Maine is a product of the Ice Age. The last glacier was responsible
for cutting what had been a relatively straight coastline into
the hundreds of bays, inlets and picturesque harbors we know today.
The receding ice sheet formed the 2,000 or so islands found off
the Maine coast.
EARLY INHABITANTS. The region's earliest inhabitants were
descendants of Ice Age hunters. Little is known of these "Red
Paint" people - so named because of the red clay with which
they lined the graves of their dead - except that they flourished
and hunted in Maine long before the coming of the Micmac and Abnaki
Indian nations.
Burial grounds for these earliest Maine dwellers are thought to
date back to 3000 B.C. Huge oyster shell heaps on the Damariscotta
estuary testify to the capacious appetites of Maine's aborigines.
Of Maine's two earliest Indian nations, the Micmacs of eastern
Maine and New Brunswick were largely a warlike people, while the
more numerous Abnakis (or Wabanakis) were a peaceful nation, given
to farming and fishing as a way of life.
Although dozens of tribes once inhabited the land, only two remain
today. The Passamaquoddies (1,500) live on two reservations, the
largest of which is located at Pleasant Point near Eastport. The
Penobscots (1,200) live on Indian Island in the Penobscot River
at Old Town.