Lakes Region front page > Project Contents > Report #I-6

In what follows, please remember the geographical realities. Rather far to the north, the Crooked River ( which joins the Songo River just before the Songo flows into Sebago Lake) starts in Songo Pond in Bethel ME, very close to the Androscoggin River. Also, the southwest shore of Sebago Lake is very close to Steep Falls on the Saco River. Therefore, both Amarascoggin and Saco Natives had easy access to the Sebago-Presumpscot drainage basin - but did they live in Sebagoland?

Also please remember that in the primary-source records, the latest-listed / most-recent sakamo (chief) of the Sebagoland area is Polin. Although Polin sounds like a French-influenced name (even in different spellings & dialects), no primary-source record that I know of gives him any other name, especially an Indian-sounding name - despite what at least a couple of recent publications tell us.

According to official Massachusetts Colony records, in August 1739 "Polin the Sachem [sakamo] of the Pesumpscot [note spelling] Indians" was in Boston to complain to Governor Jonathan Belcher that "the River, which I [Polin] belong too, is barred over [dammed tightly] in Sundry Places", which stopped fish-migrations, and therefore prevented sustenance-fishing by the Native community*, contrary to prior agreement for fish-ways.

Despite new promises then, not enough (if anything) corrective was done thereafter, by the intruding English settlers on the Presumpscot (especially by dams-owner Col Thomas Westbrook). So, a decade later, a primary-source document (dated 8 October) about a 1749 treaty conference states that "Pooran" [Polin in another dialect] was by then a chief of (& likely also at) "St.Francois"(Odanak / Arosaguntacook) [MeHlSy Collections S1V4:147]. This indicates that Polin had moved to the major French refugee-center for the Abenaki peoples, in southern Quebec.

Five years after that, according to official Massachusetts Colony records, Governor William Shirley complained to his council (15 July 1754) of "the many Outrages & Hostilities suppos'd to be done by one Polan an Arssagunticook Indian" [MeHlSy Baxter Manuscripts V24:17]. Clearly, Polin was retaliating from his French power-base, on the continually-intrusive English frontier settlements, for at least the Presumpscot fishery interference, if for nothing else.

Two years later on, according to several secondary-sources (but no primary-source that I yet know of), Chief Polin supposedly led the war-party against English settlements in Sebagoland, and on 14 May 1756 was shot dead by Stephen Manchester of New Marblehead (now Windham ME). [Click for note 9]

With this 1756 event, the Polin of History is replaced by the Polin of Folklore-- and it is Whitefolks' folklore, not Indian folklore. Polin seems not to be widely remembered in Wabanaki traditions as a freedom-fighter for his people. At best, Whites cast Polin as a forced-to-be-villain*; at worst, he has been cast as a skulking Bloody Savage who impeded White Supremacy in Sebagoland.

In 1841, poet John Greenleaf Whittier artfully described Chief Polin's burial (by his retreating warriors) under a lone beech tree, in "Funeral Tree of the Sokokis"-using the wrong name for the Saco River Natives who Whittier assumed were Polin's people. It is likely that Whittier based his poem on the detailed account in Williamson's (1832:V2:322) HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MAINE, which Williamson footnotes only to "MS.Let.of John Waterman, Esq." Access to that Waterman document, &/or learning Waterman's connection to Polin's burial, would be the only means of assessing the validity of the descriptions that both Williamson and Whittier have published.

Regional historians of Sebagoland have informed me that an Indian burial has been dug-up near Songo Lock on Songo River, and thought to be Polin's remains. Supposedly at least the head-bones were kept by the finder(s). And supposedly the mandible (jaw-bone) was huge - which may indicate a pituitary gland disorder called acromegaly, that causes giant-sizing of various body-parts. Those consequences of acromegaly could be considered a supernatural / spiritual endowment, and bestow elite status on the individual, and, if hereditary in his lineage, on all his kinfolk. Therefore, this burial's remains may very well be those of a Native leader - but is it Polin? Someday these possibilities may lead to real connections with Polin, but for now they are pure speculation - and so the last warrior-chief of Sebagoland is ensconced in mystery, not history.

To Part B: Chief Polin's People

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