Twelve Thousand Years

Bruce J. Bourque is chief archaeologist and curator of ethnography at the Maine State Museum and senior lecturer in anthropology at Bates College. His books include Diversity and Complexity in Prehistoric Maritime Societies: A Gulf of Maine Perspective. Steven L. Cox is a professor of anthropology at the Center for Northern Studies and a research associate at the Maine State Museum. Author of The Old Man Told Us: Excerpts from Micmac History, 1500-1950, Ruth H. Whitehead was a research associate at the Nova Scotia Museum.

"Twelve Thousand Years: American Indians in Maine" documents the generations of Native peoples who for twelve millennia have moved through and eventually settled along the rocky coast, rivers, lakes, valleys, and mountains of a region now known as Maine. Arriving first to this area were Paleo-Indian peoples, followed by maritime hunters, more immigrants, then a revival of maritime cultures. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Native peoples in northern New England became tangled in the far-reaching affairs of European explorers and colonists. "Twelve Thousand Years" reveals how Penobscots, Abenakis, Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, Micmacs, and other Native communities both strategically accommodated and overtly resisted European and American encroachments. Since that time, Native communities in Maine have endured, adapted when necessary, and experienced a political and cultural revitalization in recent decades.