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Keywords: Settlers

Historical Items

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Item 22547

York settlers' petition, 1711

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1711 Location: York Media: Ink on paper

  view a full transcription

Item 66587

Machias River bridge, Machais, ca.1938

Contributed by: Boston Public Library Date: circa 1938 Location: Machias Media: Linen texture postcard

Item 22311

Brita Hedman, New Sweden, ca. 1881

Contributed by: New Sweden Historical Society Date: circa 1880 Location: New Sweden Media: Electrographic Photograph

Architecture & Landscape

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Item 116384

Lewis Chase cottage on Squirrel Island, Southport, ca. 1900

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1900 Location: Southport Client: Lewis Chase Architect: John Calvin Stevens

Item 111316

The Checkley House, Scarborough, 1895

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1895 Location: Scarborough Client: unknown Architect: John Calvin Stevens

Online Exhibits

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Exhibit

Father Rasles, the Indians and the English

Father Sebastien Rasle, a French Jesuit, ran a mission for Indians at Norridgewock and, many English settlers believed, encouraged Indian resistance to English settlement. He was killed in a raid on the mission in 1724 that resulted in the remaining Indians fleeing for Canada.

Exhibit

Holding up the Sky: Wabanaki people, culture, history, and art

Learn about Native diplomacy and obligation by exploring 13,000 years of Wabanaki residence in Maine through 17th century treaties, historic items, and contemporary artworks—from ash baskets to high fashion. Wabanaki voices contextualize present-day relevance and repercussions of 400 years of shared histories between Wabanakis and settlers to their region.

Exhibit

Les Raquetteurs

In the early 1600s, French explorers and colonizers in the New World quickly adopted a Native American mode of transportation to get around during the harsh winter months: the snowshoe. Most Northern societies had some form of snowshoe, but the Native Americans turned it into a highly functional item. French settlers named snowshoes "raquettes" because they resembled the tennis racket then in use.

Site Pages

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Site Page

Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature - More Permanent Settlers Arrive

"More Permanent Settlers Arrive Two major waves of settlers arrived after 1768 – the first from Gloucester, Massachusetts in addition to James…"

Site Page

Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature - …then came the settlers…

"…then came the settlers… Granite mountains, Mount Desert, 1837Maine Historical Society While exploring Mount Desert as a place “to carry on…"

Site Page

Farmington: Franklin County's Shiretown - Early Settlers

"Early Settlers Click the icon for a map of the locations of early settler's homesteads X By Nancy Porter, Researcher & Page Creator With…"

My Maine Stories

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Story

Mali Agat (Molly Ockett) the famous Wabanaki "Doctress"
by Maine Historical Society

Pigwacket Molly Ockett, healing, and cultural ecological knowledge

Story

Rematriation
by Alivia Moore

Our shared future for all people in Wabanakiyik calls us to rematriate.

Story

A New Beginning for Wabanaki Land Relationships
by John Banks

Wabanaki leadership in land stewardship

Lesson Plans

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Lesson Plan

Longfellow Studies: The American Wilderness? How 19th Century American Artists Viewed the Separation Of Civilization and Nature

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
When European settlers began coming to the wilderness of North America, they did not have a vision that included changing their lifestyle. The plan was to set up self-contained communities where their version of European life could be lived. In the introduction to The Crucible, Arthur Miller even goes as far as saying that the Puritans believed the American forest to be the last stronghold of Satan on this Earth. When Roger Chillingworth shows up in The Scarlet Letter's second chapter, he is welcomed away from life with "the heathen folk" and into "a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people." In fact, as history's proven, they believed that the continent could be changed to accommodate their interests. Whether their plans were enacted in the name of God, the King, or commerce and economics, the changes always included – and still do to this day - the taming of the geographic, human, and animal environments that were here beforehand. It seems that this has always been an issue that polarizes people. Some believe that the landscape should be left intact as much as possible while others believe that the world will inevitably move on in the name of progress for the benefit of mankind. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a book which many feel is one of the best portrayals of our American reality - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks upon this progress with cynicism when he ends his narrative by pondering the transformation of "the fresh green breast of a new world" that the initial settlers found on the shores of the continent into a modern society that unsettlingly reminds him of something out of a "night scene by El Greco." Philosophically, the notions of progress, civilization, and scientific advancement are not only entirely subjective, but also rest upon the belief that things are not acceptable as they are. Europeans came here hoping for a better life, and it doesn't seem like we've stopped looking. Again, to quote Fitzgerald, it's the elusive green light and the "orgiastic future" that we've always hoped to find. Our problem has always been our stoic belief system. We cannot seem to find peace in the world either as we've found it or as someone else may have envisioned it. As an example, in Miller's The Crucible, his Judge Danforth says that: "You're either for this court or against this court." He will not allow for alternative perspectives. George W. Bush, in 2002, said that: "You're either for us or against us. There is no middle ground in the war on terror." The frontier -- be it a wilderness of physical, religious, or political nature -- has always frightened Americans. As it's portrayed in the following bits of literature and artwork, the frontier is a doomed place waiting for white, cultured, Europeans to "fix" it. Anything outside of their society is not just different, but unacceptable. The lesson plan included will introduce a few examples of 19th century portrayal of the American forest as a wilderness that people feel needs to be hesitantly looked upon. Fortunately, though, the forest seems to turn no one away. Nature likes all of its creatures, whether or not the favor is returned. While I am not providing actual activities and daily plans, the following information can serve as a rather detailed explanation of things which can combine in any fashion you'd like as a group of lessons.

Lesson Plan

The Fur Trade in Maine

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12, Postsecondary Content Area: Science & Engineering, Social Studies
This lesson presents an overview of the history of the fur trade in Maine with a focus on the 17th and 18th centuries, on how fashion influenced that trade, and how that trade impacted Indigenous peoples and the environment.