Maine History Online

Population estimates based on archaeological surveys and available food supplies suggest that the area housed perhaps as many as 10,000 native peoples by the time of first contact with Europeans. Indeed, all of Maine was claimed and divided among 10 known tribal groups well before Giovanni da Verrazano's 1524 voyage for the French, or England's Popham Colony was built in 1607.

With the unanticipated arrival of strangers from across the Atlantic, these largely stable groupings of native peoples, who had developed seasoned strategies for survival, were about to be tested beyond anything they had encountered in the past.

Economic Immigrants

The first groups eager to exploit economic opportunities in the 15th and 16th centuries, the French and English were the most influential in northern New England, each interested in securing raw materials for their respective nations and in furthering their colonial ambitions. The two groups often were in competition.

The process of permanent European settlement began with temporary fishing stations and related coastal explorations in the 16th century. Englishman George Waymouth and his men in the early 1600s began trading small English goods for furs and skins, and eventually risked friendly relations by kidnapping five Indians and taking them back to England along with a variety of goods to reward their backers and stimulate interest in long-term settlement of the territory.

The English quickly latched onto much of the continent's Atlantic coast and rooted themselves in small settlements arrayed along the coastal waterways.

Encounters between Maine's native and European groups typified such meetings elsewhere—mutual curiosity and caution, and a modicum of good will. Sparse settlement was no buffer, since both groups concentrated settlement and subsistence activities near rivers and lakes, major sources of food and ready transportation.

Gifts and diplomacy alternated or sometimes coexisted with conflict and war. More often than not, Wabanaki peoples were drawn into wars of European origin rather than waging wars outright on nearby colonists. To individual settlers and Indians alike, the result was much the same.

The French were already a presence, having vested their interests in the northern fur trade, and ventured up the St. Croix River under Samuel D. Champlain a decade earlier. The French were also more active in establishing early agricultural settlements, concentrated in the northeastern sections of Maine, and fostering favorable relations with native peoples, particularly through Jesuit missionary activities.

Growing friction between French and English over the decades, and the expanding presence of each in permanent settlements and opposing alliances escalated conflicts, resulting finally in the British expulsion of the French from Maine following the French and Indian War in 1763.

The result was to open much of eastern and northern Maine to greater settlement by English colonists and Americans from Massachusetts and elsewhere in British North America.

The Europeans had come to stay. That did not mean, however, that the native peoples were gone. Indians lost many tribal members to European diseases and territory to European settlers. In addition, they lost sovereignty as the new federal government and the state took control of their affairs. Indians often struggled to earn livings as they adapted to the new ways.

Still, Wabanaki traditions remained and those traditions influenced what became the dominant European culture.