Maine History Online

By the middle of the 17th century the Abenaki were living in a nightmarish landscape shaped by conflict, disease, and alcohol, and they turned to the missionaries for help and reassurance.

After the cessation of hostilities in Europe, the 1713 Treaty of Portsmouth quickly brought peace to the Maine frontier. By this time it was apparent that English population expansion would engulf southern Maine, and most Indians in the area withdrew to the St. Lawrence settlements.

The century before the American Revolution was marked by a series of destructive wars between Natives and Europeans that kept Maine – the frontier between New France, New England, and the Abenaki homelands – in constant turmoil.

The tensions were local – disputes over control of land and resources – and international. France, Spain and Great Britain engaged in numerous wars. Most were economic in nature with the European powers seeking to control both territory and resources to expand their economic power.

Religion also played a part in these struggles. The Europeans viewed control of North America as crucial to their economic and political success and fought for territory and colonies in the New World. Even the wars that were largely centered in Europe often spilled over into North America.

Tensions between the native population and Europeans began as early as the first European arrivals. In 1525 Estevan Gomez raided Nova Scotia and Maine and took some 58 surviving Indians back to Spain, and subsequent explorers, whalers, fishers, and traders continued this practice into the 18th century.

Early fishing settlements and trading posts further poisoned the relation between native and newcomer. Walter Bagnall was killed on Richmond Island in 1631, for instance, for repeatedly cheating his clients, and when John Winter arrived in 1632 he found the Indians so unfriendly he abandoned hope of trade.

Indians, on the other hand, suspected that English colonials brought on the terrible recurring epidemics, and they found it difficult, under their own political system, to rein in those who wished vengeance for trading abuses, land grabs, murders, and enslavements.

Fluctuations in the price of furs left the impression that all whites cheated them, and as the Wabanaki became more dependent on European guns, ammunition, and commodities, fur-trading – and its abuses – became an increasingly desperate matter. A heritage of mutual suspicion soured relations between Indians and whites in Maine.

Effects of European Rivalries

Rivalries between France and England in the New World further strained Indian-white relations. Most of the wars in colonial North America followed upon conflicts in Europe, and although Maine's Wabanaki did their best to remain aloof from these foreign quarrels, they were inevitably drawn into the maelstrom. Still, they entered these wars for their own reasons, maintaining a political independence that both French and English officials refused to respect.

French or English alliances with various tribes exacerbated ancient feuds and created new conflicts, and as the devastating plagues swept through the villages, these alliances were again disrupted; those who survived regrouped and exacted tribute from more debilitated or less powerful neighbors.

Was the outcome of these wars inevitable? European advantages included a technology based on metal and gunpowder and expertise with capitalist relations, while Indians clung to a culture disordered by plague and constant demographic movement. Indians, however, enjoyed an advantage in logistics and tactics.

Most of Maine's 6,000 English settlers were dispersed in "ribbon" settlements strung out along the coast or lower rivers, almost impossible to defend militarily. The English clung to what early historian William Hubbard called the "sea-border," considering the unfamiliar woods behind them "a great Chaos, the lair of wild beasts and wilder men."

This, of course, was familiar territory to the Abenaki, who could traverse the woods and waters, wait for an opportune moment, raid, and scatter. Indian tactics – sudden attack and withdrawal – prevailed against a people with little wilderness experience and a history of open-field combat.

However, these tactics were designed for short wars or raids to avenge particular wrongs or insults. Given their subsistence regimes and their limited capacity for storage, Indians simply did not have time to wage a protracted war, and when English militia began destroying their corn fields and blocking access to traditional hunting, fishing, and foraging grounds, Indians were powerless to resist.

English victories also depended on alliances with other Indians, particularly the Iroquois-Mohawk, while the Wabanaki's French allies were relatively weak south of the St. Lawrence. By the 1670s, New England contained about 50,000 inhabitants, and New France about 10,000, and there were fewer than a thousand French inhabitants in Acadia.

Most important were England's pathogenic allies – the plagues that swept through the Indian villages beginning in 1616, killing more than 75 percent of the inhabitants and leaving the rest weakened culturally, spiritually, economically, and militarily.