Wabanaki Confederacy

European expansionism required Wabanaki leaders to join together in larger and stronger units.  As the years passed, alliances became more widespread and more permanent, as did the perception of common danger.  At the same time, Wabanaki leaders wanted to preserve their relationships of equality and freedom. 

During the early 1700s the Wabanaki People achieved these goals through confederation, the same method later used by the American colonies when they united against the British.   Wabanaki elders met at Indian Island and elsewhere as the Wabanaki Confederacy. Abenakis, Penobscots, Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, and Micmacs maintained their separate identities but acted in unison toward common objectives of defense and survival.  By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Wabanaki Confederacy was deprived of any diplomatic or military leverage, and seventy years later it came to a quiet end.
Weakened Position

Because of their own strength and the support implied by their alliance with the French, the Wabanaki People were able to impede the English inclination to intimidate.  After the French defeat at the Battle of Quebec in 1759, the Wabanaki People were without their military ally and were in a weakened position. 

Representatives of the Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, and Richibucto Micmacs went to Halifax to sign treaties with the British that year, and the rest of the Micmacs concluded similar treaties the following year.  The British king promised to respect Wabanaki territory in a proclamation issued in 1763, but the governors of Massachusetts, Quebec, and Nova Scotia did not recognize the Proclamation as valid in their territories.