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277 Appendix 1820 Treaty Negotiations between the Penobscot Indian Nation and Maine In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, treaty councils were open forums in which Wabanaki leaders and Euro-American officials came together to discuss diplomatic relations and performed treaty protocol that entailed lengthy speeches and the presentation of wampum to cement alliances. Treaties, which the British and later Americans used to establish a “legal framework” to negotiate agreements with the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies, were the written result of these oral and face-to-face exchanges. For Native peoples, it was the spoken word in the negotiation process that symbolized the agreement. But for the Euro-Americans, only the written text authenticated a treaty agreement, and they benefited from their own interpretations of it. The result of this discrepancy between the treaty text and the oral context was that both groups understood very differently the outcome of treaty councils.1 Unlike most Indian tribes, who made their treaties with the United States government, Wabanaki peoples of Maine, whose diplomatic relations with Massachusetts predated the formation of the federal government, entered into treaties with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and later with the state of Maine. By the nineteenth century, however, treaty negotiations in Maine had changed. Maine still adhered to treaty council format, permitting Native leaders to voice their concerns and stress the importance of the treaty process, but in July 1820 state officials estimated that there were only about 360 Penobscots dispersed across their homeland. Outnumbered by Euro-American settlers, Penobscots were no longer directly involved in the decision process, rendering treaty councils a form of mock compromise. In the 1820 treaty, Penobscots consented to sever their long relationship with Massachusetts and recognized the new state of Maine as accepting responsibility over treaties, lands, and the distribution of annuities. Massachusetts gave $30,000 to Maine for the 1. William C. Wicken, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial: History, Land, and Donald Marshall Junior (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 3–16; Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 133–150; Robert A. Williams, Jr., Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600–1800 (New York: Routledge, 1997). Appendix 278 implementation of “certain duties and obligations to the Indians.”2 However, Maine’s statehood in March 1820 had, in fact, left Penobscot leaders with little choice about the political changes. Penobscot delegates’ recognition of statehood was a strategy for cultural survival and helped assure amicable relations with Maine. But there was another reason why the Penobscots acknowledged Maine. The treaty affirmed Penobscot lands established in the 1818 Penobscot treaty with Massachusetts, consisting of the four upper townships, the islands in the Penobscot River, and the repurchase of two acres along the waterfront in Brewer, Maine. The 1820 treaty stipulated that the Penobscots relinquished the fulfillment of their claimed tribal land in Brewer to Massachusetts.3 Joseph Treat and Lieutenant Governor John Neptune were well acquainted before their departure in September 1820. Both had participated in the 1820 Penobscot treaty with Maine, although they had had different roles and stood on opposite sides of the room. In June, at the first treaty council in Maine’s first capital of Portland, John Neptune had spoken on behalf of his people to Governor William King. In August, the treaty council had reconvened at the court house in Bangor to finalize the treaty, where John Neptune signed the treaty as the Penobscots’ lieutenant governor and Joseph Treat signed as a witness. As participants from opposite sides, the two men undoubtedly felt tension over conflicting interests, but their 1820 excursion testifies to the remarkable degree to which they were able to put their apprehension aside and reach a level of trust. Treat was a surveyor who bought and leased Indian land and resources. Neptune was a prestigious leader among his people trying to hold onto the lands they had left. Still, both worked together and relied on each other’s help as they traveled across northern Maine and western New Brunswick. The 1820 Penobscot treaty has received little attention, partly because Indian lands were mostly left unchanged. But for the Penobscots, it was a difficult decision. For gen2 . Governor William King’s state of the state address to the new legislature in Portland, June 2, 1820, p. 10, Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine (hereafter MeSA). 3. on May 22, 1820, Penobscot lieutenant Governor John Neptune and eleven other tribal leaders...

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