Category: Euro-Wabanaki Wars

Frontier hostilities after the Owl’s Head massacre of 1755 became much more limited to personal attacks rather than actual warfare. Wabanaki numbers had declined to the point that their raids “were small and infrequent enough to prompt the desire for revenge but not sufficient to raise fears of counter-revenge” (Ghere, 2001).

In the third quarter of the 1700s, most of the violence in the frontier consisted of English attacks on largely peaceful Wabanaki.

Over time,  frontier raids by the Wabanaki became very sporadic and mostly ineffective.The only major confrontation occurred in August 1758, when approximately 50 Canadian militia members and more than 250 Maliseet and Canadian mission Penobscot warriors attacked Fort St. George. After several days of an ineffective siege, the warriors dispersed into small bands and harassed settlers in the surrounding region. These would be the last major Wabanaki engagements on the Maine frontier.

In May 1759, Governor Thomas Pownall led a 400-strong militia force up the St. George River to quell any remaining resistance and claim the land east of Fort Charles. They visited the now-abandoned Penobscot village of Penawabskik, returned to the mouth of the Penobscot, and constructed Fort Pownall, at today’s Stockton. They then returned to Boston, proclaiming a glorious victory, even though they had not encountered a single hostile Wabanaki.

Later that year, the English defeated the French at Quebec, marking the end of the long, bitter struggle for control of North America. Finally free from war, many Wabanaki family bands returned to their traditional tribal grounds on the Penobscot and Kennebec Rivers. Penawabskik and Narantsouak were reoccupied, but with far fewer people than before the last war. 

The peace brought a torrent of English settlers to the region, which the Wabanaki were now powerless to stem. To give the Wabanaki some breathing room, the new Massachusetts Governor Bernard sent surveyor Joseph Chadwick to mark a boundary line for  English settlement, which fell at the falls above the Kenduskeag (Bangor). However, the English continued to flood into the area, forcing the Wabanaki deeper into the woodland fringes andmaking their traditional ways of life impossible.

A last gasp

In 1760, several Penobscot groups in the vicinity of Fort Pownall approached the commander, General Preble, to sue for peace. “They said they wished to dwell with their families, at some place near the garrison, receive its protection, and enjoy the neighborhood and friendship of the English living with them, as many tribes had lived with the French in Canada” (Willimson, 1889).  

Four of their sagamores, Kehovvret, Joseph Marie, Sockaiteon, and Sockebasin, went to Boston, and, on the 29th of April, signed articles of treaty with the Governor in the Council chamber. The terms were the same as all the treaties signed in the last half-century. They acknowledged that they were good subjects of King George, would forfeit their lands, relinquish all allegiance to the French government, and deliver up future offenders for trial. At this point, their Nation was no longer able to wage war, as the once mighty Penobscot were reduced to five Sagamores, seventy-three warriors, and 500 total souls. All they requested was the privilege of hunting and fishing on such tracts as the English might allow them.  So few in number were the rest of the Wabanaki people,  that no other tribes or bands took part in the signing of this general truce.

The end of a long, devastating struggle

After the French and Indian War in 1763, the English conquest of New England was complete. The English had finally vanquished the Wabanaki, a little over 150 years after the first Europeans had touched Maine’s shore. The Wabanaki had fought hard for the last century to defend their homeland with French help. However, disease, starvation, and battle deaths had whittled them down to the point that they could no longer effectively fight. At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, after more than a century and a half of struggle, a diverse, proud Wabanaki nation of successful hunters, gatherers, and agriculturalists had been steadily pushed from the lifeblood of the coastal bays, estuaries, and river basins to the forests of the north.

At the beginning of the Euro-Algonquian encounters, the Wabanaki had welcomed the English and aided them in their explorations. As Europeans’ lust for fur became apparent, the Wabanaki had abandoned their traditional, self-sufficient hunting and gathering way of life for one dependent on European guns and trade goods for their sustenance. When the ever-growing encroachment of English settlements threatened their very existence, they chose to resist. In response,  the English tried to take their guns and ammunition away and began to hunt them for their scalps. 

The Wabanaki valiantly slowed the European rate of conquest, defending their homeland. Long after the English of Massachusetts had defeated Metacomet and his allies, the Wabanaki held fast in Maine. Englishmen were forced to flee all but the far western corner of Maine in at least three instances: at the end of Metacomet’s War in 1678, King William’s War in 1697, and Queen Anne’s War in 1713. However, after all these wars, the resilient Englishmen kept coming back, slowly but surely exhausting the Wabanaki’s ability to fight.

Illustration: Fort Pownall

Literature cited:

Ghere, D. L. & Morrison, A. H. (2001) Searching for Justice on the Maine Frontier: Legal Concepts, Treaties, and the 1749 Wiscasset Incident. American Indian Quarterly, 25 (3): 378-399. 

Williamson, W. D. (1889) The history of the state of Maine: From its first discovery in A.D. 1602 to the separation, A.D. 1820, exclusive. Vol. 2. Glazers, Masters, and Smith, p. 345

When Queen Anne’s War ended, Jesuit Missionary Sebastian Rale rebuilt his mission at Narantsouak (Norridgewock), and many of its former inhabitants returned from Canada. He was by then completely fluent in their language and had converted most of them to Catholicism.  He had compiled a dictionary of their language and had become deeply invested in their well-being.

As it became clear that the English had absolutely no intention of stopping or even slowing their expansion, Rale decided that the Wabanaki would have to resist the English to stop their uncontrolled growth. He believed that, if the English became masters of the country, they would chase out the Catholic missionaries, and “that would spell the end of their flocks’ religious fidelity”. This attitude was encouraged by the governors of New France, “in whose opinion the surrender of their lands by the Abenakis of Acadia would open the door to Canada for the English”. The Jesuits were receiving financial aid “from the authorities of New France secretly, since it could not be given openly because of the treaty of Utrecht (1713)”. (Charland, 2003)

Rale wrote to the Governor General of New France, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, requesting reinforcements to obtain more firepower, and he was promptly sent hundreds of Algonquin allies from Quebec. In August 1721, Rale led a force of 250 warriors downriver to Georgetown in a fleet of 90 canoes with a letter demanding, “that if the settlers did not remove in three weeks, the Indians would come and kill them all, destroy their cattle and burn their houses”    As justification, the letter stated “ you Englishmen have taken away the lands which the Great God has given our fathers and us”. (Williamson, 1889, pp. 106-107).

The Wabanaki raids begin

In the spring and summer of 1722, bands of Kennebec and Penobscot, often led by Rale, went on a rampage across the mid-coast region, attacking settlements and forts in Woolwich and Brunswick, moving along the coast to the mouth of the Penobscot, taking hostages, and burning villages. Thus began the war, variously known as Father Rale’s War, Drummer’s War, Lovewell’s War, or the Three Years’ War.

Both large and small parties of Wabanaki and Frenchmen participated in the mayhem. A rampaging group of 60 Penobscot warriors took nine families captive along Merrymeeting Bay, releasing most but keeping five male hostages. Homes at Damariscotta, Pemaquid, and Boad Cove along Muscongus Bay were also attacked and pillaged. All the crew and passengers on a ship traveling from Annapolis to Boston were brutally taken captive by a mixed group of Wabanaki and Frenchmen. While many escaped, several remained prisoners for later ransom. A man was shot point-blank on July 12 on Casco Neck, and all the English were driven fleeing into the garrison. Five hundred to six hundred Penobscot warriors besieged Fort St. George for 12 days. They failed to get inside when an underground tunnel collapsed during heavy rainfall, but as they withdrew, they destroyed the surrounding community, burning to the ground a local sawmill, a large sloop, many houses, and butchered a large herd of cattle. Five Englishmen died in the assaults, and seven were taken prisoner. A band of Wabanaki also descended upon Brunswick, reducing all structures to ashes and taking many captives. 

The mayhem continues

Throughout 1723, Father Rale and the Wabanaki made at least 14 more bloody raids across coastal Maine, killing or taking captive between 20 and 30 people. In Scarborough, the garrison house of Roger Deering was attacked, and his wife, two other inhabitants, and two soldiers were slain. Nearby, John Hunnewell, Robert Jordan, Mary Scammon, and Deering’s three children were taken captive while picking berries. In Saco, Dominicus Jordan was badly wounded by five Wabanaki but was able to stay upright, bleeding profusely, and retreat backwards into the garrison.  A group of 250 warriors from Narantsouak and St. Francis, led by Rale, ambushed the settlement at Arrowsic, burning 37 dwellings to the ground and killing 300 cattle. The 40 inhabitants of there managed to flee to the garrison, with only a single child lost. About 60 Wabanaki besieged Fort St. George for 30 days, but were unable to breach the palisade, and were chased off when Col. Westbrook arrived with reinforcements. ⁹

The raids on unprotected communities continued throughout 1724. By now, any Englishman who remained in Maine was forced to hide in fortified garrisons at night and could only work during the day, protected by armed guards. Wabanaki war parties lay in wait, lurking, looking for “exposed, isolated, and unprepared targets of opportunity”. (Dekker, 2015, p. 65).

With New England’s long-held fears about a Jesuit/Indian alliance finally coming true, English clerics began to view the hostilities as almost a holy war. Colman, Mather, and others described the war as a battle between Catholicism and Protestantism, an idea that had filled the Boston presses for years.

It was now time for English retaliation.

Illustration: Father Sébastian Rale monument in Madison, Maine (erected in 1833).

Bibliography

Charland, T-M. (2003) Lauverjat, Étienne In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, University of Toronto/Université Laval.

Dekker, M. (2015) French & Indian Wars in Maine. The History Press. Charleston, South Carolina.

Kidd, T. S. (2002) “The devil and Father Rallee”: The narration of Father Rale’s war in provincial Massachusetts. Historical Journal of Massachusetts. https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Kidd-Summer-2002-complete.pdf

Williamson, W. D. (1889) The history of the state of Maine: From its first discovery in A.D. 1602 to the separation, A.D. 1820, exclusive. Glazers, Masters, and Smith.