Battle of Pequawket

Battle of Pequawket
Part of Father Rale's War
Death of Chief Paugus
Date 9 May 1725 (O.S.) Location Pequawket (present-day Fryeburg, Maine) 44°01′16″N 70°56′10″W / 44.021°N 70.936°W / 44.021; -70.936Coordinates: 44°01′16″N 70°56′10″W / 44.021°N 70.936°W / 44.021; -70.936 Result British Colonial victory
Belligerents
Abenaki	British colonists
Commanders and leaders
Paugus †	John Lovewell † Seth Wyman
Strength
approximately 66	33
Casualties and losses
unknown	13 dead, 9 wounded

The Battle of Pequawket (also known as Lovewell's Fight) occurred on May 9, 1725 (O.S.), during Father Rale's War in northern New England. Captain John Lovewell led a privately organized company of scalp hunters, organized into a makeshift ranger company, and Chief Paugus led the Abenaki at Pequawket, the site of present-day Fryeburg, Maine. The battle was related to the expansion of New England settlements along the Kennebec River (in present-day Maine).

The battle was the last major engagement between the English and the Wabanaki Confederacy in Governor Dummer's War. The Fight was celebrated in song and story for at least several generations and became an important part of regional lore—even influencing the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the early 19th century as well as other writers. Its importance is often exaggerated in local histories, as arguably the August 1724 English raid on Norridgewock was probably more significant for the direction of the conflict and in bringing the Abenaki to the treaty table. But the Norridgewock raid, also celebrated in song and poetry, has been less well remembered, probably because it was essentially a massacre of Indian civilians by New England forces.

The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended Queen Anne's War, had facilitated the expansion of New England settlement. The treaty, however, had been signed in Europe and had not involved any tribes of the native's Wabanaki Confederacy. Since they had not been consulted, they protested this incursion into their lands by conducting raids on British fishermen and settlements. For the first and only time, Wabanaki would fight New Englanders and the British on their own terms and for their own reasons and not principally to defend French imperial interests. In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the Governor of Nova Scotia, Richard Philipps, built a fort in traditional Mi'kmaq territory at Canso, Nova Scotia in 1720, and Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory at the mouth of the Kennebec River. The French claimed the same territory on the Kennebec River by building churches in the Abenaki villages of Norridgewock and Medoctec further upriver. These fortifications escalated the conflict.

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