Passamaquoddy Tribe

A nation today

Sunrise light on the pink granite summit of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, the highest point on the U.S. eastern seaboard.
John Manard, via Flickr / Wikimedia Commons (2021) · CC BY-SA 2.0

Background

A full text of the 1794 treaty between the Tribe and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is published online, with the agreement of September 29, 1794 and the Massachusetts resolve ratifying it on February 10, 1795. That agreement set over fifteen islands in the Schoodic River, a township of about 23,000 acres, Lire's Island, 100 acres on Nemcass Point, Pine Island and ten acres at Pleasant Point, and it reserved fishing on both branches of the Schoodic River. The Tribe holds more than 200,000 acres in Maine today, with more than 115,000 of those acres held in trust and spread across seven counties. Two communities hold the reservation, Indian Township, which the Tribe calls Peskotomuhkati Motahkomikuk, and Pleasant Point. Indian Township sits on the west branch of the St. Croix River on the largest Indian reservation in the state, and the reservation waters there include Big Lake, Long Lake, Lewey Lake, Grand Falls Flowage and Tomah Stream.

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Visit and learn

Passamaquoddy Tribal Museum

·museum

The Tribe's museum states its mission as collecting, preserving and exhibiting the fine arts and tribal arts, and says that promoting the arts of Native Americans is how it works to bring a wider appreciation of the Passamaquoddy culture.

https://www.passamaquoddy.com/?page_id=804

Passamaquoddy Tribe's own site

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Parks on its homelands

Sunrise light on the pink granite summit of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, the highest point on the U.S. eastern seaboard.Acadia National Park

The Tribe's own history says the Treaty of 1794 with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conveyed its Washington County reservations to it: Indian Township, Pleasant Point, Pine Island, Nemcass Point, Lire's Island and fifteen islands in the Schoodic, or St. Croix, River. It says the Tribe now owns more than 200,000 acres in Maine, and that Indian Township, on the west branch of the St. Croix, is the largest Indian reservation in the state. Source

Programs

  • Water Resources Planning and Inventory Program

    Started in April 1993 with a US Environmental Protection Agency multi-media grant and a Bureau of Indian Affairs water resources contract, the program monitors water quality on tribal lands and waters. The agency requires a Quality Assurance Project Plan as a condition of funding, covering field work, transport, data use, laboratory and field protocols and safety, and the plan is submitted, reviewed and approved by the agency for each year of monitoring. Water bodies adjacent to the Tribe's trust lands have seen little testing, and the Tribe says it has increased monitoring there in recent years.

    https://www.passamaquoddy.com/?page_id=134·land

Affiliations

  • Acadia National Park

    Acadia counts the Passamaquoddy at two places in its list of tribal governments, one at Motahkokmikuk and one at Sipayik, and says the governments have a government-to-government relationship with the park. The same page records that tribal governments in Maine traveled to Mount Desert Island overland and in seaworthy birchbark canoes, camping in season near places like Somes Sound to hunt, fish, gather clams and trade with each other. Some called Mount Desert Island Pemetic, meaning range of mountains.

    https://www.nps.gov/acad/learn/historyculture/wabanaki.htm

Sources

Checked September 2026.

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