ROOM FOR THE INDIANS
by
Dr. Robert Haldane Jr.
Copyright 1999
Chapter I
Penobscot Nation Marker (photo obtained with permission)
I grew up in New England. My maternal grandmother held me on her lap before I could walk and told me fascinating stories remembered from her childhood about encounters with Indians in northern Maine. The stories were sometimes scary, but more often warm and friendly-feeling. She told of Molly Ockett and others who had the power to bless or curse the future of an area. Molly cursed Snow Falls, and to this day, no business has long survived on that spot.
Early personal experience, which built over the years and led to the happy culmination of this account, goes back to 1935. I was seven years old and my sister, Betty, was three. We lived in a small town in rural Aroostook County, Maine, where our father was minister of the "Larger Parish." Ashland was the center and hometown for the parsonage where we lived. Dad served nine Congregational Churches1 - some of which were simply "preaching points" in homes or one-room schools.
Ashland is situated on the Aroostook River about twenty miles west of Presque Isle (the only city in "The County"). To the south are Squawpan, Masardis, and the Oxbow plantation on a route winding through the Hainesville woods. Called the "Forty Mile Woods," there was nothing more permanent there than a logging camp and an occasional hunter's cabin for at least forty miles through deep Maine woods. To the north of Ashland was Portage Lake and a tiny community called Buffalo.
Lest the year 1935 mislead any of you brought up in more urban areas of our country, let me tell you that in rural northern Maine, while cars were used in the summer, in winter, we put them up on blocks in the barn to protect the tires. Then we used horses - with sleighs, pungs, and sleds. Almost all farming was done with teams - usually Belgians. There was a blacksmith shop across the street from the parsonage. I spent many a contented hour watching horses being shod, cartwheel rims fashioned, and horseshoes made.
The thrill of my first experience of pushing a switch button and having electric lights make the old kerosine lamps obsolete (even the Aladdin with a mantle like a modern Coleman lantern); moving to a house with inside plumbing; the progression of radio from earphone, to horn speaker, to a Philco with a built-in speaker; the first phonographs, progressing from a windup with a cylinder, to 78 RPM, to 45's (though not yet stereo) - with "Lucky Lindy" and "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and "12 O'clock in the Midst of the Night" - these were all a part of that time I was being shaped.
In 1935 our pastor-parents had to travel long hours to Bangor or Portland for Convocation or other church meetings. They hired a wonderful Native American lady (she wouldn't have had the faintest idea what that meant, as she called herself a Micmac Indian squaw) to be our "nanny" while they were gone for ten days to two weeks.
The Oxbow, not even a village, but listed as a "plantation," had a scattered population of a few farmers and woodsmen on the edge of the Forty Mile Woods. It was there that Mrs. Sockalexis lived, with occasional visits to her childhood reservation in New Brunswick. I remember driving with Dad what seemed such a long way in those days, to the Oxbow to get the Indian woman who would be our nanny for two weeks. Betty was with us and I could not resist a bit of teasing (as brothers are wont to do). I whispered to her that if she wasn't real good, our new nanny would scalp her! En route home, Bets and me in the back seat, Dad and "Mrs. Sock" in the front, Dad noticed that my sister was quietly sobbing. On inquiry, she blurted, "Bobby said if I'm bad, Mrs. Sock will scalp me!" I'll never forget Mrs. Sockalexis' loving response from her "mother's" heart, and her comforting arms as she turned and reached out to Betty. Nor will I forget that she showed me, without scolding, how wrong I had been.
Mrs. Sockalexis will always occupy a special place in the hearts of Betty and me. She was loving and giving. She told us stories and made us the best molasses cookies we ever had! She was proud to have been the wife of a good Penobscot, Johnny Sockalexis. And she was proud of his brother, Louis Sockalexis, who was the first Native American ever to make it into the Big Leagues in baseball.
Louis F. Sockalexis
The Penobscots are a tribe of the larger group called Wabanaki, which means "People of the Dawn." The tribes of the Wabanaki were the Micmac, the Malecite, the Passamaquaddy and the Penobscot. The Penobscots are known as "The People of The River." I remember "Mrs. Sock" telling us about Louis who played baseball at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. He was a right-handed thrower, but switched to a left-handed batter. He could throw a baseball four hundred feet (a football field and a third!). That 1886 Holy Cross team has been called the greatest college baseball team of all time.
He moved to Notre Dame in the spring of 1897. However, he signed with the Cleveland Spiders about a month later. The Spiders were a National League team. My nanny's brother-in-law had a relatively short, albeit resoundingly successful, career in professional baseball. Jim Carney, staff writer for the Beacon Journal, is quoted on the internet as reporting: "Little did Sockalexis imagine that one day he would be both hailed as the father of today's Cleveland Indians and reviled as the inspiration for the Chief Wahoo caricature."2
After Louis died (Christmas eve, 1913, at 42 years of age), the Cleveland team was renamed, the Cleveland Indians, in Sockalexis' honor. The caricature of an Indian which became the symbol of the team was picked up by various parts of the Press, made into a comic character and used in ways the Sockalexis family could never have imagined. They made "Little Chief Wahoo" a laughable figure from a white point of view.
Louis F. Sockalexis Grave, Old Town, Maine (photo obtained with permission)
Inscription on Sockalexis Grave (photo obtained with permission)
But . . . there is a tiny graveyard on an Indian reservation, Indian Island, in Old Town, Maine, where the grave of Louis Francis Sockalexis is a tribute to a man and his story. I did not get there in person until after I retired and had time for travel and questing. It is impossible to describe the spine-tingling wash of emotion which swept over me as I stood by the grave on the island in the Penobscot River where a picture of a baseball and two crossed bats on a granite tombstone symbolizes a Man, a Penobscot Man, an American and our National Pastime (baseball).
Strangely, I do not remember Mrs. Sock telling about Louis' cousin, Andrew. Andrew was another Sockalexis athlete. Andrew was chosen by the 1912 U.S. Olympic marathon team to compete in Stockholm, Sweden. He came in second to Jim Thorpe.
My Maine roots encompass the Androscoggin River, the Kennebec River (and valley), the Aroostook, the Narraguagus, and others. I rejoice in all touches with the Wabanaki Nation and most personally with the Penobscots, The People of the River. The northeast corner of my Indian Room contains a paddle, representative of their birch-bark canoes, printed myths of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy,3 prayer feathers and mandella's, framed records of the "People of the Dawn" and the Sockalexis men, and The Lord's Prayer in Micmac.
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