PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • March 31, 2026
Some 234,000 acres of Indigenous land in Maine was granted to Colby and Bowdoin colleges between 1796 and 1861. The Massachusetts Legislature, which governed the District of Maine until it became a state in 1820, granted to Bowdoin College a total of 182,000 acres of “unappropriated lands” in central Maine. Colby received just over 52,000 acres. The institutions would parlay that into tens of thousands of dollars used to fund construction of their first buildings. It was a small fraction of the 12 million acres to which Wabanaki Nations laid claim. After Congress passed the Morrill Act in 1862, creating so-called “land grant universities,” the University of Maine received 210,000 acres scattered across the United States. Now, as the tribes work to regain land, some Maine institutions are grappling with how — or whether — to address the legacy of their involvement in its dispossession.