These glacial influences “ laid the ground ” for the abundant and varied natural resources that have supported both Wabanaki and Euro-American people in Downeast Maine for well over a millennium .
The Passamaquoddy traditionally used coastal and inland areas and relocated between them on a seasonal basis to hunt , fish , and gather for their subsistence needs year-round . They harvested a wide variety of plants , including nuts , berries , sweetgrass , ash , birch bark , and plants as sources for medicine . They hunted and fished large and small mammals including seals and small whales , birds , amphibians , shellfish , and fin fish from salt and freshwater . Large schools of herring and salmon migrated by river and stream from inland lakes to the coast . The ocean supported large populations of fish , seals , and waterfowl . Forests were filled with immense old-growth trees . Wild blueberry barrens provided an important food source for people and animals .
Trading was extensive , and rivers and streams between inland and coastal water bodies were critical transportation routes . As colonists began extensive harvests of trees , and later dammed rivers for mills and power , Passamaquoddy hunting and fishing areas were greatly diminished , and they lost access to the coast .
Beginning in the 1500s , Basque , French , and English fishermen , traders , explorers , missionaries , and settlers were drawn to the region ’ s rich resources . Countless Passamaquoddy people died in the centuries following the arrival of Europeans from violence , disease , and the colonial taking of land and resources .
Fisheries
The location of fish has always influenced where people lived , and the size of vessels determined where European settlers fished . These settlement patterns remain in place today , and villages continue to develop in protected harbors and at the confluence of rivers and the ocean .
Marine fish , invertebrates , shellfish , and river-run species such as alewives were , and still are , an important food source and part of the economy . Many generations of people harvested sturgeon , sculpin , bluefish , tomcod , pollock , swordfish , eels , Atlantic cod , and harbor porpoise . Runs of salmon and alewives up the rivers provided an abundance of food during migration season in the spring . The name “ Passamaquoddy ” is an Anglicization of the word Peskotomuhkati , meaning “ pollock spearer ” or “ those of the place where pollock are plentiful ”.
The Passamaquoddy hunted seals for food , tools , and other uses for many generations . Overharvesteing of seals by non-native hunters led to removal of their sovereign right to harvest seals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 .
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