Research Guides: Wabanaki in Midcoast Maine: 1600-1699

1600-1699

Manuscripts
Printed Material

Contemporary or early copy of the “Indian deed,” dated 1684, detailing sale of land along the Androscoggin river that was “signed, sealed, and delivered by the several sagamores within named … Warumbee, Darumkin, Wehikermett, Wedon-Dombegan, Neonongassett
This is the earliest “Indian deed” covering the land on which Bowdoin College now stands. So called “Indian deeds” were contractual arrangements between representatives of the indigenous peoples who had traditionally hunted or fished on the lands and waterways in question and settler colonialists, or more often, large land agencies, most owned by wealthy Bostonians.  Such deeds typically covered not only land transactions but outlined terms and agreement, and thus served almost as treaties. In this case, the Wabanaki granted Richard Wharton "'ye Sole propriety Benefitt and advantage of ye salmon & sturgeon fishing within ye Bounds & Limits aforesaid…:”, while preserving their sovereignty and subsistence rights:  "Provided Nevertheless [that] nothing in this Deed be Construed to deprive us ye Saggamores Successors or People from Improving our Ancient Planting grounds nor from Hunting in any of s'd Lands being not Inclosed nor from fishing or fowling for our own Provission Soe Long as noe Damage Shall be to ye English fisherys."  Wharton would honor the terms of this agreement, but his successors would not. This copy of the Wharton Deed is from the Charles Vaughan Family Papers (M180). Both the Vaughan and Bowdoin families were among the Kennebec proprietors whose claims included land covered by the Wharton deed.

Eliot, John. Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God : naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament, or The Holy Bible: Containing the Old Testament and the New. Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, 1663.
The Algonquian Bible, so called because of the language of the text, was the first Bible printed in British North America. The work was produced by Puritan missionary John Eliot and indigenous translators including Cockenoe and Job Nesuton for use in preaching to the Massachusetts people. The Bible was printed on the first press of Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson located in the Indian School building of Harvard University. James Printer (Nipmuc) composed and proofed the 1,200 sheets as they went to press over a three-year period. Of the original 1,000 or more copies of the 1,200-page work, only a handful survive.
Eliot, John. Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God : naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament, or The Holy Bible: Containing the Old Testament and the New. Printed by Samuel Green, 1685.
The second edition of the Algonquian Bible, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1685 was “much corrected and amended” from the first. While the imprint only attributes the printing to Samuel Green, James Printer likely also contributed to the work, which was printed over a five-year period. Bowdoin College's copy of the exceedingly scarce work was a gift of Thomas Walcutt, a graduate of Moor’s Indian Charity School and missionary to the St. Francis Indians (modern day Odanak), a division of the western Abenaki near Montreal.
Josselyn, John. New-Englands Rarities Discovered. Printed for G. Widdowes, 1672.
A first edition of the earliest natural history of New England, this work identifies plants and their herbal and medical uses by the Algonquian speaking people of what would become Massachusetts and Maine. An English traveler to New England, Josselyn visited for the first time in 1638 and returned in 1663. In addition to describing the flora and fauna of the region, Josselyn included a 'Description of an Indian Squa' with an accompanying poem, praising black beauty above white, and in his chronology of events in New England, he notes the publication of the first edition of John Eliot’s Algonquian Bible.