Nahswaak

The Nashwaak River flows through the wooded country of the Wolastoqiyik before joining the great river known to the French as the Saint John. Its mouth became a meeting place of Indigenous and French interests in Acadia, where a small fort stood close to the communities whose alliance mattered to the French colony.

In 1691 or 1692, the French governor Joseph Robineau de Villebon established Fort Nashwaak at the junction and made it his base. During King William's War, a New England force under John Hawthorne attacked the fort in October 1696. The defenders replied to the attackers' guns, and after two days the expedition withdrew without taking the post. Villebon abandoned the fort in 1698, but its brief history shows how the struggle for Acadia reached far up the Saint John.