1188 
FOREST AND STREAM 
GOVERNOR OF THE TRIBE OF PENOBSCOT 
JOSEPH FRANCIS, A FAMOUS MAINE GUIDE AND WOODSMAN 
HAS PASSED TO HIS REWARD—HIS REMARKABLE CAREER 
By Fannie Hardy Eckstorm. 
F RIENDS of his have asked me to write 
some reminiscences of Joseph Francis, for¬ 
mer governor of the Penobscot tribe of In¬ 
dians and the most notable man among them in 
recent years. 
Though complying gladly, I feel that I must 
write chiefly for them—strangers could hardly 
know him now. This is a gentle bidding to them 
to set the doors of memory ajar. Each one of 
them knows that the story must be incomplete 
without just what he alone could supply. So I 
do not undertake to tell the story of Joe’s life. 
Out of a lifetime’s recollections I gather a few 
fragments for his friends to add to their store. 
To his tribesmen Joseph Francis stood for solid 
success. By his service as governor, by his re¬ 
peated elections to the State Legislature as their 
representative, by his accumulation of property 
and by his reputation for superiority, he was a 
man of mark among them. The men who went 
with him in the woods thought of him as an 
unique personality; they found his wit cheering, 
his health of mind infectious, his philosophy sane 
and corrective. To myself, in addition to an 
immemorial friendliness, he was a part of that 
old order of the woods which has passed away, 
and to speak of him at all now recalls Odysseus 
trying to consult the shade of Tiresias and hold¬ 
ing back with his naked sword the ghosts that 
crowded about begging for recognition. Others 
can not see them—they knew only Joe—but these 
dead men whom he worked with and hunted with 
and lived with, are so real to me that it is hard 
to deny them recognition. 
Though Joe was living yesterday his world 
was gone. Even in his own town there were 
men who did not know him. Said one of them 
to one of Joe’s friends, before he was buried 
even, “Who was this Joe Francis? Why are 
the papers making such a fuss about a dead In¬ 
dian?” “Didn’t you know him?” asked the friend. 
“I’ve seen him. What about him?” “He was a 
Man,” replied the friend, unconsciously pronounc¬ 
ing his epitaph. 
It is by doctors and lawyers and clergymen 
and business men, the leaders in their own lines 
in large cities, that Joseph Francis will be most 
missed, as he was most appreciated. They are 
the ones who will most promptly say of him, “He 
was a Man.” They are the ones who met him on 
the ground of manhood equality and professed 
no superiority. To the friend who pronounced 
his epitaph, I said, “Did you ever know anyone 
who dared treat Joe as a servant?” He pon¬ 
dered a moment, and replied slowly, “I never did.” 
Those who knew him only in the prime of life, 
alert, courteous, self-possessed, intellectually 
keen, could not see behind him that neglected 
childhood, among a race regarded as inferior, 
without schooling, without scope for ambition. 
No child could start in the world with less, pro¬ 
vided it had health and sunshine. Like the myth¬ 
ical tribal hero of our Penobscots, Klose-kur- 
behl (the Glooscap of the Micmacs), the first 
created man, Joseph Francis was a “man-out-of¬ 
nothing.” Yet perhaps Booker T. Washington 
was the only other “man-out-of-nothing” of our 
own day to whom so many exclusive doors 
opened so gladly. 
Of Joe’s childhood I remember but one inci¬ 
dent. He was only a little Indian child, still 
hunting sepsisal, little birds, with a bow and ar¬ 
row as he “picked rocks” on ploughed land for 
my grandfather. One day, missing him from the 
field, my father went to look for him and found 
him asleep in the shade of a bush, the little bow 
and arrows lying beside him, and my father with¬ 
drew quietly, leaving the child to have his sleep. 
It was my father who got Joe his first place 
as guide. Some prominent clergyman had asked 
him to recommend an Indian guide. My father 
was urging Lewis Ketchum, the finest and ablest 
young man in the tribe and Joe’s cousin, to take 
the place. But Lewey proved obdurate. “I tell 
you what, Manly,” he replied with spirit, “there’s 
one thing I have crooked my elbow on, and that 
Joseph Francis in the Ceremonial Dress of His 
Tribe-An Exceptional Photo, as He 
Hated Fuss and Feathers. 
is that I won’t go guide for any ministers.” He 
told his reason. “And that fellow,” he concluded, 
“after eating up most of that girl’s luncheon, let 
her sit on the outside of the stage all the way to 
Greenville and never offered her his rubber coat, 
and she with nothing to protect her. I tell you 
I would like to oblige you, but I won’t go with 
a minister. Let Little Joe go; he can do it.” 
So Little Joe went, and if, as I believe, it was 
for the Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth, he made a 
lifelong friend. 
In some ways the early years of Joe’s life were 
not unfavorably placed. The Oldtown Indians, 
just changing from nomadic. to stationary life, 
felt the impulse toward self-improvement, and 
many among them < esired schools and good 
houses. Indian Island sixty years ago was not 
a decadent community. Then came the Civil War. 
The wages of "woodsmen and rivermen trebled 
and quadrupled. White woodsmen, not already 
in the army, were open to conscription. The In¬ 
dians alone (though they volunteered freely), 
could not be drafted, and being almost to a man 
expert and willing workers, they commanded 
high wages the year round. The premium which 
the war placed upon their labor made a group of 
the younger Indians, then in their twenties and 
thirties, into men who held themselves proudly. 
Somewhere I have a photograph of four of 
them, including Lewis Ketchum, Joe’s cousin, and 
Sebattis Shay (or Shea), Joe’s half-brother, 
which they presented to my father just after they 
had finished a season’s haying for him. They 
are dressed in the height of the vogue, satin and 
velvet brocaded waistcoats, long coats and gold 
watch-chains, a group of as able-looking men as 
could be found on Penobscot waters, whose 
clothes did not look too fine for them. 
So the Civil War taught Joe his value, and a 
particularly happy marriage, together with his 
friendships with men of high character, kept him 
from sinking below the level of his youth. In 
the late sixties Joe was married to the daughter 
of Governor Soccabasin Swasen, a man of prob¬ 
ity, wisdom and fine intelligence. I recollect my 
father saying that once during the sixties he met 
Governor Swasen in David Bugbee’s book-store 
and the governor’s first remark was: “What you 
t’ink, Manly, ’bout this Maximilian cornin’ to 
Mexico? We goin’ stand that? That contrary 
to Munroe Doctrine, don’t it?” His father-in- 
law was a great help to Joe. 
One of the solid achievements of Joe’s life 
was his building up a white-man’s home. In 
my father’s youth they had all lived in bark 
camps; in mine, all lived in houses; but the most 
of them still camped out in their houses. I have 
seen a best room, containing a tapestry carpet 
and haircloth furniture; but the carpet was 
rolled up in the middle of the floor, the chairs 
were herded about it, and the family received 
their guests squatting upon their heels. But 
away back in the seventies Joe Francis had a 
house which was well-ordered and immaculate. 
How young Joe was when he went to work 
on the river I do not know. I can not remem¬ 
ber when he was not counted an expert in all 
branches of woods and river work. In 1891 my 
father and I visited the West Branch Drive at 
Ripogenus and found him the head of the whole 
drive with about two hundred men under him, 
to be largely increased as the drive worked down. 
There was a clerk of the drive for accounts and 
correspondence; but the responsibility of getting 
over forty millions of logs down that difficult 
river fell upon Joe Francis. At the same time 
he was doing his share of boat and peavey work. 
One day when he told us to go down to the 
Little Arches and wait till he came with a crew 
to pick off a jam which had formed on the head 
of the island, we waited interminably. Then the 
logs began to run by, some cut with an axe, some 
broken, and we knew that he had had another 
jam on above. Then Joe and his men came 
swinging down the drivers’ path, peaveys clank¬ 
ing on shoulder, and Joe came up laughing. “Oh, 
Fannie, you just missed it,” cried he; “we had 
just the prettiest little middle jam on up above 
that you ever saw; and when she hauled we had 
to run just like sheep.” 
(Continued on Page 1200.) 
