1 We all have a role to play in the calls to action launched by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.¹ One of my goals as a postsecondary educator is to integrate Indigenous perspectives more fully into my research and teaching. Some historians have long been aware that there was something lacking in traditional colonial narratives about early North America. Nearly forty years ago, John Reid exposed the weakness of imperial claims to Acadie and Maine and underlined the enduring autonomy and strength of Indigenous nations including the Mi’kmaq and the Wabanaki in the larger Northeast.² In a similar vein, W. J. Eccles emphasized that the new French governor for Acadie in 1670, Hector d’Andigné de Grandfontaine, was “required to maintain the King’s authority over a vast region stretching from the Saint George River to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence” with a company of fifty soldiers and a French population of, at most, five hundred colonists.³ The true rulers at this time were Indigenous peoples such as the Wolastoqiyik in their homeland along what Europeans called the Saint John River.

2 New paradigms such as the Atlantic world and, most recently, settler colonialism, have provided different ways of interpreting Indigenous-colonial relationships. For northeastern North America, Elizabeth Mancke has described the transoceanic and multinational connections underlining competing and intersecting “spaces of power” that belied solid imperial control.⁴ Although Patrick Wolfe convincingly describes the “logic of elimination” of Indigenous peoples at the heart of multiple areas of European expansion around the globe,⁵ John Reid and Thomas Peace draw a key distinction between “colonies of settlement” and settler colonialism. For the Northeast, they argue that settler colonialism only became dominant in the ways Wolfe articulates in the later eighteenth century.⁶ In a similar vein, Jeffers Lennox describes the persistence of Indigenous control in their homelands and how this relative autonomy fit into French strategies for imperial defence.⁷ Meanwhile, Allan Greer posits that although French settlers could and did displace and dispossess Indigenous peoples, the logic of French imperialism in New France was less about eliminating Natives and more about incorporating them. Like Reid and Peace, Greer also sees a turning point toward settler colonialism in the later eighteenth century, beginning with the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which enshrined the principle of extinguishing Native property rights.⁸

3 Moving the start point of settler colonialism to a later time period may seem like splitting hairs to those evaluating colonialism in 2022, but all of these scholars emphasized the enduring agency of Indigenous peoples and their effective resistance to dispossession. Further, they importantly remind us that imperialism in practice did not always follow official discourse, and in the case of New France, had very real limits. Greer explains that the French “did not conquer or rule—and they certainly did not settle, except in the tiniest enclaves—but they did exert influence and claim imperial sovereignty.”⁹ He cautions against a simplistic adoption of the settler colonialism paradigm and instead returns to competing visions of empire to better understand what was happening in contested spaces like the Northeast before 1763. These accounts emphasize military, economic, and demographic factors in a way that assumes that a kind of realpolitik consistently motivated historical actors and explained events. The history of the Wolastoqiyik, in this light, is typically seen as characterized by a slow, gradual loss of autonomy accelerated by the arrival of British immigration and a new colonial regime after the fall of New France.

4 As a graduate student, I was perplexed by Richard White’s The Middle Ground (1991), arguably the most influential study of the history of Indigenous-European relations in le pays d’en haut—the Great Lakes region in the North American interior. The author tried to escape the realpolitik prison by emphasizing that this history was much more complex than a dialectic of cultural persistence and conquest. White highlighted instead the co-creation of something new by both European and Indigenous actors—a place “in between” characterized by accommodation, exchange, and reciprocity that endured from 1650 until 1815. This was not some Eden; it could at times be a “violent and horrifying place,” but it had enduring principles and motivations. The end of this innovative experiment came when new colonial societies deliberately “recreated” Indigenous peoples “as alien, as exotic, as other.” Why and how they did this had more to do with nineteenth-century imperatives related to race, industrialization, and nationalism than some inevitable progression of earlier forms of settler colonialism.¹⁰

5 Given the obvious parallels with what Mancke, Reid, Peace and others have claimed about the Northeast, I wondered to what extent White’s ideas might apply to this region and specifically the Wolastoq/Saint John River Valley. However, I also worried that these interpretations might fuel enduring myths about the French as more humane colonizers.¹¹ Andrea Bear Nicholas warns us that the French-Wabanaki alliance and the conquest of New France including the deportation of the Acadians creates fertile ground for a rosier interpretation of the French regime. After all, French colonists, particularly in the Northeast, also became victims of British displacement and dispossession. At the same time, there is something that resonates between White’s notion of co-creation in le pays d’en haut and Bear Nicholas’s emphasis on the political wisdom and cultural adaptability of Wabanaki leaders trying to create relationships with French and British leaders in the Northeast.¹² For her part, Marie Battiste articulates the Mi’kmaq concept of elikewake (the king in our house), to describe the ways in which Indigenous leaders defined Europeans as friends and allies rather than oppressors. The surviving written versions of the eighteenth-century Treaties of Peace and Friendship simply do not capture the nuances of Indigenous understanding of the negotiations and the atmosphere of mutual respect (and need) that would have reigned at the time.¹³

6 We need to be careful to ensure that the Middle Ground does not become yet another “myth” in the way Bear Nicholas described. Recent studies are not always in agreement with White’s idealistic interpretation, but they share his ambition of returning agency to the Indigenous communities of the pays d’en haut. For example, Robert Morrissey argues that Indigenous historical actors and colonists alike in the Kaskaskia region created firm social distinctions and geographical borders through kinship networks.¹⁴ Catherine Desbarats suggests that White’s act of “narrative configuration” provides a point of entry for historians trying to “write responsibly and truthfully about transformations” in the “current politics of land, law, and identity in Canada and the United States.”¹⁵ Kathleen DuVal affirms that we should really be talking about a “Native Ground” due to the balance of power resting with stronger Indigenous nations.¹⁶ For his part, Gilles Havard offers an alternative vision of an “empire du milieu” that aligns more closely with Wolfe in emphasizing an ongoing process of European conquest.¹⁷ In this essay, I propose that the region surrounding the Wolastoq/Saint John River had the potential to become a Middle Ground during the seventeenth century, but that historical actors, Indigenous and European, ultimately did not take this path.

7 While Europeans tended to see rivers including the Wolastoq but also the Saint-Croix, Kennebec, and Penobscot as convenient border demarcations between imperial possessions, for Indigenous peoples the rivers were the heart of their homelands—central transportation arteries and sites of exchange, as well as “biomes” providing everyday essentials.¹⁸ The Wolastoq River connected the Wolastoqiyik with the larger territories of Mi’kma’ki and the Wabanaki Dawnland. In their encounters with Europeans—French, English, Dutch, and more—Indigenous peoples in this area expressed considerable agency and, often, forbearance and patience. It was in everyone’s interest to trade, and Indigenous peoples could integrate the small European presence into their patterns of life. Looking retrospectively, historians have emphasized the violent frontier raids that came to characterize the region beginning in the 1690s. They have forgotten that before this period of intense guerrilla warfare, Indigenous and European actors alike most often chose diplomacy, restraint, and accommodation, creating a different kind of new world. I would suggest that the origins of what some scholars have termed policies of ethnic cleansing in the eighteenth century—the scalping proclamations and forced dispersals directed at Indigenous peoples and some colonists, including the Acadians¹⁹—can be traced back to the failure of an embryonic Middle Ground emerging in what is now New Brunswick. In the following sections, we will consider the parallels between the Northeast and the Great Lakes region, as well as the differences that led to this failure.

8 In his presentation of the Great Lakes region during the seventeenth century, Richard White described how the French unwittingly arrived into a world already “shattered” by conflict and epidemic diseases. The wars of the Haudenosaunee confederacy with their neighbours displaced many communities and entire nations. The uneven circulation of firearms, alcohol, and other European trade goods further disrupted Indigenous material culture, while the efforts of Christian missionaries divided families over spiritual questions. In short, White suggested that these difficult conditions created a willingness to collaborate with the French in order to create peace and stability.²⁰ Like DuVal, Michael Witgen offers the alternative view that Indigenous nations in the North American interior created a “Native New World” with only marginal European contributions.²¹ The accounts agree that something new emerged.

9 Indigenous peoples in the Northeast had also previously been displaced by war. While studies of New France tend to focus on the dispersal of the Wendat in the 1640s, because this deprived the French of their principal Indigenous allies and traders to this point, conflicts previous to these so-called “beaver wars” sent the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Wabanaki eastward into what is now Atlantic Canada and Maine. In fact, the Wabanaki confederacy existed in part as a defensive pact against further attacks from the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk). Of course, Indigenous politics and war aims varied across nations and changed over time.²² We should not underestimate Indigenous capabilities to adapt and reconstitute themselves in new polities without European guidance.

10 The principal challenge for historians interested in understanding Indigenous historical perspectives remains the absence of written records. We are always constrained by the need to read European documents against the grain and the difficulties in integrating Indigenous oral testimony passed down over many generations. For this reason, we cannot pinpoint the exact moment of the move to Wulstukwik (the territory of the Wolastoqiyik, which traditionally included the lands of the watershed of the Wolastoq River from Quebec to Maine). From the archaeological record, we know that there were people living in what is now Atlantic Canada thousands of years before Europeans. Although we are far from consensus on these events, it appears that the Wolastoqiyik and the Mi’kmaq started to arrive more recently than that, in a series of gradual migrations dating back to the fourteenth century. They appear to have displaced or integrated with the pre-existing “Maritime Woodland” population.²³ Mi’kmaq tradition relates that hostilities existed with the Iroquoian people who lived in the St. Lawrence Valley during the 1500s. Historians believe that Cartier first met members of the Mi’kmaq nation near Chaleur Bay before encountering Donnacona’s Stadaconians in the Gaspé.²⁴ This latter group had mysteriously vanished by the time that Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608, but the Wabanaki maintain that they integrated some of the Stadaconians as refugees in the Dawnland and it is possible that a few settled in Wulstukwik.²⁵

11 The homeland of the Wolastoqiyik extended from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Bay of Fundy. Archeological finds seem to confirm a well-established and growing Indigenous population including a significant community near Lake Temiscouata and clear evidence of large kin groups residing in particular territories throughout the region. Like their Mi’kmaq neighbours, the Wolastoqiyik tended to come together in large fishing camps of a hundred or more people during the summer, but would disperse into smaller hunting groups during the winter.²⁶ European explorers including Champlain did not understand this seasonal cycle and often commented that the land was empty or seemed to belong to no one.²⁷ The future bishop of Quebec, Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, travelled down the Saint John River in 1686, visiting Meductic (established at the confluence of the Eel River and the Saint John River, near present-day Woodstock), and other Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq communities in what is now New Brunswick. In typical European fashion, he did not even consider Indigenous claims to the region, commenting that the land had “no master” since the king or the governor had not yet given it to anyone.²⁸

12 In a similar vein, as Jason Hall has shown, European descriptions of Indigenous land use employed an imperial “gaze” that diminished the permanence of Indigenous settlement and even Indigenous agricultural practices, which included maize cultivation and wild rice, as well as groundnuts and Jerusalem artichokes. The Wabanaki were horticulturalists, employing fire to clear the land and supporting robust communities with their harvests. Some of the Wolastoqiyik, including those living at Meductic, also grew maize. French censuses deliberately misled by identifying cleared fields along the Saint John River as the work of European colonists when, in fact, these were the product of Indigenous labour. The fertile soils, much like the nutrient-rich tidelands around the Bay of Fundy, provided a strong foundation for Indigenous habitation and, later, European settlement. It is no coincidence that settlers tended to establish themselves near Indigenous sites such as Port Royal and the mouth of the Wolastoq River.²⁹ Proximity for trade was one element, but Indigenous people had also already worked hard to clear the land.

13 The accounts of early French exploration along the river that Samuel de Champlain would baptize the Saint John suggest that the initial contacts between Europeans and Indigenous communities were largely peaceful. Like Indigenous peoples living in other parts of North America, the communities of the Wabanaki confederacy including the Wolastoqiyik had already suffered grievously from European diseases by the time that colonial expeditions arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century. We cannot estimate the pre-epidemic population with any degree of accuracy. French censuses only reflect those physically counted by officials and missionaries and so greatly underestimate the Indigenous population.³⁰ One 1696 report suggested that only about 250 Indigenous people were living in the entire Wolastoq region. Meanwhile, Béatrice Craig and Maxime Dagenais affirm that the Wolastoqiyik population during the seventeenth century was in fact ten times that number. However, the ravages of European diseases were clear; smallpox outbreaks, such as that of 1617 in Penobscot territory and another occurring in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1633, spread quickly to surrounding communities. Overall, scholars estimate that the Wolastoqiyik lost two-thirds of their population in a little over a century. Some Wabanaki communities had diminished by as much as 90 per cent.³¹

14 The French exploring Acadie and the English pushing into Maine, then, certainly encountered changing Indigenous homelands under considerable pressure from ongoing hostilities with their neighbours and the scourge of European diseases. What is perhaps less apparent is the resilience and adaptive capacity of these populations. Jesuit missionaries estimated the Indigenous population in what is now Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as more than ten thousand.³² In a recent study, Paul-André Dubois and Maxime Morin convincingly demonstrate that the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq populations stabilized and even partially recovered after the initial epidemics. They estimate a Wabanaki/Wolastoqiyik population living within New France holding steady around 3,000–3,500 right up to 1764. In addition, at least 2,000–2,500 Mi’kmaq lived throughout the territory from the Gaspé to Cape Breton Island and peninsular Nova Scotia.³³ Thomas Peace found substantial Mi’kmaq population growth during the eighteenth century in some parts of Mi’kma’ki.³⁴ To put this in perspective, the entire Acadian population in 1698 was less than one thousand.³⁵ The English colonial population was larger, but remained well to the south, near centres like Boston and Portland.

15 The Wabanaki confederacy functioned as a defensive pact, a privileged commercial zone, and a kind of loose political structure for mutual aid and building consensus. Europeans did not really understand Indigenous politics; they kept trying to sign agreements with “kings” and “captains” in accordance with their own views about hierarchy and never understood that these deals were local, negotiable, and in line with Indigenous leaders’ own strategies for peace and prosperity. These sachems and sagamos wanted to control the trade and access to European firearms and manufactured goods, but more than that, they sought to create lasting relationships that would serve their people and support successful seasonal patterns adapted to the local environment that maximized agricultural yields as well as hunting and fishing returns.

16 For their part, Europeans needed the much more numerous Indigenous peoples, their knowledge of the land, waterways, and resources, and their help for commerce and settlement. Most of the colonists also wanted nothing more than to establish a better life for their families. Many had fled poverty or conflicts in Europe. Even the merchants and entrepreneurs seeking to get rich from the fur trade and fishing needed peace to be successful. Crucially, as in le pays d’en haut, European settlement remained limited and negotiated. The stage was set for a kind of Middle Ground as White described, a co-created world of accommodation and exchange for mutual benefit. However, in the Northeast, European authority proved particularly unstable and weak, limiting the opportunity for relationship-building before 1763.

17 The European perspective has long dominated our research and teaching and so I will say less about it here. The traditional narrative emphasizes the gradual implantation of colonies in what was, for Europeans, a new world. Colours on maps detail imperial claims and boundaries—blue for the French, red for the English. The story begins with exploration and initial contacts with Indigenous nations, but soon focuses on conflicts between rival commercial companies and, later, rival empires. The colours change as wars and treaties hand over entire territories without consulting Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, the French lose, handing over Acadie and Terre-Neuve in 1713, and then all of New France (less Saint-Pierre and Miquelon) in 1763. These accounts relegate Indigenous actors to secondary roles as guides, trading partners, and military auxiliaries.

18 Little in this imperial history would have been directly relevant to the Wolastoqiyik. Although the French recognized the Saint John River as a useful route connecting Acadie with Canada, they focused their efforts elsewhere, first on Port Royal and Pentagouet, and, later, Louisbourg. These were military choices, and also reflected the enduring importance of the fishery. Wulstukwik was in the middle of a supposedly French territory that was nevertheless largely empty of colonists. Similarly, from the English perspective, the Saint John River was part of the larger colony of Nova Scotia, founded during the 1620s and reclaimed between 1654 and 1667, and again from 1690 to 1697. While a few merchants were interested in the fur trade as well as exchange with the growing Acadian population, most Englishmen focused on agriculture at home and the lucrative coastal fisheries. In short, the Saint John River was a peripheral zone for Europeans, while the Wolastoq River remained at the heart of Wulstukwik and a central artery of the Wabanaki confederacy.

19 Of course, there were brief moments that Europeans aimed to exert their influence in this area. For example, Charles de la Tour founded a trading post and settlement at the mouth of the river in 1631. This site became La Tour’s headquarters and a centre of the fur trade until his rival Charles de Menou captured it in 1645. It took even longer for Europeans to move upriver. After the English seized Port Royal in 1654, Thomas Temple established a trade post at Jemseg in 1659. Handed over to the French by the Treaty of Breda in 1667, Jemseg fell to a Dutch raid led by Julian Aernoutz in 1674. To keep this in perspective, the French commander, Pierre de Joybert, led a garrison of just nine soldiers. They were clearly there at the sufferance of the Wolastoqiyik and it is unclear how much merchandise they really had to offer their Indigenous neighbours.

20 When the French returned in 1670, the governor of New France saw the Saint John River as a place to extend his control from Quebec. A series of seigneurial concessions divided the river valley amongst several Canadian military officers and notables. Marie-Claire Pitre and Denise Pelletier have studied the lands assigned to three of the Damours brothers, Louis, sieur de Chauffours (Nashwaak to Jemseg), René, sieur de Clignancour (Meductic to Grand Falls), and Mathieu, sieur de Freneuse (Jemseg to Woodstock). Governor Frontenac’s vision was ambitious, but again, we must keep things in perspective. According to a 1695 French census, the brothers had settled just ten families comprising seventy-two people and brought about thirty-four hectares (one hundred arpents) under cultivation. A report written two years later indicated that only four colonists remained.³⁶ To these feeble efforts, we can add a small Jesuit mission at Meductic from the 1670s until the 1740s.³⁷ The priests seem to have moved to support the Wolastoqiyik village of Ekoupahag (present-day Kingsclear) and the new Acadian community at Pointe Sainte-Anne by 1750.³⁸

21 We can imagine that Indigenous peoples living in the area, looking for stable trade partners and allies, would have been somewhat bewildered by the carousel of officials and merchants coming through. Not only did the French, English, and Dutch fight each other, they also competed amongst themselves and they did not always play nice. After capturing Fort La Tour in 1645, Charles de Menou hanged the garrison and imprisoned Françoise-Marie Jacquelin, the wife of the absent Charles de la Tour. She died in his custody a few days later.³⁹ Speaking about the Acadians, Naomi Griffiths commented that the local population would have had little influence over the “transients” sent to govern them.⁴⁰ In the same way, the Wolastoqiyik could not count on stable relationships with the new arrivals. On the other hand, the evidence seems to point to increased contacts, trade, and discussion amongst the different nations of the Wabanaki confederacy. Some of the Mi’kmaq abandoned their territories near the growing Acadian communities and settled in closer proximity to the Wolastoqiyik. For example, by the time that the French set up an outpost at Nashwaak, near present-day Fredericton, this village was largely composed of Mi’kmaq.⁴¹ A new, shared space was emerging, featuring multiple Indigenous and European actors but certainly reliant on the continuity provided by the Wolastoqiyik.

22 The Wolastoqiyik traded extensively with their neighbours. This was nothing new; the archeological site near Lake Temiscouata discovered ceramics, tools, and other trade goods from all over the Northeast. The French recorded how the local population travelled by birchbark canoe to the Madawaska region in order to hunt and trap, to the St. Lawrence for trade, and to the lower Saint John for fishing. The villages of Aucpac and Meductic were not simply transitory camping sites; one French report recorded four hundred inhabitants living at Meductic in 1715 and described a strong stockade with defensive trenches, a large longhouse for councils, and warehouses for storing provisions.⁴² The English prisoner John Gyles, who spent several years at Meductic, similarly described a large community. He commented on the extensive maize cultivation and noted that the inhabitants included many Wabanaki refugees who had fled English encroachments in Maine.⁴³ The Europeans who wanted to trade (or proselytize) amongst the Wolastoqiyik naturally focused on these villages.

23 From every indication, the Indigenous population integrated Europeans into their existing trade network. Marc Lescarbot related how the inhabitants of the palisaded community at the mouth of the Saint John, called Ouigoudi and led by their sagamo Chkoudan, took just eight days to travel to the French trading post at Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence.⁴⁴ Later in the century, some Wolastoqiyik added Port Royal to their stops while trading with the Mi’kmaq. By the time that missionaries and traders established themselves at places like Jemseg (1659) and Meductic (1686), the Wolastoqiyik had already been trading with Europeans for more than fifty years. Saint-Vallier described the Wolastoqiyik and the Mi’kmaq he encountered as welcoming and happy to learn prayers; he was more concerned about the lack of sobriety and bad behaviour of the French traders.⁴⁵ Some of the French were also willing to travel long distances and traverse imperial boundaries in search of profit. For example, Henri Brunet made several voyages between 1673 and 1678 from Newfoundland to northern New England, visiting the Saint John along the way.⁴⁶ Acadian entrepreneurs such as Abraham Boudrot also frequented the region to acquire furs on their way to Boston.⁴⁷

24 While early English settlement in Maine remained distant from the Wolastoqiyik, trading companies soon moved north, establishing posts amongst the Wabanaki and, by extension, delivering trade goods further inland. For example, the Laconia Company, founded in 1629, established trade posts along the Kennebec River. The associates aimed to divert the fur trade from the French, while also creating a sedentary fishery.⁴⁸ In a similar vein, Thomas Clarke and Thomas Lake setup a trade post at Arrowsic, which included a foundry, sawmill, and shipyard.⁴⁹ These sites in Maine served as jumping-off points for travel into Wulstukwik, such as Temple’s venture at Jemseg, in 1659. He also repaired and reoccupied Fort La Tour. Temple’s business remained a modest project. In an appeal to the Crown after relinquishing his possessions in Nova Scotia to the French, Temple claimed that the total trade revenue amounted to just nine hundred pounds sterling.⁵⁰

25 There was more to trade than simply showing up with goods. Developing trust with customers and suppliers took time. While pragmatic concerns like prices and quality of the merchandise certainly played a role, so did gifts, kinship, and spiritual bonds as well as the willingness to learn languages. The Jesuits and other missionaries proved valuable assets for building relationships, while some colonial entrepreneurs including Charles de la Tour and Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin married Indigenous women. However, a few Englishmen also gained the confidence of the Wabanaki through frequent contacts and good faith. For example, during the same period that Saint-Castin married the daughter of the Penobscot sachem Madokawondo, the merchant Thomas Gardner built a close relationship with the same community.⁵¹ A Boston trader, John Alden, pursued trade along the Kennebec and the Saint John, and with the Acadian communities. He later played an important role in peace negotiations with the Wabanaki.⁵² We often forget that Protestant missionaries were also at work in Maine.

26 In general, the Wolastoqiyik proved willing to welcome French and English traders, no doubt in part because the colonial presence remained small. The Europeans were supplicants, not conquerors. Of course, there were inevitable disputes between trading partners and rivals, but for most of the seventeenth century, they did not lead to general war. When Charles de Menou captured Fort La Tour, or Julien Aernoutz seized Jemseg, neither colonists nor Indigenous peoples were involved as either aggressors or victims. These were short, targeted raids between European rivals. Disruption to the Wolastoqiyik would have been minimal, although the events would have underlined the instability of the European presence in their region.

27 While historical narratives tend to focus on these episodes of violence, it is worth remembering that Europeans also sought peace when it served their interests. Even as he prepared for the final showdown with La Tour in 1644, Charles de Menou opened negotiations with Massachusetts for a peace treaty that recognized existing boundaries and, significantly, would permit free trade between the French, English, and their Indigenous partners.⁵³ When the English captured Port Royal in 1654, they sent no garrison and worked with local Acadian representatives.⁵⁴ Even the expansionist Louis XIV seemed to agree with a moderate approach. His instructions to Grandfontaine in 1670 emphasized reestablishing French control over Acadie, but included provisions to maintain friendly relations with Massachusetts, allowing them to fish in Acadian waters. Intercolonial commerce was also encouraged, although the king did ask the governor to keep the English out of the fur trade because of the importance of maintaining Indigenous alliances.⁵⁵ The directive to establish a new capital at Pentagouet, deep in the contested zone between Acadie and Maine, rather than to return to Port Royal, was a deliberate step to limit English influence on the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq nations.

28 Perhaps even more remarkable was the short-lived initiative to create a state of neutrality in the colonies that would endure even should war break out in Europe. Louis XIV and James II of England signed an initial agreement to this effect for the West Indies in 1681. In 1686, the Treaty of Whitehall, also called the “Treaty of Peace, Good Correspondence & Neutrality in America,” extended the principle to New France and New England. Amongst its provisions, the agreement declared that neither kingdom would outfit ships or send soldiers to attack each other’s imperial possessions. Interestingly, the monarchs also agreed that they would not engage in proxy wars by supplying or supporting Indigenous peoples who might be engaged in hostilities with them.⁵⁶ However, in a departure from the previous diplomatic efforts, they agreed to forbid fishing and trade across imperial boundaries. On the one hand, the Treaty of Whitehall recognized that the colonial space was distinct and should operate with different rules than in Europe. On the other hand, this was less a vision of Middle Ground and more a retrenchment of imperial borders and sovereignty.

29 The monarchs considered Indigenous peoples, described as “barbarous and wild,” as simply part of the colonial landscape. In reality, however, Louis XIV and James II held little influence over them. While it is undoubtedly appropriate to expose the deep prejudice expressed by imperial authorities, we should not exaggerate the power those authorities wielded.⁵⁷ It is unlikely that any of the Wolastoqiyik had ever heard of the Treaty of Whitehall, or that they would have changed their willingness to trade with anyone if they had. An implicit recognition of Indigenous autonomy is provided by Article XV of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), in which France and Great Britain acknowledged that Indigenous peoples enjoyed “full liberty” to travel on account of trade. The same document restricted settlers from crossing imperial boundaries.⁵⁸ According to this vision, Indigenous peoples were the foundation of this changing imperial world, “subjects or friends” maintaining interconnections amongst Native and settler communities and helping to preserve peace along imperial frontiers.

30 Indigenous peoples in the Northeast generally did not involve themselves in the conflicts between European rivals, and as the last section showed, even European monarchs sometimes saw them as a kind of free agent. The French in Canada built alliances with the Wendat and other nations by accompanying them on military expeditions against the Haudenosaunee. However, in the Northeast, the members of the Wabanaki confederacy did not need European help to fight traditional rivals, a crucial distinction from the kind of alliance-building and refugee assistance that White described for le pays d’en haut. The Wolastoq engaged in no major wars with other Indigenous nations during this time, although raids by the Kanienkehaka were a persistent threat. Until the 1670s, Wulstukwik appeared to be a generally peaceful world. The motivations of Indigenous peoples to create a Middle Ground with Europeans would thus have been different and probably quite limited. The first true test of these new relationships arrived with the conflict that Europeans would call King Philip’s War (1675-78).

31 English encroachments on Indigenous territory in southern New England constituted the primary cause of this conflict. The sachem of the Wampanoag, Massasoit, had previously negotiated peace with the Plymouth colony, but he died in 1661. His sons, Wamsutta (Alexander) and Metacom (Philip), were concerned about the English occupying additional lands. After Wamsutta died in English custody the following year, Metacom slowly built a coalition of nations ready to resist. Fighting broke out in 1675. This proved to be an ugly war, with many losses on all sides. The intervention of the Kanienkehaka as English allies proved a turning point in the struggle, which wound down after the death of Metacom in August 1676. The results were disastrous for the surrendering Indigenous communities in southern New England.

32 The Wabanaki were themselves concerned about English encroachments on the Dawnland. John Reid notes that while early attempts to colonize Maine had largely been scattered and disunited, the political takeover by Massachusetts of the colonial enterprise in the 1660s led to new schemes to push settlement and agriculture beyond the Kennebec River.⁵⁹ Although the English presence remained small, the move by some of the trading companies to restrict access to fishing sites as well as a new official policy restricting the sale of firearms and gunpowder to Indigenous people raised Wabanaki ire. Once the Kanienkehaka attacked Metacom’s forces, some Wabanaki were drawn in to fight their traditional adversary. In other words, this was not simply an Indigenous-English war.

33 However, most of the Wabanaki population, including the Wolastoqiyik, demonstrated considerable restraint. Many of those closest to the conflict, such as the Penobscot and Kennebec communities, chose to leave the area rather than fight. They headed to the Upper Wolastoq River (today the Madawaska region), finding refuge with their Wolastoqiyik brethren, and also moved beyond to French missions at Bécancourt, Saint-François, and Sillery.⁶⁰ In both 1676 and 1677, Wabanaki delegations headed south to negotiate an end to the war.⁶¹ However, the English negotiated in bad faith. Near Dover, Richard Waldron used subterfuge to capture approximately four hundred Wabanaki refugees and sell them into slavery.⁶² Inflammatory acts like these provoked stronger military responses to defend the Dawnland and its inhabitants. Wabanaki war parties burned trade posts and seized fishing boats in Maine, but allowed most of the English colonists to flee back to Massachusetts. They refused pitched battles against New England militia expeditions that penetrated as far as the Wolastoq River.

34 This was in stark contrast to events in southern New England, where two years of brutal fighting caused the deaths of one thousand colonists and three thousand Indigenous people. The English did not show restraint and did not discriminate between Indigenous groups. For example, slavers from Massachusetts seeking profit captured a number of peaceful Mi’kmaq living in the Cap Sable area (present-day southern Nova Scotia) and sold them as slaves in the Mediterranean. The Mi’kmaq responded with raids on English fishing vessels in their territory the following year. In general, Indigenous peoples in the Northeast adopted limited military aims against those who had wronged them, but avoided large-scale fighting. In this, they acted in a way consistent with their own interests, but also with preserving the Middle Ground. All parties finally agreed to a general peace in 1678.

35 Historians agree that King Philip’s War represented a turning point in the Northeast. Naomi Griffiths emphasizes that the conflict built deep resentments with long-ranging consequences.⁶³ Eccles described it as a “savage warning” to the Wabanaki confederacy about English plans to occupy and dominate the land.⁶⁴ However, the Middle Ground did not simply crumble. The peace treaty signed at Casco in 1678 has not survived in its original form. We know that it included provisions to release all captives without ransom and to regulate trade. Most importantly, the Massachusetts government agreed to pay an annual tribute of corn in return for limited English settlement in parts of the Dawnland. This recognition of Wabanaki sovereignty temporarily restored the foundation necessary to resume regional patterns of exchange and accommodation.

36 Unfortunately, many of the English settlers did not respect the agreement and the opportunity to build on this treaty relationship was lost. Livestock ruined Indigenous crops, while nets blocked access to traditional fishing sites. Traders peddled alcohol and cheap merchandise. Tensions increased and the Massachusetts government stopped paying the corn tribute in 1684. The instability of the European colonial world was again on display when the Crown attempted to impose a centralized Dominion of New England in 1686 under the highly unpopular Edmund Andros. This initiative fell apart with the Glorious Revolution. A new military regime followed due to increased hostilities with the French, who had tried to block English fishing boats from entering Acadian waters. William Phips’s expedition against Port Royal in 1690 was the first English incursion against Acadie in nearly forty years.⁶⁵

37 As imperial boundaries hardened, the French hoped to use the Dawnland and Wulstukwik as “buffer zones” to protect Acadie. They even imagined relocating some of the Wabanaki permanently to better shield New France colonists in the St. Lawrence valley. The French increased trade and gave generous gifts—particularly of firearms and gunpowder—to enhance relationships with Wabanaki leaders. For example, the children of several chiefs visited Versailles in 1693.⁶⁶ While they accepted French friendship, the Wabanaki continued to resist entering into formal alliances and to negotiate with English authorities as well. They would not have done this if they had not desired to maintain the previous regional culture. However, both the French and the English had decided that they would no longer tolerate sharing resources with each other.

38 Ten years after the peace of Casco, war returned to the Northeast. While the immediate causes can be attributed to hostile English actions including a raid on Saint-Castin’s home with the Penobscot, an attack on the French fishery at Chedabouctou, and the seizure of twenty Indigenous people at Saco, the conflict originated in new imperial mandates, more explicitly military colonial regimes, and a deliberate recasting of other peoples as foreign, savage, and hostile. In fact, there were a lot of similarities between the reconstruction of Indigenous peoples as alien that White described for the Great Lakes region in the 1800s and the kinds of political and religious discourse in Boston that deliberately cast the Wabanaki and the French as implacable adversaries. Many of the French missionaries were also to blame, deliberately rousing Indigenous anger against the English colonists and describing the conflict in spiritual terms. The Middle Ground broke down under the polarizing influence of partisan agents convinced of their own rightness.

39 The Wabanaki first retaliated by capturing hostages at Casco. The choice of the site of the previous peace treaty was probably not a coincidence. Meanwhile, Saint-Castin organized a large force to attack the English fort at Pemaquid in 1689. Most of the garrison had already left due to the turmoil caused by the ousting of Governor Andros. Just thirty soldiers briefly defended the site before surrendering. Still, the Wabanaki demonstrated restraint, permitting all of the soldiers as well as most of the captured colonists to return to Massachusetts. The expedition against Pemaquid constituted the first recorded instance of a significant Wolastoqiyik military foray into New England. They brought a captive, John Gyles, back to Meductic and later sold him to the French. John Reid explains that the English capture of Port Royal in 1690 was less about defeating the French military and more about ending their material support to the Wabanaki, since they presented a much greater threat to Massachusetts.⁶⁷

40 Even at this late stage, not all of the Wabanaki chose to fight—there were advocates for peace as well. Madockawando, sachem of the Penobscot and father-in-law to Saint-Castin, met with Governer William Phips in 1693 and attempted to negotiate a new treaty. The French wanted the war to continue and so they effectively roused opposition within the community. However, it would be misleading to assume that the Wabanaki were in thrall to the French. They refused to organize a large force to attack Boston and other major settlements in Massachusetts, concentrating instead on raiding the Maine frontier and along the coast to protect the Dawnland and their traditional fishery.⁶⁸ During this same period, the French tried to re-establish their presence in Acadia after the loss of Port Royal by moving to the Saint John River. First at Jemseg, and then at Nashwaak, the French hoped to rally Indigenous peoples to their aid. Wolastoqiyik warriors helped free several captured French soldiers near the mouth of the Saint John River, and then assisted in the defence of Fort Nashwaak in 1696. Once again, this was a first, as they had not gotten involved in previous European disputes on their territory.

41 Perhaps the best indication that the Wabanaki were fighting for their own interests and had decided that they needed a military solution is the fact that they would fight on, even without their French allies who signed a separate peace in 1697, until they had destroyed the frontier settlements threatening their use of the land in Maine and until called to the 1701 “Great Peace” of Montreal. Although sponsored by the French, this conference focused on negotiations amongst more than forty Indigenous nations including the end of hostilities between the Haudenosaunee and the Wabanaki. The event brought communities from the Northeast in contact with those of le pays d’en haut. One might wonder about the kinds of conversations that occurred; particularly how Indigenous nations described their alliances with the French. The Wabanaki would again declare war without French support in the 1720s. Indeed, Bear Nicholas argues that the French refusal to fight in defence of Indigenous homelands ended the reciprocal alliance that they had so carefully constructed during the seventeenth century.⁶⁹ The crumbling of the Middle Ground in the Northeast, then, was not just about English aggression but also the failure of the French to live up to their agreements.

42 Indigenous experiences of the wars at the end of the seventeenth century revealed that they could not count on an unstable colonial world. The Wolastoqiyik were increasingly drawn in to active combat as the path of negotiation and shared space became unviable. Even by the standards of the time, the tactics employed became increasingly brutal and families became targets. Some captives were tortured and killed, while others were enslaved. Entire communities burned, and famine and disease spread throughout the region. Eccles described a state of nearly continuous mobilization beginning in the 1680s and lasting for three decades. A “whole generation of Canadians and Acadians had grown up in the midst of these hostilities.”⁷⁰ Of course, this was even truer for the nations of the Wabanaki confederacy including the Wolastoqiyik. Their young people grew up knowing only hostility with the English, and self-serving promises of alliance from the French. More than just a “low ebb” for colonization,⁷¹ these acts of violence destroyed any hope for the building of a Middle Ground after the decades of peace that had characterized the region for much of the seventeenth century.

43 Scholars of the Northeast have emphasized how this region was a borderland in which Indigenous peoples preserved considerable autonomy until well into the eighteenth century. Andrea Bear Nicholas notes that Europeans had little knowledge of the Wolastoq River and the surrounding territory until detailed map surveys began in 1759—a deliberate effort to erase Indigenous place names and possession.⁷² Micah Pawling acknowledges the escalated tensions brought by the arrival of Acadians and Planters in the 1760s, but identifies the coming of the Loyalists in the 1780s as the key turning point.⁷³ John Reid argues that effective Indigenous resistance in Wulstukwik and Mi’kma’ki continued until the 1820s, with local leaders “drawing on two centuries of experience not only with inter-cultural trade relations but also with diplomatic engagements, including citation of treaty obligations to protect essential resource harvests and the containment of agricultural settlement.”⁷⁴ Bear Nicholas notes that the Wolastoqiyik word for treaty, lakotowaken, “means a tool for creating a relationship.”⁷⁵ We can interpret the many treaty negotiations before 1763 and indeed up to 1820 as an attempt by Indigenous peoples to forge and maintain a stable relationship with colonial regimes.

44 On the one hand, then, it seems that Richard White’s concept of the Middle Ground could have applied very well to the region that is now New Brunswick. As in le pays d’en haut, small groups of Europeans blundered into a dynamic, changing Indigenous world and met people interested in peace and trade. The formation of the Wabanaki confederacy originated in the need for mutual defence against traditional foes (the Haudenosaunee) and adapted to the new presence of missionaries, traders, and settlers. In Wulstukwik during the seventeenth century, we can observe the development of spiritual and social kinship, free trade, and open borders across which Indigenous and European actors passed with little difficulty. Trade was mutually beneficial, the parties resolved disputes through diplomacy, and even the initial destruction caused by epidemic diseases appears to have slowly reversed into a time of modest demographic recovery. A distinct regional reality appeared to be emerging.

45 In many ways, although perhaps counterintuitively, the Wabanaki participation in Metacom’s war (1675-78) confirmed the strength of this understanding. Indigenous leaders showed restraint, pursued limited aims, and refused formal military alliances. The peace established at Casco recognized Indigenous sovereignty while also providing protections for limited English settlement in proscribed zones. Just as the Mi’kmaq were prepared to allow the Acadians to move into certain areas around the Bay of Fundy, the Wolastoqiyik permitted trade posts and new settlements so long as they did not interfere with their use of the land and its resources. This close proximity of a small European presence with larger Indigenous communities mirrored the situation in the Great Lakes.

46 However, my conclusion is that the Middle Ground was a path not taken, that the Northeast diverged from le pays d’en haut in important ways and at a much earlier point of time we can situate in the 1690s. What happened? With the brewing of a much more direct imperial confrontation—much earlier than would be seen in the Great Lakes region—agents on all sides pushed war and sought to bring Indigenous people into the conflict. White describes how the Middle Ground in the pays d’en haut disintegrated as new boundaries were drawn and deliberate othering of Indigenous peoples occurred. This is precisely what happened in the Northeast at the end of the seventeenth century, as the French sought to harden imperial boundaries and the English pushed new settlements deeper into Indigenous territory. The conflict took a more brutal turn as settlers and Indigenous peoples alike became more actively involved in the violence and their very survival appeared to be at stake. The resulting raids left a legacy of resentment and hatred that extended well into the eighteenth century and directly contributed to attacks on civilians and their homes, scalping policies, and forced transportation as slaves and refugees.

47 If we accept this line of reasoning, we might wonder what to make of the Treaties of Peace and Friendship signed during the eighteenth century between Wabanaki peoples, including the Wolastoqiyik, and the British Crown. While ideas of reciprocity and exchange were certainly present, I read the treaties as explicitly not creating a Middle Ground, but rather trying to preserve a Native Ground. The treaties proscribed territories for each side and sought to keep the groups separate from each other. There was no intention of co-creating a new and shared world, but rather firm lines were drawn around rights to settle and access to resources. Indeed, after the initial 1725 treaty, there is no evidence that either the British or the Wolastoqiyik sought to build on the relationship before war returned—no visits, no delegations, no ceremonies. The series of peace and friendship treaties signed up to 1761 appear defensive in nature—as attempts to limit violence and contact rather than to work together. This is admittedly a different reading of the situation from that proposed by Pawling and Reid, one that pinpoints the end of an embryonic Middle Ground in an earlier period. It is more consistent with the interpretation of Bear Nicholas, who sees continuity in the six Wabanaki wars of defence against English encroachment from 1675 through 1760.

48 This essay is not meant to be conclusive, but rather to suggest different ways of looking at the history of the Northeast. Integrating Indigenous perspectives and restoring Indigenous agency to our narratives about the past are not only about reconciliation. These are important steps to developing a greater understanding of the origins of Atlantic Canada. The treaty relationships in the Maritime provinces are different than those in other parts of Canada, and not just because the Wolastoqiyik and the Mi’kmaq never formally ceded their territory. Legal courts and political negotiations have focused on the Treaties of Peace and Friendship and for good reason; but as historians seeking to understand why Indigenous peoples and settler communities did not work together, we need to bear witness to the relationships built and destroyed during the seventeenth century. The instability of the European regimes in Acadie/Maine/Nova Scotia as well as the earlier direct imperial confrontation in what to Europeans was a borderland made the Northeast different than le pays d’en haut in important ways. The Middle Ground—a new, more tolerant, shared, and peaceful world—was a fleeting opportunity and ultimately a path not taken. Our world became all the poorer for its loss.

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