A remarkable survey of Wabanaki history
It is sad but true that reliable accounts of who was native to Maine’s coastal region, their way of life, and how they struggled to survive in the face of the invasion and eventual takeover of their homeland by Europeans are extremely hard to come by.
Therefore, the appearance of this study is cause for celebration. A remarkable piece of scholarship, it is at the same time readable. For anyone interested in the state’s native people, the overall history of the Penobscot Bay-Mount Desert Island region, or coastal Maine in general, it is a “must read”.
The work begins with an executive summary, a foreword by Passamaquoddy historian Donald Soctomah, acknowledgements, a 12-page timeline, and a map of the research area. There follow 13 chapters that provide a description of native life before the arrival of Europeans; a thorough rethinking of cross-cultural relations in the contested region north of colonial New England including French Acadia, from the Mi’kmaq wars to the fall of French Canada; and a chronicle of the Indian struggle for cultural survival as white settlers, rusticators, and others came into the region.
There are all sorts of fascinating stories here about indigenous actors such as the great chiefs Bashabas, Asticou, Madockawando, and Orono, their French and English friends and foes, fur traders (including the Baron de Saint Castin and his metis children), various fishermen, missionaries, privateers, militias, farmers, summer visitors and so on. The chapters are well illustrated with an array of maps, engravings, paintings, drawings and photographs.
Following these chapters are three more that detail Wabanaki material culture uses, food uses, and medicinal uses of plants and animals. Next are five more: an illustrated inventory of plants used, of animals used, maps and inventory of indigenous archaeological sites, maps and inventories of Wabanaki encampments on Mount Desert Island from the 1840s to 1920s, and maps and inventory of native canoe routes to and on Mount Desert Island. Concluding the work is an annotated reference list – some 37 pages in length!
The importance of this study cannot be overstated. The bad news is that only about 150 copies were run by the park service. The good news is that several were distributed to local libraries, and that it is now available for digital downloading from the Acadia Park web site, or the National Park Service history web site.
William A. Haviland, an anthropologist who lives in Deer Isle, is author of The Original Vermonters, Deer Isle’s Original People and the forthcoming At The Place of the Lobsters and Crabs: Indian People and Deer Isle, Maine, 1605-2005.