Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
B
eing the easternmost of the United States, Maine is the place where
the rays of the rising sun hit America first. For years, exactly where
the dawn can be seen from first has been in dispute. Some claim it is mile-
high Katahdin in Baxter State Park. Others claim it is Cadillac Mountain
in Acadia National Park along the coast.
In fact, it all depends on the time of year. No one place can rightfully lay
ultimate claim to the honor. On some days the sun can be seen first from
Mars Hill in Aroostook County; on others an observer in the lighthouse at
West Quoddy Head, the nation's easternmost point, would be first.
Native Americans
The fact that the sun rises first somewhere over this part of North Amer-
ica was undoubtedly understood by the area's earliest inhabitants -
Native Americans known by other tribes as
Wabanaki
, “those living at
sunrise.” The modern English spelling of the overall name for the tribes
who called Maine home is
Abnaki
, or Abenaki. The more literal transla-
tion of the name is now “people of the dawn.”
The ancestors of these native peoples, whose tribes sported names still
used in geography today - the Penobscots, Passamaquoddies, the Sacos,
Kennebecs, and Micmacs - were the mysterious
Red Paint People
.
Scant evidence of their lives has been found.
What is generally known is that later Indian settlements were found
both along the coast, where shell heaps, called middens, were fairly com-
mon, and in the interior, where the area's maze-like network of lakes,
ponds and streams allowed routine travel by birch-back canoe.
Europeans
The earliest contact between European explorers and native peoples sent
the French and English back to the continent with tales of great riches
and of
Norumbega
; a legendary city of gold. The true wealth, of course,
lay in millions of acres of virgin timber, rivers and bays overflowing with
fish, and rich fertile land.
There is no end of speculation that Norse explorers were the first white
people to visit Maine. A Viking coin uncovered at an excavation of a
Native American site near Blue Hill earlier in this century gave backers
of that theory hope. Most experts, however, believe the coin arrived at the
