Northeast Coast Campaign (1723)

Northeast Coast Campaign (1723)
Part of Father Rale's War
Date 19 April 1723 – 28 January 1724 Location Berwick, Maine to Mount Desert Island Result French and Wabanaki Confederacy victory
Belligerents
New England Colonies	French colonists  Abenaki
Commanders and leaders
Colonel Thomas Westbrook	Father Sébastien Rale
Strength
	unknown
Casualties and losses
20-30 killed or taken prisoner	unknown

The Northeast Coast Campaign (1723) occurred during Father Rale's War from April 19, 1723 – January 28, 1724. In response to the previous year, in which New England attacked the Wabanaki Confederacy at Norridgewock and Penobscot, the Wabanaki Confederacy retaliated by attacking the coast of present-day Maine that was below the Kennebec River, the border of Acadia. They attacked English settlements on the coast of present-day Maine between Berwick and Mount Desert Island. Casco (also known as Falmouth and Portland) was the principal settlement. The 1723 campaign was so successful along the Maine frontier that Dummer ordered its evacuation to the blockhouses in the spring of 1724.

The war occurred as a result of an expansion of New England settlements along the Kennebec River (in present-day Maine) and of the movement of more New England fishermen into Nova Scotia waters. The border between Acadia and New England, which New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended Queen Anne's War and included the cession of peninsular Nova Scotia to Great Britain, had facilitated this expansion. The treaty, however, had been signed in Europe and had not involved any member of the Wabanaki tribes. None had been consulted about the expansion of British settlements, and they protested through raids on British fishermen and settlements. In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the governor of Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory around the mouth of the Kennebec River: Fort George at Brunswick (1715),St. George's Fort at Thomaston (1720), and Fort Richmond (1721) at Richmond. The French claimed the same territory by building a church in the Abenaki village of Norridgewock (present-day Madison, Maine) on the Kennebec River, maintaining a mission at Penobscot on the Penobscot River, and building a church in the Maliseet village of Medoctec on the Saint John River. These fortifications and Catholic missions escalated the conflict.

...
Wikipedia