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History

Two North Maine Woods sites are said to have been sacred: the Katahdin Iron Works, in Brownville Junction, source of the pigments found in their burial sites; and Mount Kineo on Moosehead Lake, source of the flintlike volcanic stone widely used for arrowheads. Early French missions
at Mount Desert and Castine proved battlegrounds between the French and English, and by the end of the 17th century thousands of Wabanaki had retreated either to Canada or to the Penobscot community of Old Town and to Norridgewock, where Father Sebastian Rasle insisted that the Indian lands “were given them of God, to them and their children forever, according to the Christian oracles.” The mission was obliterated (it’s now a pleasant roadside rest area), and by the end of the French and In­dian Wars only four tribes remained. Of these the Mic­macs and Maliseets made the unlucky choice of siding with the Crown and were subsequently forced to flee (but communities remain near the Aroostook County–Canadian border in Presque Isle and Littleton, respectively). That left only the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddys.

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