Wabanaki history on MDI focus of study

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – Though members of the state’s Wabanaki tribes came to Mount Desert Island for thousands of years and even coexisted with the rusticators, or summer residents, well into the 20th century, hardly anyone knows any of their names.

Nationally recognized anthropologist Bunny McBride gave the first public lecture Thursday night on a two-year study on Wabanaki history on MDI that she and her husband, Harald Prins, have just completed. The couple said they hoped their study, “Asticou’s Island Domain: 400 Years of Wabanaki Indian History on Mount Desert Island,” will counter the tendency toward the “nameless Indian.”

“There’s more than 10,000 years of Wabanaki history in this region,” McBride said to a small but appreciative audience. “Indian cultures are comprised of individuals, … but how many individual Wabanaki people can you name?”

Acadia National Park, the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor and members of four Maine Indian tribes collaborated with the couple on the $60,000 study, which will be published this fall.

Wabanaki, which translates roughly to “people of the dawn,” refers to the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki tribes. Tribal members would make their way to MDI by canoe and later by train or steamship until the 1930s and after, McBride said.

She followed the long and adventurous life of Frank Loring, a Penobscot who also was known as Chief Big Thunder, to put a name on the thousands of years of anonymous Indian history.

Loring, who was born in 1827, worked for circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum in his youth and then spent 50 years traveling around New England “producing, directing and acting in Indian entertainment,” McBride said.

“A consummate showman, he was a leader amid mid-19th century Native Americans who made a decision to commodify their culture in order to make a living,” she said.

The chief wore many additional hats, including that of celebrated outdoorsman, guide, hunter, trapper, canoeist, healer, herbalist and craftsman. He didn’t let his busy schedule keep him from visiting MDI and the surrounding islands for long, McBride said.

One of his first documented trips happened in 1847, when he and a group of Penobscots from Old Town wintered on the island and put on popular shows in the old woolen mill in Somesville.

As the island became more popular with tourists in the late 1800s, the Wabanakis adapted their habits in order to survive in the white man’s world, McBride said. They still stayed at traditional encampments but added commerce to their former activities such as hunting, fishing and clamming. Sweet grass baskets and birch bark canoes were especially prized by the rusticators.

“Once you get out of the stereotypes of what the Indian is supposed to be, you see the adaptations to the dominant society,” Prins said after the lecture.

McBride will lecture on MDI’s Wabanaki history at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. Call 288-3519 for information.