Wabanaki Timeline

Wabanaki Entrepreneurs: Performers and Crafters

Surrounded by a growing cash economy and no longer able to survive on hunting and gathering, Wabanaki women and men struggled to get by while trying to hold on to at least some of their traditional liberty. Avoiding the miserable confines of factory jobs requiring long hours for low wages, they worked independently making and selling crafts, especially moosehide moccasins used in logging camps and woodsplint baskets used for harvesting and storage. Most Wabanaki men continued to hunt to feed their families. Many took up logging and river driving, which allowed them to spend their days in the familiar setting of the forest. Some began farming small reservation plots to earn government crop bounties.

Some Wabanaki women and men capitalized on white society's growing romantic fascination with the primitive wilderness that was being destroyed by "progress." Marketing themselves as Indian doctors or performers, they took to the road as entertainers in various venues, including medicine shows. Wabanakis who made a living as small-town entertainers were treated as backward, county fair material. Those who succeeded in the greater venues of Wild West shows and films found themselves forced to portray Plains Indian stereotypes wildly popular with the American public.

Quite a few Wabanaki men became hunting and fishing guides, and many women began making fancy woodsplint and sweetgrass baskets designed specifically to suit the Victorian tastes of well-to-do visitors. Most Wabanaki ventured to Maine's coastal and lakeside resorts each summer to market their wares. Everyone knew that sales increased if one dressed in Indian costume or had their children perform an Indian dance or song. By the end of the century, most Wabanaki households in the state depended on basketry as their primary source of income—and women were the major makers and marketers of the craft. Despite hard work, many suffered from poverty.