Dan Ennis was 4 years old when his family moved from the Tobique Reserve in New Brunswick to Caribou, Maine. He has been afraid of water ever since.
At age 79, Ennis remembers vividly the night his father Louis, his older brother Gordon and his mother Louise carrying his infant brother John, were loaded into a canoe to be paddled by a friend across the Tobique River, leaving their home and Maliseet culture behind.
“Our canoe must have been loaded down really good because from my seat on the floor of the canoe I could look directly over the rim of the canoe and see the waves dancing at my eye level as we cruised over the waters,” he wrote in an essay called “My Fear of Water and the Indian Agent.”
“Between the darkness and the pitch black water looking me right in the eye, and the memory still fresh in my mind about dad’s encounter with the Indian Agent, I was petrified and speechless with fear as we made our way across the Tobique River in our little canoe. And for me, a scared 4-year-old child, it was if we were heading into complete blackness and on into oblivion.”
It was March 1941. The Indian Agent was on vacation. Louis Ennis needed to cut wood on the reserve to heat his home, which wasn’t allowed without the permission of the Indian Agent. “The Indian Agent gave orders on when to cut wood and how much, and it was never enough for the [entire] winter,” Dan said.
When the agent returned, he learned that Louis had cut wood without his permission.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “From the reservation to Caribou, part 1,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Kathryn Olmstead, please follow this link to the BDN online.
