About

Beginning in 1625 Plymouth began trading surplus corn to the eastern Abenaki on the Kennebec River (Maine) for furs. In 1668 Captain Sandy, an Indian chief, sold Francis Small a large tract of land embracing the territory between the Great and Little Ossipee Rivers where the village of Cornish now stands. The Saco River and its tributaries were home of the Sokokis Indians. By 1776, Maine had been cleared of all recognizable tribes except the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddies.

The Maine Indians were Abenakis, belonging to the great Algonquin stock. At the beginning of the seventeenth century they occupied all the most desirable locations along the coast and up the lower sections of all the Maine rivers. The interior of the state was their hunting ground. The principal residences of their chiefs or Sagamores was upon Indian Island just above the Lower Falls where Saco village now stands. Small groups of Indians would come up the Saco River and camp near the mouth of the Little Ossipee in East Limington. One of the last such visits of an Indian family was reported on the Little Ossipee River in October 1845. This small area known as "Indian reservation" was flooded when the dam was built at Bonny Eagle Pond