Native Americans in Maine
Table of Contents for the Annotated Bibliographies on Native Americans in Maine

Note each bibliography section is alphabetical and separate from the others.  Due to the lengthy annotations following many of the citations the traditional all inclusive bibliographic format has been modified and the bibliography subdivided into several sections.

Principal

Contemporary

Special Topics

Damariscotta Shell Middens

Indian Pandemic of 1617-1619

Pathways and Canoe Routes

Petroglyphs in Maine

Principal references

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For information on Native Americans outside of Maine, also check our Archaeology bibliography page.

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Axtell, James. (1985). The invasion within: The contest of cultures in colonial North America. Oxford University Press, NY, NY. IS.

Banks, Ronald R., Ed. (1969). A history of Maine:  A collection of readings on the history of Maine, 1600-1970. Third edition. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., Dubuque, Iowa. IS.

• See annotations in the Maine history: contemporary bibliography.

Baker, Emerson W., Churchill, Edwin A., D'Abate, Richard S., Jones, Kristine L., Konrad, Victor A. and Prins, Harald E.L., Eds. (1994). American beginnings: Exploration, culture, and cartography in the land of Norumbega. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NB. IS and also W.

• A great read and the most important of all recent texts on the cartography of the Maine coast.
• The many contributors express a wide range of opinions about Maine's ethnohistory in the years of exploration and early settlement.
• See annotations in the Maine history: principal sources bibliography as well as our comments in the text of Norumbega Reconsidered.

Baxter, James Phinney, Ed. (1884). Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine. 3 vols. Hoyt, Fogg, and Donham, Portland, ME. Reprinted in 1890 as The life and letters of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Prince Society Publications, 18 - 20, Boston, MA.  Reprinted in 1967, NY.

• See annotations in the Maine history: Antiquarian bibliography.

Baxter, James P. (1891). The campaign against the Pequakets. Maine Historical Society Collections 2. Series 2. pg. 353-371. X.

• "One hundred and fifty Penobscot Indians, converts of Thury, the Jesuit priest, set out on this expedition, and were joined by a body of Indians from the Kennebec.  Traveling on snow-shoes, the expedition reached York, which, in the early dawn, they attacked and destroyed; Dummer, the venerable minister of York, was shot dead at his door, and his wife subjected to the hardships of a captivity which she did not survive.  One of the savages it is said arrayed himself in the clerical garb of the dead minister, and delivered a mock sermon to his howling associates." (pg. 354).
• "The country of the Pequakets was to be Lovewell's objective point.  The principal seat of this tribe was upon the shores of the Saco, near the present village of Fryeburg.  The Pequakets had in former wars been active against the English, and were considered especially dangerous to the settlements exposed to their attacks.  Their premeditated treachery at the time the Casco treaty was made, and their subsequent cruelties had not been forgotten..." (pg. 363).
• "So great was the terror inspired by Lovewell's attack upon them, that the savages abandoned their seat at Pequaket and took up their abode in Canada." ... "To Lovewell, then, we may accord the honor of having ended a war, which might have been prolonged for years and caused much bloodshed and suffering, by his brave fight at Pequaket." (pg. 371).

Baxter, James Phinney. (1906). A memoir of Jacques Cartier: Sieur de Limoilou: His voyages to the St. Lawrence. A Bibliography and a facsimile of the manuscript of 1534 with annotations, etc. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, NY.

• "Like many other Indian tribes of North America, the Hochelagans used no salt whatever in their food, which comprised game and fish, maize, beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, and wild fruits." (pg. 33).
• "And we having arrived at the said Hochelaga, more than a thousand persons presented themselves before us, men, women, and children alike, the which gave us as good reception as ever father did to child, showing marvelous joy; for the men in one band danced, the women on their side and the children on the other, the which brought us store of fish and of their bread made of coarse millet, which they cast into our said boats in a way that it seemed as if it tumbled from the air." (pg. 161).
• "There are within this town [Hochelanga] about fifty long houses of about fifty paces or more each, and twelve or fifteen paces wide, and all made of timbers covered and garnished with great pieces of bark and strips of the said timber, as broad as tables, well tied artificially according to their manner." (pg. 164).
• "Likewise they have granaries at the top of their houses where they put their corn of which they make their bread, which they call carraconny, and they make it in the manner following: they have mortars of wood as for braying flax, and beat the said corn into powder with pestles of wood; then they mix it into paste and make round cakes of it, which they put on a broad stone that is hot; then they cover it with hot stones, and so bake their bread instead of in an oven.  They make likewise many stews of the said corn, and beans and peas, of which they have enough, and also of big cucumbers [crooked-neck squash] and other fruits.  They have also in their houses great vessels like tuns, where they put their fish, namely eels and others, the which they dry in the smoke during the summer and live upon it in the winter.  And of this they make a great store, as we have seen by experience.  All their living is without any taste of salt." (pg. 164-165).
• This book is now in Google Book and the entire text is searchable.
• See more annotations for this citation in the Ancient Pemaquid bibliography.

Berkhofer, Robert. (1978). White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the present. Alfred A. Knopf, NY, NY. IS.

Biggar, Henry P., Ed. (1911). The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497-1534: A collection of documents relating to the early history of the dominion of Canada. Publications of the Public Archives of Canada, #5, Ottawa, Canada.

Biggar, Henry P., Ed. (1922-1936). The works of Samuel de Champlain. 6 vols. Reprinted in 1971 by Toronto University Press, Toronto, Canada. X (partial xeroxed copy only).

• See annotations in the New England and US History: Antiquarian bibliography.

Biggar, Henry P. (1937). The early trading companies of New France: A contribution to the history of commerce and discovery in North America. University of Toronto Library, Toronto, Canada.

Bourque, Bruce J. (1989). Ethnicity on the Maritime Peninsula, 1600-1759. Ethnohistory. 36(3). pg. 257-284. IS.

• "Challenges Speck's classification of Maine's Native Peoples.  Discusses French understanding of tribal identities vs. Speck classifications." (Ray, The Indians of Maine, pg. 31).
• This is among the most important of all essays pertaining to the interpretation of the ethnohistory of Maine and the maritime provinces.  The "Bourquian era" of Maine's ethnohistory can be dated from the publication of this thesis.
• Bourque's version of Maine's ethnohistory remains virtually unchallenged since the publication of this article; almost all commentary and museum exhibitions have utilized his term "Etchemins" to describe the ethnicity of the indigenous population of the central Maine coast east of the Saco River at the time of contact with Europeans.
• Extensive excerpts from this landmark essay are commented on in the main text of this publication (Norumbega Reconsidered).

Bourque, Bruce J. (1995). Diversity and complexity in prehistoric maritime societies: A Gulf of Maine perspective. Plenum Press, NY. IS.

• Beginning with a site-specific analysis of the Turner Farm site on North Haven Island, Bourque explores the ethnohistory and life-style adaptations of Maine's Native American maritime communities over a period of five millennia.  This is the first of two comprehensive publications by Bourque on Native Americans in Maine and contains an excellent bibliography and photographs of lithic, bone, shell and ceramic specimens from this site.
• "The Turner Farm site is located on North Haven Island, one of the Fox Island group in Penobscot Bay off the central Maine coast.  Large-scale excavations there during the 1970s, followed by over a decade of analysis, have produced a body of data that, in its age, size, and comprehensiveness, is probably unparalleled among coastal sites in North America.  It spans five millennia, from 5000 B.P. to the early historic period, and includes 6,500 catalogued artifacts of stone, bone, and fired clay, as well as 1,800 bone samples from which over 20 thousand vertebrate specimens have been identified. ...the Turner Farm data set is doubly useful, for it provides a record of human coastal adaptation during the entire recent Holocene epoch at a single location." (pg. vii.).
• "The discovery of the Susquehanna tradition cemetery was a landmark event for eastern North American archaeology.  There, for the first time, were preserved the uncremated human remains and bone technology of a people whose now boneless cemeteries have often been encountered in the Northeast, and whose technology so closely resembles that found among Archaic peoples throughout much of eastern North America (Appendix 3). ... A comparison of the isotope values from this sample with others from central coastal Maine ranging in age from 4300 to 400 B.P. revealed one of the biggest surprises of the whole project: the site's Susquehanna tradition occupants, surrounded by the riches of the sea, apparently made little use of them, consuming less marine protein than any other coastal population known to us." (pg. 2).
• "Ground slate point technology in the Northeast still has not been reliably traced back before about 5500 B.P., although a few variable and generalized specimens have been recovered from various contexts dating to about 7000 B.P.  After about 5500 B.P. the technology ramified throughout much of the Northeast with specimens occurring as far west as Michigan, eastward down the St. Lawrence Valley, along its tributaries, and up and down the Atlantic coast from northern Labrador to the Kennebec River.  It was during this post-5500 B.P. florescence that distinct styles developed.  Although no ground slate points have been found at the Turner Farm site (and very few have been found in the handful of other early shell middens either), the presence there of bayonets made of swordfish rostra provides a new perspective on the possible origins of the ground slate point." (pg. 7).
• "Radiocarbon dates then available suggested that the Moorehead phase dated between about 4500 and 3800 B.P.  A few habitation sites, including shell middens, were identified as having Moorehead phase components, and evidence for swordfish hunting was noted from some of these sites.  I saw the Moorehead phase as characterized by discrete cemeteries of red ocher-filled graves -- often richly furnished -- a sophisticated heavy woodworking technology, ground slate bayonets, plummets, and nonutilitarian symbolic artifacts." (pg. 223).
• "The analyses presented in Chapters 4 and 5, as well as data from other sites discussed below, reflect my increasing confidence that the historic roots of the Moorehead phase extend back to Middle Archaic populations in the Gulf of Maine region to the south of both the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the domain of the Laurentian tradition.  What follows is a summary of the Moorehead phase origin debate." (pg. 225).

Bourque, Bruce J. (2001). Twelve thousand years: American Indians in Maine. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska. IS.

• The most comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the ethnohistory of Native American communities in Maine in the pre-historic as well as in the historic period.  Bruce Bourque is Maine's preeminent archaeologist; this text supplements and expands his previous publication Diversity and Complexity in Prehistoric Maritime Societies, which remains a basic reference for exploring Maine's Native American pre-history.
• Bourque begins his historic survey by noting the traditional emphasis on predictable sequence and cultural continuity in previous accounts of Native Americans in Maine.  Bourque instead postulates the existence of complex and dynamic Native American communities, which experience "...rapid population expansion, culture change and innovation that strain against explanations based upon passive cultural adaptation.  (pg. xvi).
• "In my view, the primary explanation for the cultural dynamism of the Maine region is the long standing importance of the sea and the rich resources it provided."  (pg. xvi).
• "A second factor that contributed to Maine's cultural dynamism is its geographical situation.  Maine is positioned astride a larger geographic formation known as the Maritime Peninsula..."  (pg. xvi).
• Bourque's description and photographs of ceramic fragments (chapter III, The Ceramic Period) located during his archaeological explorations provide the best summary available of pottery production in the late prehistoric era.
• Chapters VI, VII and VIII are the strongest parts of Bourque's comprehensive survey of Native American's in Maine, and provide an excellent summary of each of the Indian Wars and the era of missionary activity that followed.  These chapters will be particularly useful for secondary school teachers preparing courses on Maine history or Native American history as a component of the Native Education Bill.
• Of a more controversial nature is Bourque's description of the Native American communities in the Maritime Peninsula just before and at the time of contact with Europeans (Chapter IV, An Introduction to the Historic Past). "The early French sources name four ethnic groups on the Maritime Peninsula.  As is the case for colonized peoples throughout the world, however, the names used by the French were not generally those these groups used for themselves.  Eastward from the Gaspé and St. John River lived the Souriquois, who were apparently named for a river called the Souricoa..." (pg. 106).
• "West of the Souriquois, between the St. John and Kennebec Rivers, lived the Etchemins...  By 1605 members of this group were also engaged in the fur trade and in providing guides to the French.  In the late seventeenth century, the Etchemins came to be referred to by the French as the Maliseets (or Malicites) between the St. John and Penobscot Rivers and as the Canibas between the Penobscot and the Kennebec Rivers." (pg. 106).
• "West of the Kennebec and as far to the southwest as Massachusetts lived a third people, whom the Souriquois referred to as Almouchiquois -- literally 'dog people' -- with whom they had been at war.  This group's territory began at the Androscoggin River, which John Smith later named the Almouchicoggin.  They were linguistically and culturally distinct from their neighbors to the east, wearing different clothing and hairstyles, using some dugouts in addition to birchbark canoes, and practicing horticulture.  The French soon abandoned this epithet, and the calamitous epidemics and warfare that broke out during and soon after their initial visit so disrupted the region that it is unclear who, if anyone, remained in former Almouchiquois territory." (pg. 106-107).
• "Champlain later described a fourth group, the Abenakis, who lived eight days travel south of the newly founded settlement of Quebec at Norridgewock, on the Kennebec River.  They lived in 'large villages and also houses in the country with many stretches of cleared land, in which they sow much Indian corn.'"  (pg. 107).
• "In later years, as all the region's coastal populations became increasingly oriented to Quebec, the term Abenaki was extended to all, even the Micmacs at times.  The Abenakis proper, however, remained distinct enough to be distinguished from their neighbors until around 1700." (pg. 107).
• Bourque's brief chapter IV adds a particularly interesting element to his comprehensive survey of Native Americans in Maine by either contradicting or ignoring traditional English sources.  Local Maine historians such as William Williamson, Francis Greene, Rufus King Sewall and many others provide a description of Native American communities in central coastal Maine at the time of contact that differs radically from Bourques.  Maine's town and state histories as well as its literature are filled with descriptions of the Wawenoc Indians as living in a series of robust semi-sedentary villages in the heart of Mawooshen between the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers prior to and during the early years of European contact.  Bourque alleges that Etchemins lived in this region and that the Canibas living to the north on the Kennebec River were also Etchemins.  While Bourque consistently presents arguments for ethnohistoric complexity as well as dynamic change, the reduction of all communities living east of the Saco River to the convenient label of Etchemin is a radical simplification of a much more complex ethnohistorical reality, and one that contradicts the huge body of written and oral history of thousands of English settlers and their descendants.  In one brief paragraph Bourque has eliminated one of Maine's most important Native American communities of the late prehistoric past.  Is this because the Wawenoc Indians had no significant role to play after 1620, having been decimated both by Micmac (Tarrentine) massacres and the epidemics that followed?  (See Bourque's comments on the Bessabez and the Tarrentines quoted below.)
• Bourque's description of the ethnohistory of Native American communities in Maine in the 15th and 16th centuries in the central coastal region is contradicted by his description of the Bessabez in the excerpt on page 119.  English sources frequently note the alignment of the Etchemins with the Tarrentines in their conflict with Native Americans living west of the Penobscot - conflicts that arose as a result of the intense European demand for furs.  Bourque quotes from Sir Ferdinando Gorges (below) but also fails to mention the confederacy of Mawooshen that Gorges along with so many other English sources describe, and which Gorges is essentially describing in this excerpt.  The only Native American description of Mawooshen, printed by Samuel Purchas in 1626, is reprinted  in its entirety in the Appendix.
• Bourque's description of Etchemin's living to the east of the Almouchiquois and the Androscoggin River cuts Mawooshen into two diametrically opposed halves, not only eliminating the Wawenoc Indians from our history texts but contradicting without adequate explanation a huge body of historical narrative by English speaking writers.  The controversy thus delineated in this brief chapter makes Bourque's book all the more interesting; how boring it would be if there was nothing to disagree with in this fast moving narrative of Twelve thousand years: American Indians in Maine. Bourque and other writers continue to refer to surviving Native American communities in the maritime provinces by the designations these communities use to describe themselves: Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac.  The elimination of Wawenocs from our history texts and the description of Canibas as Etchemins constitute a new ethnohistorical interpretation of Maine's protohistoric past that needs further documentation.
• "Early English explorers in the Gulf of Maine described a rivalry that reflects the emergence of European influence there during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.  On one side was Bessabez, the supreme Etchemin sagamore whom English sources describe as the preeminent leader of a domain that extended from Frenchman's Bay at least to Saco and possibly as far west as Lac Mégantic in Quebec.  On the other side was a group that lived to the east of Bessabez.  Known to the English as Tarrentines and to the French as Souriquois, they were mainly the ancestors of those who would later be called Micmacs.  In 1658 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a prime backer of the 1607 effort to colonize present-day Popham, described the rivalry and its causes as follows:  [Bessabes] had under him many great Subjects ... some fifteen hundred Bow-Men, some others lesse, these they call Sagamores....[He] had many enemies, especially those to the East and North-East, whom they call Tarrentines.... [H]is owne chief abode was not far from Pemaquid, but the Warre growing more and more violent between the Bashaba and the Tarrentines, who (as it seemed) presumed upon the hopes they had to be favored of the French who were seated in Canada[.] [T]heir next neighbors, the Tarrentines surprised the Bashaba and slew him and all his People near about him."  (pg. 119).
• One particularly interesting aspect of the controversy Bourque inadvertently highlights in chapter IV pertains to a most important contemporary study of Native Americans in New England which Bourque omits in his bibliography, Kathleen Bragdon's Native People of Southern New England.  Bragdon postulates three patterns of settlement in southern New England:
• An inland culturally conservative hunting and gathering society with little or no focus on semi-sedentary villages -- very similar to the mobile hunting and gathering Etchemins Bourque postulates as living in central coastal Maine and on the Kennebec River.
• River valley based sedentary villages with horticultural activities, a description one would think would aptly apply to the Canibas Indians living on the Kennebec River as well as the Native American communities living on the Saco River at the time of European contact, and one which coincides with Champlain's observations when he first visited this area in 1604/5.
• Of most importance, Bragdon postulates a third settlement type that she calls "conditional sedentism" -- semi-sedentary communities relying upon the extensive marine resources of the southern New England coastal area.
• One of the ironies of Bragdon's important text is her rejection of the use of tribal designations, which she strongly advocates at the beginning of her book.  Bourque must to some extent agree with her since he drops reference to all of the Native American tribes who did not survive contact with Europeans in significant numbers (Wawenoc, Cannabis, Pigwacket, etc.)  Both Bourque and Bragdon then also follow the politically correct and probably safest course of action and carefully refer to all the tribes surviving in significant numbers in the historic period by the tribal designation they themselves use: e.g. Pequot, Pennacook, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy.
• Bragdon's more complex model of settlement patterns in New England contrasts with the more pervasive oversimplified view of Native communities in Maine as being either wandering hunters and gatherers living east of the Saco River or horticultural communities from the Saco River west.  One can't help ask the question in view of the huge antiquarian literature on the Wawenoc Indians: Isn't there at least a reasonable possibility that the robust semi-sedentary marine resource dependent communities of coastal southern New England extended further than Saco and included the central coastal communities of Maine so prominently documented in Samuel Purchas' description of Mawooshen?  In fact, aren't many of the communities described in this important early narrative located in tidewater locations that exactly match Bragdon's description of non-horticultural coastal communities dependent on marine resources?  In an era of global warming, before the little ice age, circa 1350, why wouldn't these semi-sedentary communities also characterize the central coast of Maine?  Aren't the presence of these communities verified by the extensive shell heaps and other archaeological sites that Bourque has so carefully documented in his lifetime of research on the Maine coast?  Would Bourque contend, in fact, that the huge shell heaps of the Damariscotta River and those scattered about the coastal reaches of Maine including Frenchmans Bay, result from the activities of mobile hunting and gathering Etchemins lacking semipermanent village sites?
• While skipping over the interesting descriptions of the Native American communities of coastal Maine contained in both Purchas' narrative of Mawooshen (1623) and Dean Snow's (1980) Archaeology of New England, Bourque inadvertently comments on their demise by including a Jesuit map of 1715 illustrating the last of the semi-sedentary Native American communities in New England at Pigwacket (Saco River), Narakamogou (Androscoggin River), Amaseconti (Farmington Falls, Sandy River), Norridgewock (Kennebec River), Panawamské (Penobscot River) and Meductic (upper St. John's River).  (pg. 182).  These villages, rather than being located at the head of tide, reflect the fact the Native Americans had withdrawn from coastal locations and were making a last stand at riverine locations well inland from their original tidewater village sites.
• What would William Williamson (1832) say about this revisionist view of ethnohistory which substitutes Etchemins for the Wawenocs and identifies the Kennebec Indians as Etchemins?  Was the Confederacy of Mawooshen really cut in half in the manner described by Bourque?  Would Dean Snow also agree with this new paradigm, which cuts the communities he describes after Purchas in The Archaeology of New England into two diametrically opposed components?  Doesn't the cultural and linguistic differences noted by Bourque for the Almouchiquois also describe the Wawenoc Indians?  Didn't Champlain encounter some horticultural activity when he visited the Wawenocs at Wiscasset in 1604?  Didn't he note their radical cultural differences from the more eastern tribes during this visit?  Didn't George Waymouth also note this difference when he encountered the coastal Indians near Pemaquid?  Didn't Samoset, who greeted the Pilgrims, share the cultural characteristics of the Almouchiquois rather than the Etchemins?  Is the history of the Native American communities living between the Kennebec and the Penobscot in the 15th and 16th centuries (and earlier) so simple that it can be described as Bourque does in just one sentence?
• Bourque was recently the source of a justifiably adulatory review article in the Bangor Daily News (Alicia Anstead, Nov. 17/18, 2001, pg. E1-E2).  Bourque is quoted thusly "Bourque might say that 'change' is part of his underlying thesis in 'Twelve Thousand Years.'  Based on his own research, analysis and interpretation fusing archaeology and history, he posits that Maine was the site of dynamic and divergent cultural traditions, and that native people were at the vanguard of those shifts."  and "'There is a perception that the people were isolated here and not in touch with the rest of the world,' said Bourque.  'Prehistorically, they were in touch with people all over North America.  And natives here were in on the earliest visitors from Europe.  There was a connectedness.  All people who have ever lived here were connected to much larger regions.  Maine's perception of itself has never been more isolated than it is today.  Maine was important and Indians were players up here for a long, long time.'"  These comments contradict Bourque's easy identification of most indigenous residents of central coastal Maine in the late prehistoric period as being simply Etchemins whose primary location has always been the Passamaquoddy and Medutic areas.

Bourque, Bruce J. and Cox, Steven L. (Fall 1981). Maine State Museum investigation of the Goddard site, 1979. Man in the Northeast. 22. pg. 3-27. IS.

• "By far the most intense Archaic component preserved at the site is one which can be referred to the Moorehead phase (Bourque 1971:78-81). 
• It is characterized by small, narrow stemmed points, small stemmed and usually barbed ground stone points, plummets, adzes, gouges and pecking stones (Plate I:f-n)." (pg. 7).
• "The culture/historical sequence of the ceramic period in Maine is known only in broad terms." (pg. 12).
• "The archeological evidence at hand from the Goddard site indicates that it was a major summer village during the period of Norse visits to North America and that its population participated in extensive trade networks ultimately reaching as far north as Ramah Bay, Labrador.  The archeological sample from the site is unusually large.  These factors suggest several possible scenarios which could have led to the [Goddard] coin's deposition." (pg. 23).
• Bourque is referring to the notorious Norse coin found at this location.

Bourque, Bruce J. and Whitehead, Ruth Holmes. (1985). Tarrentines and the introduction of European trade goods in the Gulf of Maine. Ethnohistory. 32(4). pg. 327-341.

• A key document for students of the contact period in Maine history.  Bourque and Whitehead contend that the numerous trade goods found in the possession of 15th century Native American inhabitants of coastal Maine derived not from direct contact with English, Basque, French or other traders or fishermen, but only from Micmac traders (Tarantines) who were intermediaries between the coastal natives and the European visitors.  This revisionist interpretation insists such contacts did not take place until after 1600.
• See our comments on this contemporary view of Maine history in the Ancient Pemaquid: Voyages of Humphrey Gilbert, etc. section.

Bragdon, Kathleen J. (1996). Native people of southern New England, 1500 - 1650. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK. IS.

• "The anthropological and historical literature on southern New England has also been obscured by the use of various sociopolitical labels, most notably the term tribe, to characterize the nature of governance and sociopolitical organization in that region. ...The reality of this vaguely conceived entity in 'prehistoric' North America has been vigorously questioned by numerous scholars, and its applicability in southern New England is likewise questionable." (pg. xvi).
• "In summary, archaeological evidence for the Late Woodland period suggests three distinct settlement types, associated with specific eco-regions: estuarine 'conditional sedentism' based on reliance upon a wide variety of marine and estuarine resources; riverine village-based sedentism, with a heavier dependence on corn-beans and squash horticulture; and a culturally conservative uplands lacustrine adaptation.  Whether some or all uplands peoples were connected in some way to coastal or riverine groups is unclear;..." (pg. 77).
• "Many scholars have suggested, for example, based on the descriptions of early explorers and settlers, that the Natives of southern New England occupied settled village sites, dependent on maize horticulture.  In opposition to this 'ethnohistorical' model, Ceci and others have more recently argued that maize horticulture and settled village life in coastal regions were in fact a response by Native people with a band-like sociopolitical organization to the development of trading relations with Europeans, but that prehistorically such Natives were part of mobile groups with egalitarian social structures." (pg. xviii).
• "Native people soon observed that certain European explorers were absolutely without conscience regarding Native property or persons.  Dozens of people were captured and transported to Europe and especially England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and only a handful ever returned.  Sailors looted Native graves, and stole their seed corn, tools, and household goods.  Exploring parties deployed vicious dogs, discharged guns, and built forts, displaying their hostility with every gesture (Brasser 1978:80-83)." (pg. 6).
• "Three related issues continue to occupy archaeologists and ethnohistorians studying the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries A.D. in  southern New England: the extent and onset of reliance on maize horticulture, the nature of settlement, and the level of sociopolitical integration there." (pg. 31).
• "Both the expansion of the Hopewellian-Ohioan state to the west and the arrival of Europeans in the Northeast have been invoked as causes in the development of complex societies in coastal southern New England (e.g., Thomas 1979:400; Ceci 1990). ...it is clear that the forces leading to complexity in southern New England were in operation centuries before the European presence was established there." (pg. 48).
• "Both Eleanor Leacock and Karen Sacks suggest that gender asymmetry is due to women's loss of control over the means of production and over their own labor--losses resulting from the expansion of production for exchange and the emergence of hierarchical societies." (pg. 51).
• "If, particularly in the contact period, accumulation of capital in the form of wampum and other scarce goods facilitated a patrilineal organization, women's status (with the exception of that of sachem women) among the Ninnimissinuok may well have been on the decline, particularly in coastal regions." (pg. 53).
• "It is difficult not to conclude, for example, when examining descriptions of women's habitual work among the Ninnimissinuok, that their status was not commensurate with their important contributions to the indigenous economy." (pg. xvi).
• "Fragile and bounteous, estuarine ecosystems comprise some of the most unique and significant environments of southern New England.  Generally semi-enclosed coastal bodies of water with connections to the open sea, estuaries are characterized by varying mixtures of fresh, brackish, and salt waters. ...True estuaries consist of multiple zones, beginning with the water column itself, then extending inland over mudflats exposed only at low tide, which merge with an intertidal zone where marsh grasses flourish, succeeded in turn by a zone of mixed salt and freshwater plant species." (pg. 55-56).
• "Once called 'ecotones,' or 'regions of transition between two or more diverse communities' (Odum 1971:157), estuaries are now celebrated for their remarkable biotic diversity.  Dincauze (1973, 1974), Barber (1979), and Kerber (1984) argue that estuaries represent uniquely rich habitats for human populations because of the way in which they link diverse ecosystems.  Zones ranging from terrestrial to freshwater riverine, freshwater marsh, and salt marsh, are all easily accessible within a relatively narrow strip running from the sea inland.  The estuarine ecotone also benefits from what E. P. Odum calls the 'edge effect,' or 'the tendency for increased variety and density at community junctions' (1971:157).  Estuaries and other intertidal regions are associated with a number of diverse habitats of great importance to Native subsistence and diet, including the water column itself, the strandflats, tidal rivers, and salt marsh." (pg. 57).
• "The focus on settlement near estuaries, which manifests itself with the stabilization of sea-level rise, was accompanied through time by an increasing diversification of resource use, as well as increased cultural modification of the landscape. ...Ceramics, frequently associated with sedentism in the archaeological and ethnographic literature, are manifestly unsuited to a mobile way of life, being both fragile and cumbersome, and although traditionally associated with maize horticulture, appear long before maize-use can be documented in southern New England." (pg. 64).
• "The arrival of maize in coastal southern New England has been called a 'non-event' in the sense that it had little immediate effect on settlement patterns or on previously established subsistence practices." (pg. 83).
• "It appears that the richness and diversity of coastal estuaries both permitted and encouraged large, conditionally sedentary populations, but that the carrying capacity of these estuarine regions was ultimately surpassed, putting stress on natural resources and necessitating the adoption of alternative food-producing strategies." (pg. 86). Horticulture then becomes a necessary adjunct to estuarine adoption.
• "The archaeological data suggest that the tripartite model of settlement was overlain, or interconnected by, intraregional networks of trade, and that territorial boundaries were established in order to control that trade and protect vital resources within constricted environmental settings.  Both trade and the desire to protect restricted resources may have served to encourage the coalescence of territorially based 'ethnic' groupings and the rise of chiefly families and hereditary leadership..." (pg. 101).

Brasser, T.J. (1978). Early Indian European contacts. In: Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15. Trigger, Bruce G., Ed., Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Braun, Esther K. and Braun, David P. (1994). The first peoples of the Northeast. Moccasin Hill Press, Lincoln, MA. IS.

Brereton,John. (1602). A brief and true relation of the discovery of the North Viriginia, etc. made this present year 1602, by Captain B. Gosnold, Capt. B. Gilbert, etc by the Permission of the Hon. Knight, Sir W. Raleigh. In MaHSC, 3rd series, vol 8, pgs. 83-123.

Burrage, Henry S., Ed. (1887). Rosier's relation of Weymouth's voyage to the coast of Maine, 1605. Gorges Society, Portland, ME.

• See our information file for a reproduction of James Rosier, A True Relation of Captain George Weymouth his Voyage. Made this Present Yeere 1605.

Burrage, Henry S., Ed. (1906). Original narratives of early English and French voyages 1534-1608. Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, NY.  Also reprinted in 1930 as Early English and French voyages, chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534-1608. Reprinted in 1969.

• See annotations in the New England and US History: Antiquarian bibliography.

Burrage, Henry S. (1914). The beginnings of colonial Maine 1602-1658. Marks Printing House for the State of Maine, Portland, ME.

• See annotations in the Maine History: Antiquarian bibliography.

Burrage, Henry S. (1923). Gorges and the grant of the Province of Maine, 1622. Printed for the state, Augusta, ME.

Byers, Douglas S. (1959). The Eastern Archaic: Some problems and hypotheses. American Antiquity. 24. pg. 233-256. IS.

• "The Micmac, once makers of pottery and tillers of corn, had abandoned both arts when the French arrived, and, with their neighbors to the north, were living examples of the Archaic stage of culture." (pg. 234).
• "The fact remains that until 1936 the dwelling places of the people who buried their dead with red ochre were never excavated. ...In recent years these formerly mysterious people have begun to fit into their proper place in the Northeast.  Sites at Ellsworth Falls have been instrumental in accomplishing this feat." (pg. 243).
• An extensive description of the Ellsworth Falls site begins on page 243.
• "On a larger scale the same principle applies to the entire Boreal Archaic.  This would include Frontenac, Brewerton, Vosburg, Vergennes, Tadoussac, the Moorehead complex, Newfoundland Aberrant, and the Old Stone culture of Labrador.  All show points in common.  They are as familiar as a contemporary class picture from another school -- the clothes and poses are familiar, but the faces are different." (pg. 254).

Cadillac, Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de. (1930). "Memoir on Acadia" [1692]. In W.F. Ganong, ed. "The Cadillac Memoir on Acadia of 1692.", Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society, no. 13, New Brunswick , Canada. pp 77-97.

Calloway, Colin G., Ed. (1991). Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in northern New England. University Press of New England, Hanover, NH. IS.

Campeau, Lucien. (1967). La premiere mission d'Acadie (1602 - 1616). Presses de l'Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada.

Champlain, Samuel de. (1922). The works of Samuel de Champlain. Edited by H. H. Langdon and W. F. Ganong. 6 Vols. Champlain Society, Toronto, Canada.

• There are numerous editions of the works of Samuel de Champlain.  The Langton and Ganong edition is the definitive edition and is the one reprinted by the University of Toronto Press in 1971 under the auspices of the Champlain Society and edited by H. P. Biggar.  This edition is electronically accessible at: The Champlain Society (http://www.champlainsociety.ca/).  This edition is the sole source cited by Bourque in his definitive Twelve Thousand Years.
• Champlain began compiling his first volume in 1599, volume II in 1603, volume III in 1613, volume IV, V and VI in 1632.
• Another frequently cited edition of Champlain's work is that compiled by Grant in 1914.

Charlevoix, Pierre F.X. de. (1900). History and genreal description of New France. 6 vols. F. P. Harper, New York.

Cronon, William. (1983). Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, NY, NY. IS.

• Among the most important of all information sources about the lifestyles and environmental impact of New England's indigenous inhabitants prior to contact with European explorers, traders and settlers.

Davies, James. (1880). Relation of a voyage to Sagadahoc, 1607 - 1608. American Journeys Collection. Document No. AJ-042. Reprinted in 2003 by Wisconsin Historical Society Digital Library and Archives. www.wisconsinhistory.org. X.

• This is the same document as the one cited below by DeCosta.  James Davies was the navigator of Gilbert's vessel the Mary and John, and is almost certainly the author of the first part of this relation.  The Rev. B. F. DeCosta was the person who discovered the manuscript in London in 1875; the document has now been reprinted a number of times.
• A copy of this is available in the Davistown Museum library.
• Davies Relations has also been reprinted by the Hakluyt Society (1849), the Massachusetts Historical Society (1880), in New American World: A documentary history of North America (1979) and in David and Alison Quinn's The English New England Voyages 1602 - 1608.

Day, Gordon M. (1962). English-Indian contacts in New England. Ethnohistory. 9(1). pg. 24-40. X.

• "...the central problem of New England ethnohistory, namely, that of identifying the ethnic units within the region, establishing their affinities, locating them at the time of discovery, and following their movements, their partitions, regroupings, and mergers through the violent dislocations which followed European contact." (pg. 26).
• "The English also exhibited a tendency to create a distinct band for each river, village, or fishing camp as their acquaintance with the country grew.  Perhaps we should, pending the unraveling of the nomenclature by a concordance of historical and linguistic data, place more trust in the entities recognized by the French among their northern New England allies and in those recognized by the English among the southern New England coastal tribes." (pg. 26).
• "Of course, King Philip's War, that cataclysm in New England history, changed everything.  When the smoke had cleared away, southern New England contained only what might be called reservation Indians, who had made some kind of peace with the English, and northern New England would contain southern New England refugees for the next one hundred and twenty-five years." (pg. 28).
• "...we can not profitably study the effect of European contact on New England Indian cultures unless we know what the pre-contact cultures were and unless we can identify the several entities with which they were associated.  When we can surely identify our ethnic units, we shall have a framework on which to hang the data of ethnographic studies." (pg. 32).

Day, Gordon M. (1981). The identity of the Saint Francis Indians. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 71. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Ottawa, Canada. pg. 237-247.

• "The Pennacooks, among many other New England tribes, came as refugees to the St. Francis, Odanak community." (Ray, The Indians of Maine, pg. 34).
• See the annotations for Day's In Search of New England's Native Past below.

Day, Gordon M. (1995). Western Abenaki dictionary. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, Canada.

Day, Gordon M. (1998). In search of New England's Native past: Selected essays by Gordon M. Day. Foster, Michael K. and Cowan, William, Eds. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA. IS.

• Essential background information for understanding the destination of any Wawenocs who survived the 1616 pandemic, this book of essays contains important information about Maine's Arosagunticook and Androscoggin tribes, among other subjects.
• "Saint Francis, ... was founded as a Catholic mission in the 1660s.  From the beginning, the majority of its inhabitants were Western Abenaki refugees, who arrived there from various locations in the New England interior during the colonial wars of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century." (pg. 1).
• "...he established, ... the fundamental role of groups in the middle and upper Connecticut River valley (the Sokokis, Penacooks, and Cowasucks), with some increments from the Eastern Abenaki area, [italics added] in building the Saint Francis community in its early stages." (pg. 23).
• The focus of most of the text is on the Western Abenaki; there is only one reference to the Wawenocs, which, unlike the Penobscots, are not shown on the map on page 29.
• "The plagues of 1616-1619 and 1633-1634 killed thousands of people in southern New England and countless more in the interior.  But it was really the disastrous King Philip's War (1675-1676), named for the Wampanoag leader who rallied New England's Indians to take up arms against the English, that began the final dispersal of interior groups such as the Sokokis, Penacooks, Pocumtucks, Pigwackets, and others to the west and north, swelling the ranks of refugees at the village of Schaghticoke, a haven created for them on the Hudson River by New York governor Edmund Andros, and at the French missions, including Saint Francis, in Quebec.  Well into the eighteenth century, Saint Francis received refugees from Maine; the upper Connecticut River valley; Schaghticoke; and especially Missisquoi, near present-day Swanton, Vermont." (pg. 9).
• "To complicate the historian's task further, there were reverse movements of people at different times from Saint Francis back to Schaghticoke and Missisquoi." (pg. 9).
• "Because most of interior New England underwent severe dislocations and depopulation before the groups involved were documented, locations that persisted throughout the period, such as Missisquoi, Schaghticoke, and Saint Francis, have assumed special importance for the historian and dialectologist." (pg. 9).
• "The impression that Saint Francis was settled by people from central and western Maine derived some of its impetus from the fact that in 1705-1706 the community had received refugees from the similarly named Saint-François-de-Sales mission on the Chaudière River, which empties into the Saint Lawrence about 75 miles below the mouth of the Saint Francis River.  Many of the Chaudière people were originally attracted to that mission from the Kennebec and other rivers in Maine, some from as far east as the Penobscot area, and most of them spoke Eastern Abenaki dialects." (pg. 17).
• "Specifying who the Sokokis were and where they were located in early colonial times is important for Western Abenaki history, because they were the principal founding group at Saint Francis and have remained a significant presence there.  Past historians often assumed that the Sokokis migrated to Quebec from the Saco River in western Maine, in part because of the vague similarity between the names.  However, examination of seventeenth-century French and English documents reveals variants of the name such as Sokokiois, Suckquakege, and Suckquakege, and Squakey that appear to equate with Squakheag, the name of a village and a tribe in Northfield, Massachusetts.  If the equation is valid, this places the Sokokis in the middle Connecticut River valley rather than western Maine."  This paper, which demonstrates the value of place-name analysis for piecing together the history of a poorly documented region, was originally published in Ethnohistory 12(3):237-249 (1965). (Chapter 8: The Identity of the Sokokis, pg. 89).
• "The English also learned of the Saco River in 1605 from the Indians whom George Waymouth took captive to England, but they recorded no name for the tribe (Purchas 1905-1907 4:1873-1875).  Captain John Smith visited the mouth of the Saco with one of Waymouth's Indians in 1614, but neither he nor Ferdinando Gorges's men who wintered there in 1616 left us any tribal name (J. Smith 1836 2:2, 42; Gorges 1837 5:57).  The Indians at the head of the river were known as Pigwackets from the time they were visited by Gorges and Richard Vines in 1642 (Winthrop 1853 2:89).  Throughout the seventeenth century, the English referred to the Indians on the lower river simply as Saco Indians, and they were still called 'the Saco tribe' in the 1726 census when there were only four men left (Wendall 1866)." (pg. 89-91).
• "For another thing, the Saint Francis Indians were a tribe of mixed origins, ...Saint Francis had received practically the whole Caniba (Norridgewock), Arosagunticook, Pigwacket, Cowasuck, Pocumtuck, Schaghticoke, and Missisquoi tribes, as well as individuals and fragments of bands broken by the wars in southern New England." (Chapter 2: Dartmouth and Saint Francis, pg. 50).
• "In approaching the history of English-Indian contacts in New England, we are faced with the fact that contact commenced long before significant records were made.  For the casual reader, the history of New England began in 1620 with the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, yet he is confronted with the anomaly of Samoset's greeting, 'Welcome, Englishmen.'  We may search hopefully in the relations of the voyage of 1602 (Archer 1843; Brereton 1843), but our quest for the precontact Indian is hardly satisfied by the Indians who met Captain Gosnold then at Cape Neddick, clad in European clothes and rowing 'in a Baskeshallop,' or by the Cuttyhunk natives who tossed off in English such phrases as 'How now are you so saucie with my Tabacco?'" (Chapter 5: English-Indian Contacts in New England, pg. 65).
• "The mere thought of historical ethnographies, however, brings up a problem which is perhaps the central problem of New England ethnohistory, namely, that of identifying the ethnic units within the region; establishing their affinities; locating them at the time of discovery; and following their movements, their partitions, regrouping, and mergers through the violent dislocations which followed European contact." (Chapter 5: English-Indian Contacts in New England, pg. 66).
• "In the latter half of the seventeenth century, an Indian village sprang up on the east bank of the Saint Francis River a few miles above its junction with the Saint Lawrence.  The subsequent history of this village, although known only imperfectly, shows complex population changes, characterized by immigration of many increments from tribes in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts; attribution by war and disease; and emigration and reimmigration.  The inhabitants of this village are known in history as the Saint Francis Indians." (Chapter 6: The tree nomenclature of the Saint Francis Indians, pg. 72).
• "It appears from the data obtained on trees and other plants that those men who in their youth lived the old hunting and fishing life and maintained lifelong contact with the woods as guides have preserved a very full corpus of plant lore in spite of the acculturated condition of the band.  Whatever additional knowledge of medicinal and other plants which may be the possession of the elder women of the band has not been investigated." (Chapter 6: The tree nomenclature of the Saint Francis Indians, pg. 83).
• "Bécancour now contains only three families and practically no linguistic recollections.  The descendants of those Bécancour families that migrated to Lake Saint John are now Montagnais in culture.  Speck (1928) caught the last gasp of native language at Bécancour in 1912, but his naming it 'Wawenock' should be queried pending a thorough study of the history of the band." (Chapter 10: Historical notes on New England languages, pg. 104-105).
• "Linguistic and ethnographic data which cannot be assigned to a definite, named group at a definite time and place are at best useless and at worst a fruitful source of confusion and false theory." (pg. 223).
• "'There is a great many Indians in Canada that have not been out this Summer, both of Kennibeck and Damarascoggin, therefore a great many of these Indians at Kennibeck do intend to go to Canada in the Spring to them.'  Thus we have Kennebec and Androscoggin Indians somewhere in Canada in the summer of 1675 and more planning to join them in the spring of 1676, since the Indians on the Kennebec at that time included Androscoggin and Saco River Indians under Squando (Hubbard 1865 2:204)." (Chapter 22: Arosagunticook and Androscoggin, pg. 225).
• "Therefore, until and unless I see new evidence to the contrary, I favor the position that (1) the Androscoggin River Indians were the Amarascoggins, not the Arosaguntacooks; (2) Arsikôntegok was the name of the Saint Francis River and village, derived from its characteristics, not from the founding tribe, and probably given by the Eastern Abenakis from the Chaudière in 1700; and (3) the Arosaguntacooks who appear in the Maine treaties were merely delegations from Saint Francis, whose ethnic composition at that time was probably predominantly Western Abenaki." (pg. 227-228).
• The best summary of the history of the St Francis Abenaki, some of whom migrated to Canada from Maine.
• The bibliography in this text is extensive and contains many citations not included in The Davistown Museum bibliographies.

DeCosta, Benjamin F., Ed. (1880). The Sagadahoc Colony. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 18. pg. 82-117.

• A relation of a voyage to Sagadahoc, printed from the original manuscript in the Lambeth Palace Library.  James Davies is the author.

DeCosta, Benjamin F. (1884). Norumbega and its English explorers. In: Winsor, Justin, Ed. Narrative and critical history of America. Vol 3. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, MA. IS.

• This whole chapter has been scanned and is available in our Norumbega information file for you to read.

Denys, Nicolas. (1908). The description and natural history of the coasts of North America (Acadia) [1672]. Edited and translated by W.F. Ganong. The Champlain Society, Toronto, Canada.

Druillettes, Gabriel. (1857). Narritive of a voyage, made for the Abenaquiois mission, and information acquired of New England and dispositions of the Magistrates of that republic for assistance against the Iroquois. The whole by me, Gabriel Druillettes, of the Society of Jesus, translated and edited by John Gilmary Shea. Collections of the New York Historical Society, 2nd series, vol. 3, part 2, New York, NY. pg. 309-320.

Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy. (1945). Old John Neptune and other Maine Indian shamans. The Southworth-Anthoensen Press, Portland, ME. A Marsh Island reprint in 1980, University of Maine at Orono, Orono, ME. IS(2).

• "The statements of many historians and near historians are so full of errors and so contradictory that it is useless to cite them as evidence, needless to demolish them as errors.  Nearly all say that the Penobscots are Tarratines.  They are not.  Some say that the Passamaquoddies are Tarratines.  They are not.  Others say that the Wawenocks were exterminated.  They were not." (pg. 73).
• "The Wawenocks were not exterminated.  After the Norridgewock disaster they removed to Canada and most of them stayed there.  Within a few years Dr. Frank Speck has found a remnant of the tribe and has studied the dialect." (pg. 74).
• "According to Dr. Speck, the name is not Wan-noak, 'very brave':  it comes from Walinakiak, the 'People of the Bays,' their old homes having been along the deeply indented coast between the Kennebec and St. George's Rivers, whence their other name of 'Sheepscot Indians.'" (pg. 74).

Erickson, Vincent O. (1978). Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. In: Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast. Vol 15. Trigger, Bruce G. Ed., Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. pg. 123-136. X.

• "The Maliseet and Passamaquoddy speak mutually intelligible dialects of the same language." (pg. 123).
• "These virtually identical people differed primarily in their economic adaptation.  The Maliseet were inland hunters, living along the Saint John River drainage in New Brunswick and Maine; the Passamaquoddy were sea mammal hunters, living along the coasts of New Brunswick and Maine. (pg. 123).
• "The Passamaquoddy had long occupied and used the territory on the south and east shores of Passamaquoddy Bay for maple sugaring (Eckstorm 1941:226), marine hunting, and fishing (Sabine 1852:100) and used Lewis (Lewey's) Island near Princeton for inland hunting and fishing (Ganong 1899:223)." (pg. 125).
• "In June the Maliseets went to one of the islands in the Saint John to camp, first to spear bass and later sturgeon.  Several trips were made back and forth from garden plots to fishing sites in the summer.  After corn was hilled the Maliseets went out to spear fish including salmon by torchlight at night.  Fish, wild grapes, and roots provided the summer diet.  In fall corn was harvested, and the portion that was dried was either stored in subterranean pits lined with bark or taken along on the migratory winter hunt.  This hunt for moose or bear was done by groups of 8 to 10 people, two of whom were adult men.  Until spring, the group continually traveled over a large area of Maine, New Brunswick, and the Gaspé Peninsula in search of game." (pg. 127).
• "Passamaquoddy subsistence activities and annual cycle resembled the Maliseet in most details for the three periods outlined.  Spring found the same fishing and planting sequences, but June precipitated a movement to the seashore.  Men, two to a canoe, paddled into the open seas of the Bay of Fundy to shoot porpoise and seal (Verrill 1954:96).  While it is not universally agreed that porpoise and seal hunting was aboriginal among the Passamaquoddy, Eckstorm (1932:15) suggests that seal and porpoise oil were used by Maine Indians during the ceramic period.  Whales were enticed by men in canoes to swim into shallow areas where they became stranded and were more easily killed.  Excursions were made to neighboring islands to fish, to gather clams and lobsters, or to collect the eggs of sea birds.  Winter hunting and trapping follow most details of the Maliseet." (pg. 127).
• "Porcupine-quill embroidery was lost about the time the splint basket replaced the birchbark container." (pg. 129).
• "Other types of political organization reflect changes associated with the formation of the Wabanaki Confederacy.  Essentially an alliance established in the mid-eighteenth century among the Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki, it embraced other tribes allied to the French and had its 'great fire' or principal meeting place at Caughnawaga, Quebec. ...The Wabanaki Confederacy ceased to meet sometime in the second half of the nineteenth century." (pg. 132).

Fitzhugh, William W., Ed. (1985). Cultures in contact: The impact of European contacts on Native American cultural institutions A.D. 1000 - 1800. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. IS.

• "The lack of archeological information on contact-period Indian cultures is only one side of the coin, for archeological attention to the more mundane aspects of rural colonial life has been equally deficient. ...Is the paucity of archeological data really attributable to site destruction from colonial land-use practice, village and urban sprawl, and dam and highway construction, or is this frequently heard claim just a rationalization for neglect?" (pg. 4).
• "Little attention, however, has been given to archeological studies of early contact from the native point of view. ...we decided therefore to attempt an archeological perspective on the earliest period of contact -- primarily the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- and to concentrate not on changing material culture and technology per se, but rather on the effects of European contact on the institutions that organized native societies.  By doing so, we hoped to identify structural change in the organization of these groups and to relate changes in economic and social organization, religious beliefs, settlement patterns, subsistence, land use, and other systems to various contact and acculturation phenomena." (pg. 5).
• "More recently, a growing awareness of native life and history has led to the view that the virtual annihilation of many of these cultures and their people is attributable to the merciless and unconscionable economic, military, political, and spiritual exploitation of native American groups by European explorers and colonists competing for nationalistic and mercantile dominance in the New World.  This view holds that Indian groups were unwitting witnesses to their own destruction or, at best, ineffectual defenders of their rights in the face of broken treaties and unfavorably balanced transactions.  History supports the validity of many elements of this perspective." (pg. 8-9).
• "Societies ranged from small, nomadic hunting groups to complex chiefdoms and regional confederacies controlled by tribal councils and powerful sachems, sagamores, and shamans.  At the time of contact native groups interacted in various ways in coastal areas and inter-tribal economic exchange systems dispersed utilitarian as well as socially valuable commodities throughout the region, many destined for prestigious individuals." (pg. 100).
• "By the time Gosnold visited the coast of Maine in 1602, natives were wearing large copper breastplates and European costumes including waistcoats, breeches, hose, and shoes in seafashion style." (pg. 101).

Ganong, William Francis. (1917). The origin of the place-names Acadia and Norumbega. Proceedings and Transactions. Royal Society of Canada, 3rd series, XXXI, ii. pg. 105-119. X.

• "Thus the late A. S. Gatschet, a trained philologist and expert in the Indian language, has also written in connection with Norumbega: 'The name does not stand for any Indian settlement, but is a term of the Abnáki languages, which in Penobscot sounds nalambígi, in Passamaquoddy nalabégik -- both referring to the 'still, quiet' (nala--) stretch of a river between two riffles, rapids, or cascades; --bégik, for nipégik, means 'at the water'.  On the larger rivers and watercourses of Maine ten to twenty of these 'still water stretches' may occur on each' (National Geographic Magazine, VIII, 1897, 23).  A root -BEGA, in the locative case -BEGAK or BEGAT, is very common in place-names of Maine and Eastern Canada associated with standing water, as manifest by the fact that the sixth paper of a series appearing in these transactions, gives a list of approximately one hundred of them; and a root NOL- or NOLUM- occurs in words meaning STILL or QUIET, referring to water (Hubbard, Woods and Lakes of Maine, 205)." (pg. 108).
• "Thus De Costa, repeating the explanation above given by Ballard, adds that of Sewall who makes it mean PLACE OF A FINE CITY.  Sewall, in his Ancient Dominions of Maine, made the word apply to an Indian village westward of the Penobscot, as did an Indian mentioned by Godfrey." (pg. 108).
• "Champlain in his Voyages of 1613 uses the form NOREMBEGUE, and identifies the river with the Penobscot; but his personal experience showed the falsity of the old stories, and his common sense comments, aided by the wit of Lescarbot, swept Norumbega from the maps.  It is easy to find the source of Champlain's Norembegue, for this form of the name, and the stories he controverts, occur in a popular book which ran through seven editions prior to 1605 -- about the time when Champlain was writing (Harrisse, 155), viz., Les Voyages avantureux du Capitaine Jan Alfonce.  This work was founded on Alfonse's well-known Ms. Cosmographie of 1544, in which he describes a cape, river, and city of NOROMBEGUE in the region of the present Maine." (pg. 109).
• "Thus we are led back to the narrative of 1539 which says that NORUMBEGA was the name of the country used by the inhabitants.  The statement has an air of finality, but grave difficulties attend its acceptance.  First, we know that the American Indians did not themselves use names for extensive territories, as the civilized white man does, but only for specific localities having some connection with their lives or interests.  Our surviving Indian names for territories were adopted and extended by the whites from more limited geographical features." (pg. 110).

Ganong, William F. (1933). "Crucial Maps in the early cartography and place nomenclature of the Atlantic coast of Canada. V: The Compiled , or Composite Maps of 1526-1600". Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series 3, vol. 27, sect 2, pp. 149-195. Ottawa, Canada.

Gorges, Ferdinando. (1658). A briefe narration of the originall undertakings of the advancement of plantations into the parts of America. Especially showing the beginning, progress and continuence of that of New England. E. Brudenell for Nath. Brook., London, England. Reprinted in 1890 by Publications of the Prince Society, Boston, MA. W.

• "This Bashaba had many enemies, especially those to the East and North-East, whom they called Tarentines, those to the West and South-West, were called Sockhigones, but the Tarentines were counted a more war-like and hardy People, and had indeed the least opportunity to make their attempts upon them, by reason of the conveniency and opportunity of the Rivers and Sea, which affoarded a speedy passage into the Bashabaes Country, which was called Moasham, and that part of the Country which lay between the Sockhigones Country and Moasham was called Apistama:  The Massachisans and Bashabaes were sometimes Friends and sometimes Enemies as it fell out, but the Bashaba and his People seemed to be of some eminence above the rest, in all that part of the Continent; his owne chief abode was not far from Pemaquid, but the Warre growing more and more violent between the Bashaba and the Tarentines ... the Tarentines suprised the Bashaba, and slew him and all his People near about him, carrying away his Women, and such other matters as they thought of value..." ( This quote from Gorges was reprinted in Siebert, 1973, pg. 71.)
• Gorges or one of his associates interviewed several of the Wawenoc Indians captured by George Waymouth.  The narrative was given to Hakluyt who died before publishing it.  Samuel Purchas published it in 1625 (Morey, 2005).

Grant, W.L., Ed. (1907). Voyages of Samuel de Champlain: 1604 - 1616. Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, NY.

• Champlain's narrative of his voyages to Maine are the primary source for the Bourque/Snow thesis that the Bashaba, titular head of the mysterious confederacy of Mawooshen, was an Etchemin and lived on the Penobscot in the vicinity of Bangor.  (Also see Baird's letters.) This point of view is in fact directly contradicted by the very text that is used to verify its truth, e.g. below Champlain makes very clear that while visiting the Bangor area he found no evidence of any significant community of Native Americans, Etchemins being such a nomadic tribe that they had no permanent place of residence.  Champlain never explored the rivers of Norumbega with any thoroughness, not having visited the Medomak, Damariscotta and much of the Sheepscot basin with the exception of a single trip to Wiscasset, where he noted Armouchiquois of a different lifestyle and dress than the Souriquois of eastern Canada.  Based upon this lack of accurate exploration of the heartland of the Wawenocs, the conclusion that the Native Americans living west of the Penobscot River were Etchemins is based only upon a single encounter on the Penobscot near Bucksport and is contradicted by a large body of oral and written history from primarily English rather than French sources.  Champlain's narrative further supports the English point of view by the obvious error of calling the Kennebec Indians Etechemins ("This nation of savages of Quinibequy are called Etechemins, as well as those of Norumbegue", pg. 50.)  If Champlain thought the Kennebec Indians were Etchemins, he certainly could have easily been mistaken about the Bashaba as well as his brethren, the Wawenocs of "Norumbegue."  The Kennebec Indians (Cannabis) are considered to be Armouchiquois by both Antiquarian and contemporary historians.
• This controversy is given further fuel by W.L. Grant in his footnote pertaining to the domain of the Bashaba as being in the region around Rockland, an area Champlain called Bedabedec, see below.  This footnote supports the English and colonial observations that the stronghold of the Wawenocs and their Bashaba was in the Pemaquid/Rockland region.  The Bourque/Snow thesis would seem to hold that the Wawenocs, in fact, never existed, were it not for Snow's one and only comment on the Wawenocs in his Archaeology of New England: "Wawenoc Indians, who appear in many later documents, were simply residents of the coastal drainages between the Kennebec and Penobscot that I have chosen to lump with the Kennebec." (pg. 61). The Wawenocs may appear in "many later documents" but seem to disappear in contemporary texts, most graphically in that most comprehensive of all studies of the Native Americans of North America, Trigger's Handbook of North American Indians.  In Volume 15, Snow's chapter on the Eastern Abenaki identifies the Bashaba as an Etchemin/Penobscot chief, with no mention of his historic association with the Wawenocs of Mawooshen.  The following observations by Champlain provide a very meager basis for this contention.
• While visiting Mount Desert Island (Sept. 6, 1604): "On the morning of the next day they came alongside of our barque and talked with our savages.  I ordered some biscuit, tobacco, and other trifles to be given them.  These savages had come beaver-hunting and to catch fish, some of which they gave us.  Having made an alliance with them, they guided us to their river of Pentegoüet, [Penobscot] so called by them, where they told us was their captain, named Bessabez, chief of this river.  I think this river is that which several pilots and historians call Norumbegue, and which most have described as large and extensive, with very many islands." (pg. 46).
• "The Isle des Monts Déserts forms one of the extremities of the mouth, [of the Penobscot] on the east; the other is low land, called by the savages Bedabedec, to the west of the former, the two being distant from each other nine or ten leagues." (pg. 46-47). 
• "Some two or three leagues from the point of Bedabedec, as you coast northward along the main land which extends up this river, there are very high elevations of land, which in fair weather are seen twelve of fifteen leagues out at sea." (pg. 47). 
• The editor, W.L. Grant, adds this footnote:  "An indefinite region about Rockland and Camden, on the western bank of the Penobscot near its mouth, appears to have been the domain of the Indian chief, Bessabez, and was denominated Bedabedec.  The Camden Hills were called the mountains of Bedabedec and Owl's Head was called Bedabedec Point." (pg. 46).
• "And I will state that from the entrance to where we went [Bangor], about twenty-five leagues, we saw no town, nor village, nor the appearance of there having been one, but one or two cabins of the savages without inhabitants.  These were made in the same way as those of the Souriquois, being covered with the bark of trees.  So far as we could judge, the savages on this river are few in number, and are called Etechemins.  Moreover, they only come to the islands, and that only during some months in summer for fish and game, of which there is a great quantity.  They are a people who have no fixed abode, so far as I could observe and learn from them."  (pg. 48).
• Grant follows with this footnote: "The Souriquois are the Mic-Macs of Nova Scotia.  Closely akin to them were the Etechemins, who extended from St. John, N.B., to the neighborhood of Mount Desert.  South of these were the Almouchiquois or Armouchiquois." (pg. 48).
• September 16, 1604: "The 16th of the month there came to us some thirty savages on assurances given them by those who had served us as guides.  There came also to us the same day the above-named Bessabez with six canoes. ...Bessabez, seeing us on land, bade us sit down and began to smoke with his companions, as they usually do before an address.  They presented us with venison and game.  I directed our interpreter to say to our savages that they should cause Bessabez, Cahahis, and their companions to understand that Sieur de Monts had sent me to them to see them, and also their country, and that he desired to preserve friendship with them and to reconcile them with their enemies, the Souriquois and Canadians." (pg. 49-50).
• "The 17th of the month I took the altitude, and found the latitude 45º 25'.  This done, we set out for another river called Quinibequy, distant from this place thirty-five leagues, and nearly twenty from Bedabedec.  This nation of savages of Quinibequy are called Etechemins, as well as those of Norumbegue." (pg. 50).
• "The 20th of the month we sailed along the western coast, and passed the mountains of Bedabedec, when we anchored.  The same day we explored the entrance to the river, where large vessels can approach; but there are inside some reefs, to avoid which one must advance with sounding lead in hand.  Our savages left us, as they did not wish to go to Quinibequy, for the savages of that place are great enemies to them.  We sailed some eight leagues along the western coast to an island ten leagues distant from Quinibequy, where we were obliged to put in on account of bad weather and contrary wind [Monhegan Island]." (pg. 51).
• "And in consideration of the small quantity of provisions which we had, we resolved to return to our settlement [at St. Croix] and wait until the following year, when we hoped to return and explore more extensively.  We accordingly set out on our return on the 23d of September, and arrived at our settlement on the 2d of October following.  The above is not an exact statement of all that I have observed respecting not only the coasts and people, but also the river of Norumbegue; and there are none of the marvels there which some persons have described.  I am of opinion that this region is as disagreeable in winter as that of our settlement, in which we were greatly deceived." (pg. 51-52).

Greene, Francis B. (1906). History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine 1623 - 1905 with family genealogies. Loring, Short and Harmon, Portland, ME. IS.

• Greene is one of the last of the traditional historians utilizing Williamson as a primary source of information and retaining the tribal specific name Wawenoc for the Native American inhabitants living between the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers.
• "The Indian inhabitants of Maine were divided into two great confederacies; the Abenaques and the Etechemins; and the Penobscot River was the line of demarcation.  The Abenaques dwelt westerly and the Etechemins along the banks and east of this river.  The former were divided into four large tribes; the latter into three.  The Sokokis, the smallest tribe among the Abenaques, were settled upon the Saco River; and their principal abode was Indian Island, just above the Lower Falls, also a settlement in the present town of Fryeburg and another on the Great Ossipee.  The Anasagunticooks dwelt along he Androscoggin River, on the west side, from its sources to Merrymeeting Bay; their principal resort being at Pejepscot, now Brunswick.  The Canibas lived on the Kennebec River, from Norridgewock to the sea, and Kennebis, the paramount lord of the tribe, lived on Swan Island; but there were several other points along the river where settlements of some size were indicated, notably at Norridgewock and Teconnet, now Winslow.  The Wawenocks occupied the remaining space between the two great rivers, Kennebec and Penobscot, their principal settlements being on the Sheepscot and Damariscotta..." (pg. 35).
• "The principal dwelling places of the Wawenocks must have been those spots here and there alongshore which have shown the greatest amount of offal deposit." (pg. 38).
• "The two great centers of Wawenock settlement were where the Damariscotta oyster shell deposit exists and about the lower Sheepscot waters, though there were many minor ones.  Indications point to this Damariscotta locality as the Norumbegua or Arambec of the ancients, and also as being the residence of the Bashaba, more strongly than any other place. ... There are several reasons why this place is indicated as the chief point in old Mavooshen.  It shows to have been the center and abode of a mighty horde of eaters, much greater in extent than any other in America, and one of the largest in the world; it was as nearly central in their territory as any place that could be selected; the quality of the food was better than any other section has shown, being oysters instead of clams, and the ruling element usually takes the best in either civilized or barbarian life; lastly, when the Popham and Gilbert colony was visited by a delegation from the Bashaba, consisting of his brother Skidwares and Nahanada, extending an invitation to visit him, a locality northerly from Pemaquid was indicated by them, and not the lower Sheepscot, where the next greatest aggregation of offal deposit exists." (pg. 39 - 40).
• "At the head of the cove which penetrates Sawyer's Island from the north, more than half the distance across it, were in early times quite well-defined cooking pots, cut in the rocks, which in later years have crumbled and sloughed off.  It is supposed that they were used for cooking maize and vegetables by immersing hot stones in the pot holes when filled with water and the articles to be cooked." (pg. 40).
• Commenting on Verrazzano's 1524 visit to the shores of Maine: "He skirted the coast along, touching near the site of Portsmouth, and then made his cruise along the shores of the Gulf of Maine.  He stated that while at the South he found the natives agreeable and gentle, here, on the Maine coast, they were in an irritable state, rude and ill-mannered.  No navigator of his time knew better than Verrazzano just what localities had been visited up to that date by voyagers and fishermen, and he interpreted it at once as an indication that the Indian race, in these parts, was disaffected from treatment they had received from European visitors.  He noted another peculiarity of the Indians on this coast, which strengthened his suspicions; while at the South the natives were pleased with any trinket or ornament, here they wanted nothing but fishhooks, knives, or some iron or steel instrument that would cut, and appeared as though they had learned the use of such articles.  He concluded that European barter with the natives had commenced before his visit." (pg. 45).

Hakluyt, Richard. (1582). Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America. London. Facsimile reprint in 1967 by Theatrum Orbis Terraram, Amsterdam.

Hakluyt, Richard. (1589-1601). The principall navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation. George Bishop and Ralph Newberrie, London, England.

• The Davistown Museum library has a copy of a modern reprint in its library: Hakluyt, Richard. (1985). Voyages and discoveries: The principal navigations voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation. Edited, abridged and introduced by Jack Beeching, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books Ltd., London. IS.
• See annotations in the General History Sources: Antiquarian bibliograpy.

Hakluyt, Richard. (1877). A discourse concerning western planting: Written in the year 1584 by Richard Hakluyt; now first printed from a contemporary manuscript, with a preface and an introduction by Leonard Woods, Ed., with notes in the appendix, by Charles Deane. Press of J. Wilson, Cambridge, MA.

Hardy, Kerry. (2006). Personal communications. Director of Merryspring Park, Camden, ME.

• Kerry Hardy is also the author of the essay: "Four Guides to the Past".
• Thank you to Kerry for many helpful suggestions in the preparation of this publication by email, telephone conversations, snail mail, carrier pigeon and messages in a bottle.

Hoffman, Bernard G. (November 1955). Souriquois, Etechemin, and Kwedech