Old John Neptune and Other Maine Indian Shamans

by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm

Overview

Maine author Fannie Hardy Eckstorm was a personal friend of the tribe, having worked with them with her fur trader father. John Neptune was the Governor and Hereditary Chief of the Penobscot Tribe, as well as shaman to his people. In this classic study, first published in 1945, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm traces Neptune’s life and his ancestors, discusses the history and politics of the Penobscot tribe, and describes their spiritual beliefs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839744754
Publisher:	Barakaldo Books
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	215
Sales rank:	943,667
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm (1865-1946) was an American writer, ornithologist and folklorist. Her extensive personal knowledge of her native state of Maine secured her place as one of the foremost authorities on the history, wildlife, cultures, and lore of the region.

Born Fannie Pearson Hardy in Brewer, Maine, her father, Manly Hardy, was a fur trader, naturalist, and taxidermist. Her granduncle was painter Jeremiah Pearson Hardy. She attended Bangor High School, then was sent in the winter of 1883 to Abbot Academy, a college preparatory school in Andover, Massachusetts. She went on to Smith College and graduated in 1888, having founded the college chapter of the National Audubon Society.

From 1889 to 1891, Hardy served as the superintendent of schools in Brewer, becoming the first woman to hold such a position in Maine. In 1891 she wrote a series of articles examining Maine game laws for Forest and Stream magazine.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Eckstrom’s writing career began to gain momentum. She contributed to magazines such as Bird-Lore, the immediate predecessor of The Audubon Magazine, and the Auk, before publishing her first two books, The Bird Book and The Woodpeckers. Her next book, The Penobscot Man (1904) celebrates the lumbermen and river drivers that populated her childhood, and David Libbey: Penobscot Woodsman and River Driver (1907) creates an in-depth profile of one of those men.

In 1908 Eckstorm founded Brewer’s public library while continuing to publish articles and critiques. She also contributed to Louis C. Hatch’s Maine, A History (1919), published Minstrelsy of Maine (1927) with Mary Winslow Smyth, and worked on British Ballads from Maine (1929) with Smyth and Phillips Barry. She also wrote prolifically on the language and culture of Maine’s Native Americans.

Eckstorm was married to Reverend Jacob A. Eckstorm, and the couple had two children.

She died on December 31, 1946 in Brewer, Maine.