My First Arrowhead

Found my first arrowhead yesterday. It was in a general area where there has been at least four thousand years of Indian activity. I've been researching it lately for a project. It's a translucent stone. Could be quartz which is ubiquitous around here, or it could be Ramah chert from Labrador, artifacts of which have been found hereabouts, though very rarely. If it is, the implications are extremely interesting. I have to investigate it a bit further.

Most adults I've talked to have found an arrowhead sometime in their lives, but I hadn't until yesterday. Naturally, this called for a celebration.


Googling "Ramah Chert," I learned a fluted point made of the material was discovered twenty years ago in Vermont, but only recently determined to have come from Northern Labrador and dated at 10,000 years old. That boggles the mind. Here's are images of that point from Dr. Stephen Loring:

Artifacts of a Vermont chert have been found locally, as well as some made of materials from New Hampshire, New York State, and Mount Kineo on Moosehead Lake in Maine. I'll post more on this in summer sometime, after I've had a chance to do more research. This is how history geeks like me recreate.

That Old Summer Feeling

Didn’t set my alarm this Tuesday morning, but I was still up at five. Except for one summer project, teaching is all done for me until September. Having worked in the same community for thirty-two years, people I meet every day know my primary profession. “On vacation now?” they say.

“From one thing,” I answer. Most don’t know I’ve always worked other jobs because I couldn’t raise a family on just a teacher salary. Now that my children are grown and gone I could live on it, but I’ve come to like my sidelines too and I don’t want to give them up. I haven’t had a whole summer off since before I started a paper route in grammar school, but I have a more flexible schedule during summer and I do get away more often.

This year I’m heading to Cape Breton Island for a week with my wife. I’ve never been to Nova Scotia and I’m looking forward to it. She’ll walk the beaches while I explore the island. There’s a local Maine history angle there in the sieges of Fortress Louisbourg during the 18th century. Joseph Frye, founder of Fryeburg, fought there with other members of his family and one was killed. British forces later destroyed the stone fortification but it’s been rebuilt by the Canadian government. It’s said to have rivaled Gibraltar in it’s time. I’ve been reading about it for years and I’m anxious to take it in. That should consume a day or two. Another thing that interests me about Cape Breton is the Celtic flavor there. Settlers from the Scottish Highlands came in the early 1800s and Irish from Newfoundland a bit later. That mix and its relative isolation since has incubated interesting blends of music and dance, and I want to take in as much of both as I can. The land itself is wild and beautiful coming down to the sea sharply as it does, and that should inspire lots of photographs.
One of my best hours last summer was spent photographing Arctic Terns flying and diving for their lunch in Georgetown, Maine with my then brand-new Nikon D-60. Looking at those shots brings me right back there.

In August, I’ll visit Cape Cod for a week in Osterville. Haven’t been there for many years and I want to see what’s changed. I’ve never been to Nantucket and I’ll take a ferry there for a day. Been reading much about whaling the last few years and I feel like I know the island already - as it was in the 19th century anyway. I wonder how much of that remains. Haven’t been to Provincetown for forty-two years and I know that’s changed a lot. Do I dare go? Maybe.
In the interim, I’ll be talking to a group of people in Bridgton about my columns. I’m told to expect both friend and foe at a “brown bag lunch” in the Bridgton Municipal Building on Wednesday, July 29th. Should be fun.

Whenever I can fit it in, I want to explore locations where Indians settled in Lovell and North Fryeburg via kayak. It’s an old interest and I’ve been doing more research on it lately. I found my first arrowhead a couple of weeks ago, and with all the rain we’ve had this spring I may find a few more along the banks - now that I know better where to look.

Then there are the hills of western Maine which are endlessly fascinating. There are still some to the north and east I haven’t explored, but I’ve been studying maps of old settlements there within 20-25 miles of Lovell. There’s hostility to ATVs on back roads to the south of Lovell, but not so much to the north. I have leg problems and I need to use a 4-wheeler to get back into abandoned neighborhoods which abound in the hills of northern New England.

Then there’s the honey-do list - rather short this year, thank God. I’ve finally reached a point in life where I don’t think I have to do everything myself anymore. Now I actually hire people for the bigger projects and do only the little ones that take a day or two. I had to force myself to have fun last summer and it was difficult at the beginning. This year it’s coming easier. School is out and I’m remembering how I used to feel as a boy with time to play.

It feels good.

Prehistory of My Place - Part 1

I want to understand everything, but with a tight travel budget and less than a century of life-expectancy to study, I can only try to understand everything in the area where I live - within, say, a twenty-mile radius of Lovell. I want to know how the mountains formed, how old they are, what’s inside them, and what grows on them. I want to know why the rivers and streams flow as they do, how the lakes and ponds and swamps formed. I want to know what’s under the ground I walk on and how it got there. I want to know why it rains and snows and freezes and thaws as it does, and understand the glaciers that scraped it all. And, I want to know about the people who have lived here since the last time those glaciers melted.

The best guess is that the first people arrived when two-mile-thick glaciers last receded from here in southern Oxford County around 11,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of human activity found so far is in the form of stone tools from approximately 9000 years ago on the shores of Long Lake in Bridgton, as well as Bear Pond in Waterford, Kezar Pond and Lovewell Pond in Fryeburg and in other locations in the Fryeburg area. The earliest evidence of human activity so far discovered in Lovell proper is about 4000 years old along the shore of Kezar Lake.Old Course of Saco River Fryeburg Harbor

One of the most intriguing bits of evidence - though of unknown antiquity - was a skeleton uncovered in the year 2000 near Pleasant Point on Kezar Lake. Norris Bennett was digging a ditch with his backhoe to sink some water lines when he found a human skeleton. It’s rare for bones to survive long in Maine’s acidic soils. My daughter, Annie, was working there at the time and told me a forensic archaeologist guessed that, because of skull’s shape, the bones might be those of an adolescent Indian female. They went to the University of Maine Orono and I’ve heard little about them since.

Last summer I mentioned the skeleton to Dr. Arthur Spiess, Senior Archaeologist for the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. He’d never heard of it, though he’d been to Lovell on at least two other occasions in the performance of his work. That surprised me, but he indicated that when archaeologists uncover bones likely to be Native American, they usually avoid going any further. He didn’t say much more, but I got the impression that it was because of potential objections from modern Indian groups who would object to people digging up their ancestors.Test Pit in Fryeburg Harbor

It’s questionable whose ancestors they might belong to if the bones should date from 4000-9000 years ago. Little is known for sure about who those people would have been, and any claim they would be ancestors of today’s Abenaki is weak. Evidence that old of human activity in Ireland, for example, is probably not from my Celtic ancestors who seem to have arrived on the Emerald Isle only about 2500 years ago. We simply don’t know much about where those early Lovell residents (or visitors) came from or where they may have gone.

A lot of archaeological research in this area is confidential. I’ve had to promise to keep it that way in order to learn several things and that constrains what I can write here, so I’ll only refer to them obliquely. That goes against my nature, but a promise is a promise.

The Maine Archaeological Society Bulletin for Fall, 1998 contained an article by William F. Rombola entitled: “The Ceramic Period in the Upper Saco River Drainage: An Analysis of the Helen Leadbetter Collection.” Helen was the most knowledgeable of the many amateur archaeologists in our area and had the most extensive collection of artifacts found in Fryeburg, Lovell, Bridgton, Hiram, Conway and Ossipee. She was often accompanied by her friend, Eve Barbour, and both have since passed on. Though Rombola’s article focused mostly on Helen’s ceramic artifacts, he included some analysis of her lithic (stone) artifacts as well and those intrigue me most.

Rombola says the oldest artifacts in the Leadbetter collection date from the “Early Archaic Period” which would mean they are among the oldest artifacts found anywhere in Maine so far - 7000-9000 years old. Most are made of hornfels, which Rombola says “is prevalent in New Hampshire and southern Maine” and usually gray/black. Other artifacts are made of material from Mount Jasper in Berlin, NH, from the Moosehead Lake region, the Munsungan Lake region, the Champlain valley, from upstate New York, and several other sources. There was one piece made of the most intriguing material - found only in one location: Ramah Bay in northern Labrador. It’s a material favored by the “Maritime Archaic” or “Red Paint People” who lived in northeastern North America, including northern Labrador, more than 7000 years ago. Though I don’t know where Helen Leadbetter found her one piece, I was very lucky to find a small arrowhead made of Ramah chert last June near the Kezar Lake outlet dam in Fryeburg Harbor.My Ramah Chert Arrowhead

Part 2 next week.