On-Site Drug Testing Skowhegan, ME

Local Area Info: Skowhegan, Maine

Skowhegan /ska??hi???n/ is the county seat of Somerset County, Maine, United States. Skowhegan was originally inhabited by the indigenous Abenaki people who named the area Skowhegan, meaning "watching place [for fish]." The native population was massacred or driven from the area during the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 8,589. Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an internationally known residency program for artists, though it is technically located in neighboring East Madison. Every August, Skowhegan hosts the annual Skowhegan State Fair, the oldest continuous state fair in the United States.

For thousands of years prior to European settlement, this region of Maine was the territory of the Kinipekw (later known as Kennebec) Norridgewock tribe of Abenaki. The Norridgewock village was located on the land now known as Madison. The Abenaki relied on agriculture (corn, beans, and squash) for a large part of their diet, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild foods. The Skowhegan Falls (which have since been replaced by the Weston Dam) descended 28 feet over a half-mile on the Kennebec River. From spring until fall the tribe fished here, where abundant salmon and other species could be caught by wading. They speared salmon and other fish in the pools beneath two waterfalls there and utilized the rich land on its banks to raise corn and other crops. This place was an important stop on their annual migrations from northern hunting grounds in winter to coastal Maine in summer. They dried fish on the Island in early summer and planted crops to be harvested on their return northward in autumn. Consequently, they named the area Skowhegan, meaning "watching place [for fish]." Early variant names include Schoogun, Squahegan, Cohegan, Cohigin, Schouhegan, Scohigin, Cohiggin, Scowhegan, Scohegan, Scunkhegon, Squhegan, Sou heagan, Sou Heavyon, etc.

The village's Catholic mission was run by a French Jesuit priest, Father Sébastien Râle. Massachusetts governor Samuel Shute declared war on the Abenaki in 1722. On August 22, 1724, Captains Johnson Harmon, Jeremiah Moulton, and Richard Bourne (Brown) led a force of two hundred rangers to the main Abenaki village on the Kennebec River to kill Father Sébastien Râle and destroy the settlement. The Battle of Norridgewock (also known as the "Norridgewock Raid") took place on August 23, 1724. The land was being fought over by England, France and the Wabanaki Confederacy, during the colonial frontier conflict referred to as Father Rale's War. Despite being called a 'battle' by some, the raid was essentially a massacre of Indians by colonial British troops. The raid was undertaken to check Abenaki power in the region, limit Catholic proselytizing among the Abenaki (and thereby perceived French influence), and to allow the expansion of New England settlements into Abenaki territory and Acadia. Other motivations for the raid included the special ?100 scalp bounty placed on Râle's head by the Massachusetts provincial assembly and the bounty on Abenaki scalps offered by the colony during the conflict. Most accounts record about eighty Abenaki being killed, and both English and French accounts agree that the raid was a surprise nighttime attack on a civilian target, and they both also report that many of the dead were unarmed when they were killed, and those massacred included many women and children. Lieut. Richard Jaques killed Rale in the opening moments of the battle; the soldiers obscenely mutilated Rale's body and later paraded his scalp through the streets of Boston to redeem their reward for the scalp of Rale with those of the other dead. The Boston authorities gave a reward for the scalps, and Harmon was promoted. The rangers massacred nearly two dozen women and children. The Rangers fired around the canoes filled with families. Harmon noted that at least 50 bodies went downstream before the rangers could retrieve them for their scalps. As a result of the raid, New Englanders flooded into the lower Kennebec region, establishing settlements there in the wake of the war. Two English militiamen were killed. Harmon burned the Abenaki farms, and those who had escaped were forced to abandon their village. The 150 Abenaki survivors returned to bury the dead before abandoning the area and moving northward to the Abenaki village of St Francois (Odanak, Quebec).