Journeys into the Past at UNE

The University of New England (UNE) is located near the mouth of the Saco River in Biddeford, Maine. It is certainly a beautiful location, but it turns out that it’s much more than that. French explorer Samuel de Champlain visited the area in 1605. He drew a map and described the native people living on what is now the UNE campus, the earliest written account of the Wabanaki people. A few years later, with many believing that the climate in southern Maine was too much for Europeans to survive, de Champlain hired Richard Vines to spend the winter of 1616/17 on the banks of Biddeford Pool (then called Winter Harbor). If we count this as “settlement,” it means that Biddeford was settled before Plymouth. The experiment was successful, paving the way for European colonization in northern New England. Within a few years, the campus area was settled by a growing number of farmer/fishermen who made their living logging, farming, and fishing, alternating their activities seasonally. This wa