s and promises; but when they called themselves subjects of
Queen Anne, it is safe to say that they did not know what the words
meant.

Peace with the Indians was no sooner concluded than a stream of settlers
began to move eastward to reoccupy the lands that they owned or claimed
in the region of the lower Kennebec. Much of this country was held in
extensive tracts, under old grants of the last century, and the
proprietors offered great inducements to attract emigrants. The
government of Massachusetts, though impoverished by three wars, of
which it had borne the chief burden, added what encouragements it could.
The hamlets of Saco, Scarborough, Falmouth, and Georgetown rose from
their ashes; mills were built on the streams, old farms were retilled,
and new ones cleared. A certain Dr. Noyes, who had established a
sturgeon fishery on the Kennebec, built at his own charge a stone fort
at Cushnoc, or Augusta; and it is said that as early as 1714 a
blockhouse was built many miles above, near the mouth of the
Sebasticook.[237] In the next year Fort George was built at the lower
falls of the Androscoggin, and some years later Fort Richmond, on the
Kennebec, at the site of the present town of Richmond.[238]

Some of the claims to these Kennebec lands were based on old Crown
patents, some on mere prescription, some on Indian titles, good or bad.
Rale says that an Englishman would give an Indian a bottle of rum, and
get from him in return a large tract of land.[239] Something like this
may have happened; though in other cases the titles were as good as
Indian titles usually are, the deeds being in regular form and signed by
the principal chiefs for a consideration which they thought sufficient.
The lands of Indians, however, are owned, so far as owned at all, by the
whole community; and in the case of the Algonquin tribes the chiefs had
no real authority to alienate them without the consent of the tribesmen.
Even supposing this consent to have been given, the Norridgewocks would
not have been satisfied; for Rale taught them that they could not part
with their lands, because they held them in trust for their children, to
whom their country belonged as much as to themselves.

Long years of war and mutual wrong had embittered the Norridgewocks
against their English neighbors, with whom, nevertheless, they wished to
be at peace, because they feared them, and because their trade was
necessary to them.

The English borderers, on th