| Summary: | From the pre-Contact period through the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the Wabanaki Indians of northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes confronted European colonialism by assimilating sailing technology and undertaking an extractive political project. Their campaign of sea and shore united their communities into a confederacy, alienated colonial neighbors, and stymied English and French imperialism. Afloat, Indian marine warriors commanded sailing ships and coordinated a barrage of punitive and plundering raids on the English fisheries of the northwest Atlantic. Ashore, Indian diplomats engaged in shrewd transatlantic negotiations with imperial officials of French Acadia and New England. Wabanaki’s blue-water strategy ultimately sought to achieve a Native dominion governed by its sovereign masters and enriched by profitable and compliant tributaries.
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