Asticou's Island Domain: Wabanaki Peoples from Castine to Gouldsboro 1500–2000

The Wabanaki have lived in the Penobscot Bay area and elsewhere along the New England coast for about twelve thousand years. A recent free e-book: Asticou's Island Domain: Wabanaki Peoples at Mount Desert Island 1500–2000, offers a look back into their lives.

Much has been lost The European invasions of the 16th and 17th centuries brought smallpox, cholera and influenza, diseases against which the Wabanaki had no natural immunities. The e-book notes that

"These scourges, added to the lethal combination of firewater and firearms, almost wiped Maine’s indigenous coastal peoples from the face of the earth. Within a few decades, up to 90 percent of the Wabanaki perished in this American Indian holocaust."

Ninety percent!

Asticou's Island Domain only treats upon those later years of the Wabanaki's stewardship of our area from East Penobscot Bay to Frenchman's Bay.

An important read. The book is available as two pdf files Click Here