SUN JOURNAL • November 27, 2022
A letter emerged recently that spotlights the heartbreak of Maine’s native peoples during the state’s early years. What happened after European invaders arrived on the rocky shores of the Wabanaki homeland is laid out in the agonizing words of two Penobscot leaders pleading in 1839 with Gov. John Fairfield to help their nation’s dwindling numbers survive. John Attean and John Neptune, the governor and lieutenant governor of the Penobscots, described the members of their tribe as “very poor — no hunting ground left — the moose, the deer and beaver are all gone — the vast woods where we used to hunt are cut down — the River where we used to fish are now encumbered by mills and mill-Dams, and choked up with saw dust so that the fish no longer come up as they used to.”