Research Guides: Wabanaki in Midcoast Maine: 1700-1799

1700-1799

Manuscript
Printed Materials

Missive to the Indians, 23 August, 1780
This document, signed by the College's namesake James Bowdoin II and issued on behalf of the Council of Massachusetts over which he then presided, was intended to shore up the failing allegiance between the newly independent United States of America and the Mi’kmaq and St. John’s (Maliseet) tribes, which had pledged mutual allegiance to each other in the 1776 Treaty of Watertown. The letter is affixed with the seal of the state of Massachusetts and in it the Council promises a priest for the Wabanaki and reasserts the hope to provide arms and other provisions. The document offers strong historical evidence for the important role that the French and Catholicism played in securing the continued support of the Wabanaki for the fledgling United States. The document is part of the Bowdoin Family Collection (M015).

To the Members of the Society for propagating the GOSPEL among the INDIANS, and others, in North-America (Charlestown, 1789).
The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, and others, in North America (SPGINA) was the first missionary society founded in North America and the model for the country’s later foreign missionary societies. Initial funding for the society came from the reserves of the 12,000 pounds raised by the famous Mohegan minister Samson Occum during a tour of the British Isles between 1766 and 1768 to educate and evangelize Native Americans. The majority of these monies had been used in 1769 to establish Dartmouth College. Several of the Society’s founders gave generously to support the organization’s work, including the College's namesake James Bowdoin II, who had interacted extensively with the Wabanaki during his time overseeing the colony and later state of Massachusetts. The Society supported missionaries who traveled to remote areas of New England to preach the gospel to indigenous inhabitants and white settlers alike. The Society required such missionaries to keep journals and regularly published excerpts of their work to spread Protestantism to regions that previously were Catholic or non-Christian. During its first decade of existence, from 1787 to 1797, the Society and its missionaries distributed nearly 8,000 bibles, religious pamphlets, spelling books, primers, and hymnbooks “among the poor inhabitants in the eastern parts of this commonwealth,” including the district of Maine. The College owns James Bowdoin II’s personal copy of the 1789 report to members of the Society’s.