Arosaguntacook Indian History

Arosaguntacook. A tribe of the Abnaki confederacy, formerly living in Androscoggin County, Me. Their village, which bore the same name, was on Androscoggin River, probably near Lewiston.

The various names used indiscriminately for the tribe and the river may be resolved into the forms Amoscoggin and Arosaguntacook, which have received different interpretations, all seeming to refer to the presence of fish in the stream. The name seems to have been used only for the part of the river in Androscoggin County between the falls near Jay and those near Lewiston. The present name was obtained by changing the first part of the word to Andros in compliment to Gov. Andros. The Arosaguntacook lived on the edge of the first English settlements in Maine, and consequently suffered much in the various Indian wars, in which they took a prominent part from 1675 until their removal to Canada. Their town was burned by the English in 1690. As the settlements pushed into the interior the Wawenoc, at the mouth of the river, moved up and joined the Arosaguntacook, and at a later period the combined tribes moved still farther up and joined the Rocameca. These movements led to much confusion in the statements of writers, as the united tribes were commonly known by the name of the leading one, the Arosaguntacook or Androscoggin. These tribes, together with the Pigwacket, removed to St Francis, Canada, soon after the defeat of the Pequawket by Lovewell in 1725. Here the Arosaguntacook were still the principal tribe and their dialect (Abnaki) was adopted by all the inhabitants of the village, who were frequently known collectively as Arosaguntacook.

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Index of Tribes or Nations

Source: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906

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