CHAPTER XVII 

 A ROMANCE OF "OUR LAKE" 



"Love, therefore, and tongue- tied simplicity in least, speak moat." 



-MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 



IN 1834, Joe Sebattis, his wife Nakomis, his two 

 grown sons Frank and Pete, and his lovely daughter 

 Anita, lived in a comfortable log hut on " The Point " 

 at the mouth of the Tobique River, just above where 

 this impetuous mountain stream rushes into the upper 

 St. Johns. Joe and his family belonged to the Maliset 

 tribe of Indians, the aboriginal proprietors of both the 

 Tobique and St. Johns systems of waters, with their 

 many thousands of acres of rich wooded lands, that 

 fairly teemed with wild and noble game. This tribe 

 subsisted mainly upon the fishing and hunting to be 

 found in the Tobique valley, but many of the most 

 venturesome of the tribe sometimes crossed to the other 

 side of the St. Johns and took long hunts, either up the 

 Aroostook River three miles above, or up the rugged 

 Allegash, which enters the St. Johns one hundred and 

 five miles northeast of the mouth of the Tobique. The 

 squaws made baskets, mats, moccasins and snow-shoes, 

 which found a market either among the passing 

 lumbermen or farther down the river in the cities of 

 Fredericton or St. Johns. The tribe boasted of having 



