Imaginary Indians: Maine’s 1920 Centennial

At Maine’s 1920 centennial in Portland, Passamaquoddy families from Washington County established an encampment at Deering Oaks Park. Visitors came to watch craft demonstrations and buy baskets. The setting offered a revealing view of the celebration: people whose communities were very much alive were being presented to spectators as part of Maine’s past. Photographs and descriptions preserved by the Maine Historical Society help us look beyond that presentation.

Ten days at Deering Oaks

The Maine Centennial Exposition ran from June 26 through July 5, 1920. Its events promoted the state’s products, agriculture and industry. At the park, Passamaquoddy Governor William Neptune and his family joined other participants in what organizers called an “Indian Village.” The Historical Society’s records identify adults and children, including basket dealer Sabattus Lola and basketmaker Sabattus Mitchell. Their names matter: this was a gathering of individual people, families and skilled workers.

Attendance carried a cost. Neptune told the local newspaper that the trip took participants away from fishing and basketmaking. Selling crafts to visitors did not erase the work and income they had sacrificed to be there. The Historical Society’s centennial exhibit preserves those concerns alongside the photographs.

The past visitors expected to see

The earlier “Imaginary Indians” essay in Maine.com’s history collection examined this encounter through the Colonial Revival: a movement that romanticized earlier American life. It connected tourism and popular entertainment with simplified images of Native people. One detail in that archived essay unsettles the picture of a community frozen in time: Neptune brought a Victrola to the encampment and listened to music after visitors departed.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian explains how generic Native imagery spread through popular culture, including college mascots in the late 1920s and 1930s. It also warns that costumes and generalized depictions can suggest Native cultures exist only in the past. That perspective helps us read centennial photographs without mistaking a staged attraction for a complete account of a people.

Basketmaking as work and creativity

Basket sales belonged to a much longer story of adaptation. In an interview with the World Intellectual Property Organization, Penobscot basketmaker Theresa Secord describes both practical baskets used for hunting and fishing and decorative baskets made for sale. As wealthy visitors summered in Maine during the nineteenth century, basketmakers developed designs for that market. Their work combined inherited knowledge, artistic decisions and the practical need to earn a living.

The tradition continued through changing markets. The Farnsworth Art Museum documents Florence Nicolar Shay and Leo Shay’s Penobscot basket business, begun beside Route 1 in Lincolnville in 1930. Their family’s story shows how roadside commerce could support both household livelihoods and the continuation of basketmaking skills.

A living community

The Sipayik Tribal Government describes the Passamaquoddy, or Peskotomuhkati, as a people rooted in their ancestral homeland for thousands of years. Today, their three self-governing communities in Maine and New Brunswick maintain political, cultural and family connections. Reading the centennial with that continuity in mind changes the question: whose lives did the celebration reveal, and whose lives did its imagery obscure?

About this article

This is a newly written article revisiting the subject of “Imaginary Indians,” formerly hosted on Maine.com’s history subdomain. The archived page was part of The Way Life Should Be: Tourism, Romance and Reality in Early Modern Maine, an exhibition created by the Maine History Gallery at the Center for Maine History. The original essay’s text and images have not been reproduced here.