Majabigwaduce

Majabigwaduce, later Castine, occupies a peninsula at the entrance to Maine's Penobscot waters. Known to the French as Pentagouët, it became a meeting place of Wabanaki communities and rival European powers. Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin's family ties with the Abenaki helped link local diplomacy and trade; the settlement served as Acadia's regional capital from 1670 to 1674. Repeated attacks and changing occupations marked its seventeenth-century history.

By the late 1760s, fisheries and timber attracted farmers, artisans and traders. In July 1779 British forces occupied the harbour and began Fort George. Massachusetts sent the Penobscot Expedition against them, but British reinforcements forced an American retreat in August; the Americans destroyed their fleet upriver to prevent its capture. The peace returned the district to American control, and Castine became a separate town in 1796. British troops occupied it again in 1814 and withdrew in April 1815. By the 1820s, shipbuilding, coastal trade, lumber and provisioning fishing fleets bound this contested harbour to the North Atlantic economy.