The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on July 13, 1713, ended hostilities between the Eastern Abenakis, a Native American tribe and First Nation and Algonquian-speaking people, with the British provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. The agreement renewed a treaty of 1693 the natives had made with Governor Sir William Phips, two in a series of attempts to establish peace between the Wabanaki Confederacy and colonists after Queen Anne's War.
During the War of the Spanish Succession, France began a conflict with England which would elongate to their colonies. Called Queen Anne's War in the New World, New France openly fought New England for domination of the region between them, with the French enlisting the indigenous Abenaki tribes as allies. Occasionally under French command, First Nations people attacked numerous English settlements along the Maine coast, including Casco (now Portland), Scarborough, Saco, Wells, York and Berwick, in New Hampshire at Hampton, Dover, Oyster River Plantation (now Durham), and Exeter, and down into Massachusetts at Haverhill, Groton and Deerfield, site of the Deerfield Massacre. Houses were burned, and the inhabitants either killed or abducted to Canada. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, however, restored peace between France and England. As part of the agreement, Acadia fell under British sovereignty. When the First Nations People realised that they could no longer depend on the French for protection, the sachems sought a truce, and proposed a peace conference to be held at Casco. Joseph Dudley, governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, agreed to a conference, but chose instead to host it at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was protected by the guns of Fort William and Mary. For a more detailed timeline of events leading from first contact to the 1713 treaty, see references and resources. [1]
On July 11, 1713, Governor Dudley and various dignitaries from New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay (which then included Maine) met with delegates from Abenaki tribes, including the Amasacontee, Maliseet, Norridgewock, Pennacook, Penobscot and Sokoki. The agreement was read aloud by sworn interpreters to the sachems, eight of whom on July 13 signed with totemic pictographs. It is important to note that historians have found that New England politicians and translators engaged in a "policy of deception" the Wabanaki group of tribes. Consequently, Wabanakis would claim in subsequent years that several articles written into the treaty were at odds with verbal agreements, especially regarding British claims to sovereignty over them. [2] Others would sign the following year after a similar interpretation at another convention. "Being sensible of our great offence and folly," the Indians agreed to:
At the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth were also the St John River Maliseet [Wolastoqiyik], Mi'kmaw (Mi'kmaq), and Abenaki [Aln8bak] nations of Acadia. [3]
The English failed to fulfil their obligations under the treaty. Massachusetts did not, as promised, establish official trading posts selling cheap goods at honest prices to the First Nations. Tribes were forced to continue exchanging their furs with private traders, who were notorious for cheating them. In addition, First Nations regarded as threats the British blockhouses being built on their lands, and objected to ongoing encroachment of settlers on lands they claimed. Their discontent was encouraged by Sebastien Rale and other French Jesuit priests embedded with the tribes who promoted New France's interests. In response to what they perceived as British violations of the Treaty of Portsmouth, the Abenakis resumed raids on the encroaching British settlements. Consequently, on July 25, 1722, Governor Samuel Shute declared war against the Eastern First Nations in what would be called Father Rale's War. Boundary struggles between New France and New England would continue until the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
The Abenaki are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Queen Anne's War (1702–1713) was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought in North America involving the colonial empires of Great Britain, France, and Spain; it took place during the reign of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. In the United States, it is regarded as a standalone conflict under this name. Elsewhere it is usually viewed as the American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession. It is also known as the Third Indian War. In France it was known as the Second Intercolonial War.
King William's War was the North American theater of the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), also known as the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg. It was the first of six colonial wars fought between New France and New England along with their respective Native allies before France ceded its remaining mainland territories in North America east of the Mississippi River in 1763.
Norridgewock was the name of both an Indigenous village and a band of the Abenaki Native Americans/First Nations, an Eastern Algonquian tribe of the United States and Canada. The French of New France called the village Kennebec. The tribe occupied an area in the interior of Maine. During colonial times, this area was territory disputed between British and French colonists, and was set along the claimed western border of Acadia, the western bank of the Kennebec River.
Dummer's War (1722–1725) was a series of battles between the New England Colonies and the Wabanaki Confederacy, who were allied with New France. The eastern theater of the war was located primarily along the border between New England and Acadia in Maine, as well as in Nova Scotia; the western theater was located in northern Massachusetts and Vermont in the frontier areas between Canada and New England.
The Treaty of Watertown, the first foreign treaty concluded by the United States of America after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, was signed on July 19, 1776, in the Edmund Fowle House in the town of Watertown, Massachusetts Bay. The treaty established a military alliance between the United States and the St. John's and some of the Mi'kmaw bands against Great Britain for the early years of the American Revolutionary War. Seven Mi'kmaw bands chose to decline the American treaty. The Mi’kmaq People were in praxis with three virtues that are the supremacy of the Great Spirit, respect for Mother Earth, and people power that were based on their cultural ways of life before contact with early European settlers.
The Treaty of Casco (1678) was a treaty that brought to a close the war between the Indigenous Dawnland nations and the English settlers. There are no surviving copies of the treaty or its proceedings, so historians use a summary by Jeremy Belknap in his 1784 History of New Hampshire.
Samuel Shute was an English military officer and royal governor of the provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. After serving in the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, he was appointed by King George I as governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1716. His tenure was marked by virulent disagreements with the Massachusetts assembly on a variety of issues, and by poorly conducted diplomacy with respect to the Native American Wabanaki Confederacy of northern New England that led to Dummer's War (1722–1725).
Sébastien Rale (also Racle, Râle, Rasle, Rasles, and Sebastian Rale was a French Jesuit missionary and lexicographer who preached amongst the Abenaki and encouraged their resistance to British colonization during the early 18th century. This encouragement culminated in Dummer's War, where Rale was killed by a group of New England militiamen. Rale also worked on an Abenaki-French dictionary during his time in North America.
The Wabanaki Confederacy is a North American First Nations and Native American confederation of five principal Eastern Algonquian nations: the Abenaki of St. Francis, Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, Passamaquoddy (Peskotomahkati) and Penobscot.
The Battle of Pequawket occurred on May 9, 1725 (O.S.), during Father Rale's War in northern New England. Captain John Lovewell led a privately organized company of scalp hunters, organized into a makeshift ranger company, and Chief Paugus led the Abenaki at Pequawket, the site of present-day Fryeburg, Maine. The battle was related to the expansion of New England settlements along the Kennebec River.
The Battle of Norridgewock was a raid on the Abenaki settlement of Norridgewock by a group of colonial militiamen from the New England Colonies. Occurring in contested lands on the edge of the American frontier, the raid resulted in a massacre of the Abenaki inhabitants of Norridgewock by the militiamen.
The Northeast Coast campaign was the first major campaign by the French of Queen Anne's War in New England. Alexandre Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin led 500 troops made up of French colonial forces and the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia. They attacked English settlements on the coast of present-day Maine between Wells and Casco Bay, burning more than 15 leagues of New England country and killing or capturing more than 150 people. The English colonists protected some of their settlements, but a number of others were destroyed and abandoned. Historian Samuel Drake reported that, "Maine had nearly received her death-blow" as a result of the campaign.
The Northeast Coast campaign (1745) occurred during King George's War from 19 July until 5 September 1745. Three weeks after the British Siege of Louisbourg (1745), the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia retaliated by attacking New England settlements along the coast of present-day Maine below the Kennebec River, the former border of Acadia. They attacked English settlements on the coast of present-day Maine between Berwick and St. Georges, within two months there were 11 raids - every town on the frontier had been attacked. Casco was the principal settlement.
The Northeast Coast campaign (1723) occurred during Father Rale's War from April 19, 1723 – January 28, 1724. In response to the previous year, in which New England attacked the Wabanaki Confederacy at Norridgewock and Penobscot, the Wabanaki Confederacy retaliated by attacking the coast of present-day Maine that was below the Kennebec River, the border of Acadia. They attacked English settlements on the coast of present-day Maine between Berwick and Mount Desert Island. Casco was the principal settlement. The 1723 campaign was so successful along the Maine frontier that Dummer ordered its evacuation to the blockhouses in the spring of 1724.
The military history of the Mi'kmaq consisted primarily of Mi'kmaq warriors (smáknisk) who participated in wars against the English independently as well as in coordination with the Acadian militia and French royal forces. The Mi'kmaq militias remained an effective force for over 75 years before the Halifax Treaties were signed (1760–1761). In the nineteenth century, the Mi'kmaq "boasted" that, in their contest with the British, the Mi'kmaq "killed more men than they lost". In 1753, Charles Morris stated that the Mi'kmaq have the advantage of "no settlement or place of abode, but wandering from place to place in unknown and, therefore, inaccessible woods, is so great that it has hitherto rendered all attempts to surprise them ineffectual". Leadership on both sides of the conflict employed standard colonial warfare, which included scalping non-combatants. After some engagements against the British during the American Revolutionary War, the militias were dormant throughout the nineteenth century, while the Mi'kmaq people used diplomatic efforts to have the local authorities honour the treaties. After confederation, Mi'kmaq warriors eventually joined Canada's war efforts in World War I and World War II. The most well-known colonial leaders of these militias were Chief (Sakamaw) Jean-Baptiste Cope and Chief Étienne Bâtard.
The Maliseet militia was made up of warriors from the Maliseet of northeastern North America. Along with the Wabanaki Confederacy, the French and Acadian militia, the Maliseet fought the British through six wars over a period of 75 years. They also mobilized against the British in the American Revolution. After confederation, Maliseet warriors eventually joined Canada's war efforts in World War I and World War II.
The Northeast Coast campaign of 1747 was conducted by the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia against the New England settlements along the coast of present-day Maine below the Kennebec River, the former border of Acadia. It took place from July until September 1747, and formed part of King George's War. The Wabanaki carried out 11 raids on English settlements on the coast between Berwick and St. Georges, with every town on the frontier being attacked. Casco was the principal settlement.
The First Abenaki War was fought along the New England/Acadia border primarily in present-day Maine. Richard Waldron and Charles Frost led the forces in the northern region, while Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin worked with the tribes that would make up the Wabanaki Confederacy. The natives engaged in annual campaigns against the English settlements in 1675, 1676, and 1677. Waldron sent forces so far north that he attacked the Mi'kmaq in Acadia.
The Peace and Friendship Treaties were a series of written documents that Britain signed bearing the Authority of Great Britain between 1725 and 1779 with various Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet), Abenaki, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy peoples living in parts of what are now the Maritimes and Gaspé region in Canada and the northeastern United States. Primarily negotiated to reaffirm the peace after periods of war and to facilitate trade, these treaties remain in effect to this day.
