The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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‘ [414] John Boniton outlawed, and incapable of any of his Majesty's laws, and proclaimed him a rebel.’ （Court Records of the Province, 1645.) In 1651, he bade defiance to the laws of Massachusetts, and was again outlawed. He acted independently of all law and authority; and hence, doubtless, his burlesque title of ‘the Sagamore of Saco,’

which has come down to the present generation in the following epitaph:—

Here lies Boniton, the Sagamore of Saco;
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.

By some means or other, he obtained a large estate. In this poem, I have taken some liberties with him, not strictly warranted by historical facts, although the conduct imputed to him is in keeping with his general character. Over the last years of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even the manner of his death is uncertain. He was supposed to have been killed by the Indians; but this is doubted by the able and indefatigable author of the History of Saco and Biddeford.— Part I. p. 115.
Note 14, page 359. Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or bog, called the ‘Heath,’ in Saco, containing thirteen hundred acres. On this brook, and surrounded by wild and romantic scenery, is a beautiful waterfall, of more than sixty feet.

Note 15, page 361. Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher on Martha's Vineyard; for a biography of whom the reader is referred to Increase Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians, 1726. The following is related of him: ‘One Lord's day, after meeting, where Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came in a Powwaw very angry, and said, “I know all the meeting Indians are liars. You say you don't care for the Powwaws; ” then calling two or three of them by name, he railed at them, and told them they were deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all the meeting Indians, if they set about it. But Hiacoomes told him that he would be in the midst of all the Powwaws in the island, and they should do the utmost they could against him; and when they should do their worst by their witchcraft to kill him, he would without fear set himself against them, by remembering Jehovah. ’