The imminent execution of Timothy McVeigh has special meaning in Portland, though most residents don't even know it: The city is the site of the first federal execution, carried out in Bramhall Square in 1790.   About 3,000 to 4,000 people gathered on June 25, 1790, to witness the hanging of Thomas Bird, a sordid sailor from England who was convicted of piracy and killing a ship's captain off the coast of Africa.   His request for a presidential pardon was denied, the denial arriving by mail some time after he was put to death.   The federal court system was not yet organized when Bird and two fellow sailors were picked up in Cape Cove in Cape Elizabeth in July 1789. The U.S. Constitution had been ratified less than two years earlier, and it would be May 1790 before the federal District Court of Maine would convene for the first time. Bird was held in Portland's small jailhouse for nearly a year until his trial.   Bird had been a crew member on the Mary, a slave ship captained by John Connor.   Connor was a particularly wretched captain by all accounts, leaving a sick crew member on a deserted spit of land to die, and selling two mulatto crew members to another ship as slaves.   Several crew members eventually planned to make off with the ship, and Connor ended up dead along the way.   Bird confessed on the stand, but later denied responsibility. Because of tremendous public interest, the trial was held at First Parish Church, at the site of the newer church building of the same name near City Hall.     In his "dying speech" as reported in the Cumberland Gazette of July 26, 1790, a month after his hanging, Bird told the story of his difficult life from an early age. He gave this account of the events surrounding the murder:   "Jackson and Huddy waked me to help heave up the anchor, which we did short and let the mainsail. After the anchor was up, I asked them if they were not going to call up the captain. I was answered, I think by both of them, he was up as much as he ever would be," Bird said.   The crew sailed to Cape Cove in Cape Elizabeth and in time were captured and charged with piracy.   Bird admitted his ill ways: "I acknowledge I have lived an irreligious, wicked life, profaning the name of God, lying and drinking to excess," he said.   Because he could not read or write, he dictated his speech, and signed it with his mark.   "He tells the short and savage life of a sailor in the 18th century," said Herb Adams, a Portland historian. "But he had no other life."   Bird's lawyers, John Frothingham and William Symmes, appealed to President George Washington, seeking a pardon or stay of execution. They said the case was a particularly bizarre one, and this would be a "first opportunity for the United States to show mercy," said Adams.   In 1790, Bramhall Square was very much on the outskirts of Portland, a small town of 2,246 people. A handful of streets on the Portland peninsula made up the bulk of the city.   The West End, where Bramhall Square lies, was virtually barren of homes or other activity. Maine Street, now known as Congress Street, forked there. An original map from the era at the Center for Maine History shows gallows on the eastern end of the square.   William Barry of the history center said Bramhall Square would allow room for people to gather without destroying property, and since the square was at the entrance to the city, it was more accessible to people coming from other areas, such as Gorham and Brunswick and Pepperellborough (Saco).     A century later, in 1897, pieces of the gallows were found during construction of the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary at that corner. In the 1930s, timbers were found during road construction.   A marker at the nearby West End Fire Station commemorates the hanging. ############### PORTLAND -- How much we know about Timothy McVeigh, how little about Thomas Bird.           Hundreds of reporters were to converge on Terre Haute, Ind., this week for McVeigh's scheduled execution by lethal injection for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But what would have been the first federal execution since 1963 was delayed because the FBI failed to turn over documents to the defense.           McVeigh's life has been the focus of intense media scrutiny, but little is known about Bird, the first person executed by the United States.           Spectators gathered in Portland, near what is now Maine Medical Center, on the afternoon of June 25, 1790, when Bird was hanged for murder and piracy.           One month earlier, Bird was found guilty of fatally shooting Capt. John Conner, the master of a small merchant ship anchored off the coast of Africa.           The execution got short shrift in the local press.           "The number of spectators was judged to be not less than three thousand or four thousand, who generally paid a decent attention to the solemn religious exercises of the day," the weekly Cumberland Gazette said in its three-sentence account of the hanging.           Bird, who was British, and Hans Hanson, a Swede, were among those on board the 30-ton sloop Mary when it sailed into Casco Bay in the summer of 1789 to trade with residents of Cape Elizabeth.           The naval officer in charge of the port of Portland learned that the Mary was at anchor and set out to seize it, but the vessel slipped away before he could act. Two ships manned by volunteers set out in pursuit and brought the sloop into port.           Bird and Hanson were bound over for trial for murder and piracy. But after the new federal government took jurisdiction of maritime cases, the trial was held in U.S. District Court in May 1790.           It was said to be the first criminal trial in federal court for the District of Maine, then a part of Massachusetts.           "To gratify public curiosity, which was much excited, the trial was held in the meeting-house of the first parish," wrote William Willis in "The History of Portland."           After proceedings that lasted just one day, the jury found Bird guilty but acquitted the 19-year-old Hanson. Judge David Sewall pronounced sentence of death by hanging and set the execution date to be June 25 and the time between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.           The record of the trial, stored in the National Archives and Records Administration's regional office in Waltham, Mass., includes the charge, the verdict and other hand-written documents related to the case as well as a list of goods on board the Boston-based vessel.           The archive states that Bird was originally from Bristol, England, but his age is unknown and there is no record of how much time he had spent at sea.           Noting that life aboard merchant ships could be harsh, retired Portland historian William B. Jordan Jr. suggested that Bird may have been provoked by a tyrannical captain. "Some of the merchant captains were very hard cases," Jordan said. ############# Bob Norell strolls through Portland's Deering Oaks seeing what is, for the rest of us, unseen.   Where other visitors see grassy fields next to a four-lane highway, Norell sees the orchard where Indians and French soldiers attacked a settler's farm and the tidal marsh where British troops and their Indian allies fought them back.   "The majority of the battle was fought right here," Norell says, reaching his arm toward what looks like any old tennis court and playground.   Peaceful, green Deering Oaks was the site of a bloody battle in September 1689. It was the site of the area's first attack of the French and Indian War and the largest clash between natives and settlers ever fought on what is now Maine soil.   It also represents a forgotten chapter of Portland's history and Maine's heritage.   Norell, a Micmac Indian with infectious pride in his heritage, has set about reminding us. At the same time that he conjures its violent past, Norell envisions a Deering Oaks of the future that is designated as a historic battlefield and draws visitors to educational exhibits and American Indian crafts and gardens.   If Norell succeeds, it will be a rare memorial to an Indian heritage that Mainers have essentially ignored.   "It's a shame that with all this rich history it isn't being told," says Norell, who lives in Scarborough.   In 1689, the small settlement then known as Falmouth was in the middle of a three-way struggle between the English, the French and Native Americans. Indian tribes had divided allegiances, some allied with England and others with France, while at the same time maintaining sovereignty and trying to survive.   What is now Deering Oaks was a wooded area with a tidal estuary stretching from Back Cove into the area that now includes the tennis courts and playgrounds. Across the marsh, where Interstate 295 and the University of Southern Maine now sit, was Anthony Brackett's farm.   The English settlers of Falmouth found themselves at the front line of fighting with the French, who controlled eastern Maine.   On the morning of Sept. 21, with the smoke of campfires rising over Peaks Island and Casco Bay, about 400 Indians and French soldiers paddled a flotilla of canoes from Peaks into Back Cove. They attacked through Brackett's orchard, killing the farmer and setting fire to his farmhouse.   Maj. Benjamin Church of Plymouth led a force of English soldiers and Indians into the battle, his fighters spurred on by a bounty for the scalps of Indians they killed. Church was famous for defeating Indians in King Philip's War, and his account is the basis for most of what's known of the battle at Deering Oaks.   Church kept the invaders from reaching the town and, after crossing the salt marsh at low tide and nearly running out of ammunition, drove the attackers away.   On the English side, 10 died and 11 were wounded. It's unknown how many died among the Indians and French who attacked, according to Herbert Adams, a Portland historian who has researched the battle.   "It was a clash of three important cultures when the future of the country was very much in question," Adams said.   The spring following the battle, in fact, the French and Indians returned and wiped out the small town of Falmouth. English settlers didn't return for nearly 30 years.   Today, the only reminder of the 1689 battle -- a slate plaque once mounted on a tree in the park -- is now cracked and in storage.   Like most of the people who come to the Oaks to rest or play, or who drive past on the way to and from downtown Portland, Norell had never heard of the battle, until a couple years ago. He learned the history of the Oaks while excitedly uncovering his own personal heritage.   Norell, 53, was born in Caribou and put up for adoption. He found out only about 10 years ago why: His mother was single and she was a Micmac Indian, and both were big strikes against her new son, Norell says.   Norell's discovery led to a fascination with American Indian crafts, foods and culture. He now rattles off the contributions that Indians made to the modern culture: from maple syrup to herbs and vegetables. "I'm like a little kid in a candy store. I just can't get enough," he says, showing his bear claw necklace and a beaded leather watchband that he made himself.   He also has become frustrated at the lack of recognition for the contributions of American Indians, even in an age when Portland and other communities are celebrating racial diversity and new waves of immigrants.   While historical monuments and memorials abound in city and town squares, such visible reminders of Maine's nonwhite heritage are sparse. Arthur Spiess, an archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, could think of only one: a plaque in Norridgewock, where the Boston militia once wiped out an Abenaki village.   Maine history is generally taught beginning with the arrival of Europeans, he said, even though American Indian objects, such as canoes, and language, such as the word moose, remain part of our everyday lives.   Donna Loring, Penobscot tribal representative to the Maine Legislature, also is hard pressed to name a memorial.   "I think what they have in Maine is the big Indian in Freeport," Loring said, referring to a tall, nameless Route 1 landmark. "(Mainers) don't really equate Maine Indian history with their history. They don't realize it's a real integral part of Maine history."   Maine's Indian tribes also have played a role in this neglect, she said, by not calling attention to the shared heritage.   "It's only been within the last three or four years that the tribes have decided they are going to be more open and they're going to invite the general public back in," she said. "We sort of put a protective shell around ourselves so that we could survive, and now we realize that in order to survive, we have to reach out and educate people about us."   Loring has introduced a bill in the Legislature to do just that. It would require that Maine schools include Maine Indian studies in the standard history curriculum. The Education Committee voted to support the bill, which bodes well for passage when the measure reaches the floor of the Legislature.   Norell sees Deering Oaks as his way to reach out.   He wants to gather help from Maine's tribes, historians and residents to have the park designated as a national historic battlefield. He also wants the story of the battle to be presented to visitors of the park, perhaps with signs and maps.   Norell envisions crafts exhibits, a garden of native American plants and American Indian foods for sale in the concession stand. "I can see native storytelling in the park," he says. "I can see schoolkids coming down here to learn."   Norell said he found little awareness or enthusiasm in his first contacts with city officials and park advocates. One pointed out to Norell that the city has prohibited any new monuments because of the difficulty of mowing grass around them. A recently completed restoration plan for the park included no physical recognition of the battle.   He is finding some support, however.   Adams, the historian and a longtime advocate for the park, has tried to draw attention to the battle in the past. "It's time to commemorate our common American heritage," he said.   At City Hall, the idea has intrigued Portland's director of multicultural affairs, Rachel Talbot Ross.   Talbot Ross admits she never heard the story of the battle before Norell approached her this spring. Now she plans to help guide Norell through the political process.   "I was born and raised in Portland, not too far from Deering Oaks, and this was not part of my education," she said. "I have a 7-year-old growing up near the park and would like that to be part of his education and his appreciation for the park."   Norell vows to succeed, drawing on the words and the spirit of ancestors.   "This is from the heart. I will be silent no more forever," he said, standing on the forgotten battlefield. "If I have to do it alone, this will be my stand, my battle at Deering Oaks."