Land Acknowledgement & Local Indigenous History

Our properties are in the unceded ancestral homeland of the Wabanaki, which translates to People of the Dawnland. The Wabanaki Confederacy is currently made up of five Native American nations: Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki. For more information about the four federally recognized tribes in Maine, please visit wabanakialliance.com.

When Europeans settlers arrived in the area called Westcustogo (or “muddy river”) by the Abenaki in the 1600s, the original inhabitants had a fluid lifestyle moving seasonally to follow food sources. They hunted, fished, gathered, and farmed along the shoreline, islands, and lands near Casco Bay in small family and tribal settlements.

Shell middens found at Broad Cove indicate that it served as important fishing and clamming grounds for Abenaki in the 17th and 18th centuries and shell middens on Chebeague Island demonstrate that indigenous people were there 4,000 years before the Europeans arrived. Recently, a spearhead was found on Chebeague that has been dated to 7,000 years ago and it is thought that indigenous history extends back 12,000 years. The name Chebeague is the Abenaki word for “Island of Many Springs.”

A series of regional conflicts between the settlers and tribes in Wescustogo (or what the settlers called North Yarmouth, which included Cumberland, Yarmouth, Chebeague, Pownal, Freeport, and Harpswell) occurred between 1676 and 1758. Many Native Americans were killed by disease or forced north toward Quebec during this time, while the European settlers gained a permanent foothold at the mouth of the Royal River at the end of the French and Indian War.

Some Wabanaki did remain in, or make their way back to, the area. During the first half of the 20th century, families from two Wabanaki tribes—the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy—spent summers on Chebeague selling baskets and other handmade items. And, of course, tribal members reside in our local communities today. We’re grateful for their past stewardship of these special places and respect their ongoing relationship with these lands and waters.

Sources: Maine Memory Network (cny.mainememory.net); Chebeague Historical Society (chebeaguehistory.com); and Cumberland, Maine in Four Centuries compiled and edited by Phyllis Ruth Sturdivant Sweetser.