The Latter Wars

In the quarter century after King William's War, Falmouth, once the center of a vigorous trade in fish, masts, spars, timber, and sawed lumber, slowly revived. Sawmills, gristmills, and boatworks again dotted the rivers and inlets between the Piscataqua and Kennebec, and farms sent hay, dairy products, cattle, sheep, swine, cordwood, and fish to Massachusetts ports for the local and coastwise trade.

Returning settlers took up a quasi-military life. Garrison houses, usually under a militia command, provided nuclei for small settlements either just outside or within a stockade. During daylight, men and women worked in their fields under protection of scouts and guards. For most of the period, English Maine lived in a state of virtual siege. Only the larger seaports – Boston, Salem, Portsmouth, Kittery – enjoyed sufficient security to benefit from the military expenditures from Great Britain.

By 1701 France and England were engaged in what came to be known as Queen Anne's War. When France proved less willing to supply arms, the Penobscots ratified a series of neutrality agreements with Massachusetts. But in August 1703 an expedition of about 500 French and Micmac Indians from the St. Lawrence devastated the coastal towns and forts from Wells to Falmouth, and Massachusetts declared war on all Maine Indians. Militia raids in the upper Saco kept villagers from their fields and from critical foraging areas.

After the cessation of hostilities in Europe, the 1713 Treaty of Portsmouth quickly brought peace to the Maine frontier. By this time it was apparent that English population expansion would engulf southern Maine, and most Indians in the area withdrew to the St. Lawrence settlements under the command of Governor Vaudreuil.

Indian military successes were significant, and the upper Kennebec remained a contested territory. With English settlers pushing upriver, the Massachusetts militia rebuilt the fort at Brunswick, giving the English power to prevent Indians from reaching the coast for foraging and fishing activities. Indian security in central Maine was becoming more tenuous.

Despite the peace treaty, wars involving Indians and Europeans and between Europeans were not over. Dummer's War in 1721-1727 began as a series of skirmishes in Maine and Vermont in territory claimed by both French and English.

By this time the Muscongus Company had pushed the English frontier eastward to the St. Georges in Thomaston. Responding to Indian raids in March 1723, acting Governor William Dummer sent militia under Colonel Thomas Westbrook into the Kennebec region to burn Indian villages and fields, and in August 1724 a combined force of English militia and Massachusetts and Mohawk Indians destroyed the village at Norridgewock, killing as many as 100 Indians and Father Rasle.

Another desperate encounter took place in April 1725 on the upper Saco valley when a party of bounty hunters under John Lovewell encountered an Indian troop near the Pigwacket village. Lovewell and 11 other English were killed, along with an equal number of Indians.

During this war the French offered only limited aid, leaving Massachusetts free to focus its attention on the Wabanaki. With the destruction of Norridgewock, the Penobscots emerged as leaders of a new intertribal alliance, and after consulting with Vaudreuil, leaders ratified a treaty with Massachusetts in summer 1727.

Seventeen years of peace followed Dummer's War and during that time, English resettled to the St. Georges River. Hostilities resumed in 1744 during King George's War after a group of English scalp hunters killed or wounded several Penobscot Indians. In 1745 Canadian Indians attacked Pemaquid and Fort St. Georges, and despite minimal Penobscot and Kennebec participation, Massachusetts again declared war on the Wabanaki in August 1745.



Fort Halifax Block House Item Contributed by

Maine Historical Society

In this war, colonial forces, including those from Maine, prevailed against the French stronghold at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, but in Maine military action was limited to occasional skirmishes. The war ended with the Treaty of Falmouth in October 1749.

The sixth and final Anglo-Abenaki war, known as the Seven Years, or French and Indian war (1754-1760), was largely fought in the Ohio Valley. In Maine, Governor William Shirley used rumors of French maneuvers on the Kennebec to construct Fort Halifax above Norridgewock at Winslow. Many Penobscots withdrew from the St. Georges area when both Massachusetts and the French demanded that the Indians take up arms against the other.

In 1759, English forces defeated the French at Quebec, ending the long struggle for control of North America. During the next few years Indian family bands re-occupied tribal grounds on the upper Penobscot, Kennebec, and Saco rivers.

Governor Bernard banned white hunters and trappers from the upper Penobscot and sent surveyor Joseph Chadwick to mark the limits of English settlement at the falls above the Kenduskeag, but theft, murder, poaching, land encroachment, and an explosion of white settlement up the river valleys made a return to the old ways all but impossible.