Bates librarian finds Indigenous land grant from 1860s, complicating college’s history

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 30, 2026

In the conventional sense, the University of Maine is the state’s only land-grant university: it received Indigenous land from the federal government over 150 years ago as an early endowment. By another definition, Colby and Bowdoin, to which the state gave a combined 234,000 acres, were the first land-grant colleges in Maine. Now, add to that list Bates College. The Legislature granted the Lewiston college 57,000 acres in northwestern Maine in the 1860s. The state land agent transferred the deed for two townships to the college in 1865, and Bates sold its land two years later for $23,000 (roughly $518,000 today).