce Haven-Aroostook County, Presque Isle, ME 207/769-2103 Aug 1819 House of Morning Star Intertribal Pow-Wow, Litchfield Fairgrounds, Litchfield, ME 207/737-4532 Aug 2526 Massabesic Pow-wow & Gathering, Massebesic High School, Waterboro, ME 207/247-6206 Sept 12 Many Winds: First Light Intertribal Festival, Athens, ME 207/654-3981 Sept 89 Native American Appreciation Days 10th Annual Pow-Wow, Ossippee Valley Fairgrounds, Cornish & So.Hiram, ME 207/339-9520 From the 2001 Calendar of Indian Social Events by Princess Winona. |
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Glooskap
came first of all into this country, into the land of the Wabanaki,
next to sunrise. There were no Indians here then. He took his
bow and arrows and shot at trees, the basket trees, the ash.
Then Indians came out of the bark of the ash trees. (Molly Sepsis,
1884).
The
trail continues on to the coastal region of Acadia. Traveling
"Down East," you might head toward Bar Harbor in early
July (see "Happening") for the annual Native American
Festival. Co-hosted by the Abbe Museum, the Maine Basketmakers
Alliance and the College of the Atlantic, nearly seventy-five
artisans from all four tribes dance, drum, sing, demonstrate
traditional craft-making and sell their exquisite work. The festival
commemorates thousands of years of summer migration to the coast
by the Wabanaki peoples. Year-round, the Abbe Museum displays
selections from one of New England's finest collections of ash
and sweet-grass basketry in its historic facility.
At
the Indian Township Reservation, plan to visit the traditional
Passamaquoddy villages of Odeneg at Princeton, and Motahkomiqkuk
at Peter Dana Point, known for terrific canoeing, hunting and
fishing. It is also home to the annual fall Indian Days Celebration.
Wabanaki
traditions are based on a relationship with the natural world.
"Native symbols and art remind us of our own and nature's
origin and the kinship of the natural and human worlds,"
explains Reuben (Butch) Phillips, a Penobscot birch-bark artist
and elder.