Flowing power: rivers, energy, and the remaking of colonial New England

lines drawn in land deeds. But as the region’s tumultuous history had shown, force or the threat of force was ultimately the deciding factor in these land arguments. Proprietors could not attract colonists to eastern tracts they claimed to own if those colonists did not feel safe. To secure their tenuous claims, proprietors with the aid of Massachusetts would build forts at important waterfall sites shortly after the 1713 peace. These forts were not necessarily designed to protect settlers, rather to close rivers to Wabanakis by depriving them of a crucial energy source. Much like how a mill concentrated river energy at a single point, river forts had the same effect by monitoring the waterfall points that were essential for accessing river spaces and resources and spaces connected to them. River fortifications on the Androscoggin and Kennebec would inaugurate war across the Eastern Country in 1722, while a fort erected in 1759 on the Penobscot would for all practical purposes end it. Events at the far eastern English settlement of Pejepscot (now Brunswick, Maine) would become the flashpoint for Massachusetts’ expansion strategy. Pejepscot, meaning “long, rocky rapids,” received its name from the first falls on the Androscoggin River, the slightly smaller twin just west of the Kennebec. Like many waterfall sites in the region, the Pejepscot Falls were