Passamaquoddy

The Passamaquoddy, who call themselves Peskotomuhkati, or pollock-spearers, are an Algonquian-speaking people of the Dawnland, the country straddling Maine and New Brunswick. Their homeland centres on Passamaquoddy Bay, the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine, together with the St. Croix River and its tributaries.

They lived by a seasonal round, dispersing inland to hunt in winter and gathering on the coast and islands in summer to take fish, seals and shellfish, and they were one of the founding nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy. French settlers wintered on St. Croix Island in 1604, and the Passamaquoddy thereafter took part in the long Wabanaki wars against English expansion.

When the United States gained independence the new border cut their country in two, and during the early nineteenth century they were reduced to small reservations in eastern Maine.