A Native American born in the 1600s has thrown my workweek into chaos. Since the appearance of my recent column on St. Aspinquid, and a follow-up editorial in the Portsmouth Herald, I’ve had some doubts. I thought I’d put the story to rest, but a researcher in Nova Scotia says otherwise. He tells me that St. Aspinquid, whom I call the "Imaginary Saint", may have been real after all. This Canadian historian has written a so-far-unpublished essay that is richly documented. I have a copy. I’ve run it by a couple of local scholars who are impressed, but still dubious. I just spent over an hour on the phone with the author, and he makes a lot of sense. (Continued below)
Nobody knows, but we keep looking
This might have been just another esoteric debate between amateur historians, one theory Vs another in a fuzzy world of research where conclusions are hard to come by. What makes it news – the thing reporters call the news "hook" or "peg" on which the story hangs – is the ongoing question of whether to move a pile of rocks at the top of Mt. Agamenticus in York. Some consider the rocks a memorial or even a burial site for St. Aspinquid, whoever he was. Others think it is just a pile of rocks. I tend toward the middle ground. I don’t believe it is the gravesite of a celebrated Native American, but I do think it has great significance all the same.
After talking to Donald Awalt in Halifax, I’m convinced that his version of the story deserves telling. He offers a fascinating theory that Aspinquid is really the historical Abenquid, a Micmac leader and preacher reportedly killed at Pemaquid. That’s a long way to carry and canoe a dead body to bury it on Agamenticus, but it isn’t impossible.
Walt worked at a park in Nova Scotia that has a rock formation called "The Cathedral of St. Aspinquid". He dug into the story from his geographical point. I dug into it from mine. Without the Internet and the rock pile in York, we might never have compared notes.
This is very complicated stuff. Awalt’s theory requires tracking down interpreting Micmac (or Mi’kmaq) oral tradition and assigning actual dates and places to legends that are four centuries old. It requires digging into the life of a French Jesuit who, as the "Warrior Priest" longed to massacre the hated British settlers around here. It requires looking into Native American traditions very different from our own, and treating them with respect. It requires understanding that the 17th century around here was completely different from life as we know it. And it requires taking leaps of faith across huge gaps in the historical record. This is all made more difficult by the layers of local fiction that have attached themselves to the story like barnacles. We now need to peel away the encrusted comparison between Aspinquid and the Pennacook leader Passaconaway. The comparison never really made sense, but it was, until now, the best theory we had.
Awalt’s hypothesis, so far, appears to be better than the one we have. My job now is to boil it all down into a sweet pudding that can be easily consumed by the busy readers of the local newspaper. You can look for that piece on December 15. Awalt’s theory may not make life easier on the Parks and Recreation Dept at York, but it may bring us closer to the truth than we have been in centuries.
© 2008 copyright J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.
Seacoast History Blog #18
