Madawaska

Madawaska lies where the river of that name joins the upper Wolastoq, the Saint John River. The Wolastoqiyik, or people of the river, lived in this forested valley and travelled north by Lake Témiscouata and the portages leading toward the Saint Lawrence. Their homeland connected the great river's upper waters with the lands farther downstream.

In the 1780s Acadian families moved upriver from the Fredericton area, where the arrival of Loyalists had added pressure on land. French Canadians joined them, and farms spread along both banks of the upper river and its tributaries. The valley lay within territory claimed by both Britain and the United States after the Treaty of Paris in 1783. By 1831 the Madawaska settlements stretched for many miles along the river, while the boundary remained disputed.