Wabanaki clothing varied from tribe to tribe and from year to year. They never wore the kind of war bonnet, head piece made famous later by natives of the Great Plains. This picture, taken during a Wabanki reenactment encampment in Sheepscot in 2003, shows them dressed quite plainly. (Photo courtesy Newcastle Historical Society)
When Europeans first arrived in what is now Maine, they found the country already inhabited. The natives of Lincoln County were known as the Wabanaki, a word literally meaning “Fearless Ones” or “The Dawn People.” They had settled near the coast and were the first people to see the sun rise. They were also known as the Pemaquids.
I have gotten much of my information on how the Wabanakis lived from A. Hyatt Verrill in his “Romantic and Historic Maine,” copyright 1933.
Verrill writes the Wabanakis were continuously at war. Although of an even temperament, they were quick to rile and settle any dispute by fighting. It was almost like a game to them. Thus, even though they were all of the same offshoots they were, more or less, in a continual state of war with one another before the settlers came. Afterward, they would band with either the English or French against people of their own race. Warfare was almost their way of entertainment.
They had the same language and could converse back and forth, yet their dialects varied somewhat, just as ours does today, which made communication confusing. Many places were known by several names because of this problem. Also, they would name a place for a spot and the Europeans would assume it was for an area. Thus some places have many different names.
When the Europeans arrived, the area was not thickly settled. Warfare between the tribes and a great sickness had eliminated entire villages. The Dawn People stayed close to the coast or on the banks of large rivers. The interior of what would become Maine was almost devoid of human inhabitants.
They dwelt in fixed villages. Although they fished and gathered food for winter at the coast in the summer, they were agriculturalists. They would plant their crops and then head for the coast while their gardens were growing. They cultivated good sized farms, and while they depended a great deal on game, and hunted and trapped furs, their main food source was the vegetables they raised, including pumpkins, beans, and squashes. They also gathered wild grapes, berries, plums, acorns, nuts, and edible roots, which they obtained from the forest.
They did not have the domestic animals such as cows, chickens, or pigs.
Their houses were well built structures of sapling timbers roofed with birch or hemlock bark and walled with slabs and bark. They had no nails. They had a fire in the structure but no stove or oven, and no metal pots to use in cooking. In winter they were banked to the eaves with grass, sod, leaves, and earth to keep their homes warm.
The conical wigwam was a temporary quarters they used in the summer when they traveled to the sea to gather fish and sea food which they preserved for winter. It was usually built of birch bark over a frame work of light poles. They had only crude pottery, but their baskets were detailed works of art.
Their weapons were bows of white ash or iron wood. Their arrows were tipped with stone or iron. They had wooden war clubs and spears but until they had mixed with the Europeans they did not have the use of iron weapons. In their gardens they used hoes of moose antlers and clam shells, pointed sticks, and crude shovels.
They wove mats and made carpets of soft bark and rushes and made serviceable and warm cloth from moose hair, deer, cedar bark, milkweed, and more. They were experts in tanning the hides and skins of wild animals and made comfortable clothing and moccasins.
They made snowshoes and toboggans for hauling things, but there is no indication they used their dogs as draft animals. They did not have horses and had not invented the wheel. Of course, they were famous for their birch bark canoes which were easily navigable on the many rivers and streams.
Of course their clothing varied from tribe to tribe and from year to year. In summer a man would be expected to wear his moccasins and a breech cloth of soft skin or cedar-bark cloth. His hair was bobbed and cut to shoulder length. The women wore a skirt, probably of deer skin or fiber cloth, reaching from the waist to below her knees. A carpet-like robe or jacket-like coat was sometimes worn.
In winter the men wore clothes of animal skins with the hair or fur left on. The women’s winter garments were much the same and both sexes used heavy robes of bear skin, otter, beaver, or other furs. The Maine men never wore the feathered “war bonnet,” a head dress that was confined to the plains.
The accompanying picture, taken at a traditional encampment at Sheepscot during our 2003 celebration shows them dressed plainly.
Capt. George Weymouth kidnapped five natives, causing trouble that was to last for years. He took them to England where they were well treated, taught English, educated and returned.
It was one of them, Samoset, who welcomed the Pilgrims at Cape Cod and made things easier for them. Later he would be instrumental in bringing the Pilgrims to Pemaquid for badly needed supplies their first winter.
The Dawn People, as a whole, were peaceful but quick to rile. Most were moral, industrious, honest, clean, temperate. They did not have a written language and could not read or write. This caused a great deal of confusion as to locations and identifying places. In certain sections the locals were on friendly terms with the settlers and lived in peace, like at Pemaquid, for many years.
On July 15, 1625 the natives, peacefully, sold to the settlers a large piece of land which included much of what is now Bristol, Jefferson, Nobleboro, and a part of Newcastle. This was the beginning of their selling themselves out of their home lands.
There are no Dawn People left in the area today.
