In a Belmar Retrospective, published in 1978, Grace Roper indicated that “Indians were encamped at F Street”.…as late as 1887 under Cheif Masta”. Could that be? Most Lenni Lappe were driven from our state by 1802.
I decided to look at the record, and indeed many summers from the late 1880s until the 1930s, there are newspaper reports of a group of ‘Canadian Indians’, coming for the summer and engaging in traditional basket weaving and selling trinkets to the tourists of Belmar. The stories used the word Wigwam, an Abenaki word for house. The Abenaki are from Quebec.
A tribe of the Algonquin nation, the Abenaki, were part of the Wabanaki peoples of New England, the Canadian Maritimes and Eastern Quebec. After the American Revolution, they resettled to the north on the Saint-François River in a Quebec town called Odanak. The Algonquins and Iroquois warred for most of the 1600s over beaver hunting territory, and then took opposite sides in the French and Indian war of 1754-1763, with the Abenaki on the French side.
Traditional basket weaving was a source of income for the community, with groups traveling south into the US to sell them (They did not recognize the artificial border through their territory).
In the late Victorian era, as tourism spread to the masses, the traditional baskets crafted by the Abenaki were sold in souvenir stands in many resort locations, including Lake George NY, Ongonquit Me, Saranac Lake NY and Belmar NJ. The Belmar group was led by Chief H. L. Masta.
Chief H. L. Masta
Pierre-Paul Masta Osunkhirhine, later known as Henry Lorne Masta was born in 1853 on the Abenaki Reservation. He attended Sabrevois College St. Johns Quebec and was instructed in Latin and Greek. He was also fluent in French and English, in addition to his native language. He was a schoolmaster at the Odenac Protestant school and served as the elected chief and member of the tribal council of the Abenaki. There are many newspaper references to Chief H.L. Masta arriving to “Set up his Wigwam on F Street”
Baskets from the Smithsonian Collection 1904
The baskets, woven by hand, are made from hand-split black ash trees and sweetgrass. They took on all shapes, sizes and uses. They became so popular, they were sold via catalog. Today they are rare, as few artists still work in the trade, but they command premium prices for their artistic and cultural value. The older pieces from Masta’s time are museum pieces. The Hudson Museum in Maine has a large collection from various Wabinaki tribes, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC produced a book in 1904 on the craft. The photo below is of Masta’s wife Caroline Masta at Belmar.
The photo was taken by Herbert Rowland in 1902. “Caroline Masta, an Abenaki Indian woman from Pierreville, Canada, seated in her humble laboratory at Belmar, New Jersey. Her materials are of black ash (Fraxinusnigra) and sweet grass (Savastana odorata). The former has been worked out by machinery in Canada, and is piled up around her; the latter is gathered and braided by her relatives and sent to her all ready for the last step in manufacture. This Indian woman conducts thriving business, not being able to make up ware as fast as possible as there is demand for it."
Masta continued to bring Abenaki weavers to Asbury Park, Long Branch, and Belmar each summer. Caroline passed away in 1926, and her daughter Marie Adelaide Masta continued to own stands at the shore up until at least 1935. The Great Depression negatively impacted business, and following WWII, in which many First Nations people served, cheap plastic containers relegated the baskets to artwork vs. practical use. Chief H.L. Masta lived until age 90. In 1932 when he was 77, he wrote a book to help future generations understand the Abenaki titled Abenaki Indians, Legends, Grammar, and Placenames.
In the forward to the book, A. Irving Hallawell, the foremost American anthropologist and professor at UPenn wrote, “It is inevitable that in another generation there will be still fewer speakers of the St. Francis Abenaki language so that this little book, as time goes on, will embody the crystallization of this native American tongue by one whose generation marks the passing of the period when it still retained a great deal of its aboriginal vigor.”
The Abenaki still live in Odanak with 2,747 members as of 2021, and about 10,000 claiming Abenaki ancestry. The Musée des Abénakis offers historical and contemporary testimony on Abenaki culture https://museeabenakis.ca/en/