Exhibition
Adaptation and Resistance: Indigenous History of the Pejepscot RegionNotes
Around 1628 Thomas Purchase built a house, most likely conveniently located next to the Pejepscot Falls on the Androscoggin River. Here he fished and traded with Abenaki people and Europeans who passed through the area, many of whom trapped and traded beavers. It is important to remember that Purchase did not buy “his” land from the Abenaki. The governor of Massachusetts (who had no actual claim to the land) granted it to him for the purpose of creating an English colony without any consideration of the region’s Indigenous peoples. Such forceful settlement demanded compliance of the Abenaki residents, who used the influx of settlers to their advantage. Before the end of the seventeenth century other English settlers “purchased” land, using European systems of commerce, from the Abenaki, including the leaders Darumkin and Robinhood. The settlers were far outnumbered by the Abenaki people, who consciously allowed them to stay because of services or goods they offered.
The house shown in this photo, currently the hotel called the Federal, on Water Street, in Brunswick, Maine likely stands on the site of Purchase’s original house. While we can’t know exactly where Purchase settled, this spot on a hill above a productive fishing area would have been a valuable piece of land. Although English history records Purchase as the owner of this land, he most likely never had exclusive rights to the area or its resources.
Black and white photograph of the the house at 10 Water Street, Brunswick, Maine. The current house was built by the Stone family in the late-eighteenth or early nineteenth century.