United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
St. Croix River (Maine–New Brunswick)
The St. Croix River is a river in northeastern North America, 71 miles in length, that forms part of the Canada–United States border between Maine and New Brunswick; the river rises in the Chiputneticook Lakes and flows south and southeast, between Calais and St. Stephen, it discharges in the Bay of Fundy. The river forms from the Chiputneticook Lakes along the Canadian - U. S. border. U. S. Geological Survey topographic maps show the St. Croix River as beginning at the 1.0-mile-long outlet stream from East Grand Lake flowing through the short Mud Lake and entering Spednic Lake, extending 20 miles to its outlet at Vanceboro and the start of the river proper. Adding the section of river and lake from the outlet of East Grand Lake gives a total length of 95 miles to the St. Croix; the total drainage area of the river is 1,500 square miles. In the 20th century, the river was developed for hydroelectric power; the river had hosted a large population of Atlantic salmon. The river is an estuary between Calais-St. Stephen and the river's mouth at Robbinston and St. Andrews.
This tidal area extends for 16 miles along this section and exhibits a tidal bore. The Saint Croix River was an early trade corridor to interior Maine and New Brunswick from the Atlantic coast. Ocean ships could navigate upstream to St. Stephen; the river upstream of Calais and St. Stephen became an important transportation corridor for log driving to bring wooden logs and pulpwood from interior forests to sawmills and paper mills built to use water power at Calais and Woodland; the boundary issues of the St. Croix River came out of the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783; the geography of the river was not charted until the Jay Treaty provided provisions for surveying the boundary. The boundary between Maine and New Brunswick north of the headwaters of the Saint Croix took another four decades to establish. Following the War of 1812 there was a push to settle this disputed territory north of the St. Croix on the St. John watershed and it remained in dispute until 1842. During this conflict Maine and New Brunswick continued to issue some lumbering permits to the disputed territory.
With or without a permit, lumbermen were in a race to cut the best timber from the land while it was under dispute. Although it was illegal to cut trees with no permit, the Saint John River enabled this activity because it increased business at the local mills and timber ponds in New Brunswick so the officials were slow to halt the ongoing illegal activity. During this time, the lumbermen were serious and competitive about the trees. Whoever got to the best trees first claimed them. Dynamite was used as a tool of sabotage to blow up some of the log booms that were strung across the river to catch the cut trees, it is known that at times the timber men purposely sorted their logs incorrectly to attempt to confuse local officials charged with regulating timber trade and transportation. The Water Survey of Canada maintains six river flow gauges in the St. Croix River watershed: St. Croix, New Brunswick Baring, Maine Dennis Stream near St. Stephen, New Brunswick East Grand Lake at Forest City, New Brunswick Spednic Lake at St. Croix, New Brunswick Forest City Stream, below the Forest City Dam at Forest City, New Brunswick The United States Geological Survey maintains two river flow gauges in the St. Croix River watershed.
Vanceboro, Maine where the rivershed is 413 square miles, 400 feet downstream from the Spednik Lake Dam. Baring Plantation, Maine where the rivershed is 1,374 square miles, 5.6 miles downstream of the nearest dam. The maximum recorded flow here is 23,500 cubic feet per second and the minimum 262 cubic feet per second. USGS maintains a water chemistry monitor at Milltown, Maine where the rivershed is 1,455 square miles. For water year 2001, the pH ranged from 6.6 to 7.2. Seven active international bridges cross the river at the following locations: St. Croix, New Brunswick-Vanceboro, Maine (Saint Croix-Vanceboro Bridge, road St. Croix-Vanceboro, rail Mohannes, New Brunswick-Woodland, rail Upper Mills, New Brunswick-Baring, rail St. Stephen, New Brunswick-Calais, International Avenue Bridge, road St. Stephen, New Brunswick-Calais, road St. Stephen, New Brunswick-Calais, rail St. Stephen, New Brunswick-Calais, roadOne defunct crossing exists: St. Stephen, New Brunswick-Calais, ferry HMCS St. Croix USS McCook, became a Canadian ship in 1940 as part of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement.
It was renamed after the St. Croix River to follow the Canadian tradition of naming destroyers after Canadian rivers while recognizing the shared national history of the ship. List of bodies of water of New Brunswick List of
First Nations
In Canada, the First Nations are the predominant indigenous peoples in Canada south of the Arctic Circle. Those in the Arctic area are distinct and known as Inuit; the Métis, another distinct ethnicity, developed after European contact and relations between First Nations people and Europeans. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Under the Employment Equity Act, First Nations are a "designated group", along with women, visible minorities, people with physical or mental disabilities. First Nations are not defined as a visible minority under the Act or by the criteria of Statistics Canada. North American indigenous; some of their oral traditions describe historical events, such as the Cascadia earthquake of 1700 and the 18th-century Tseax Cone eruption. Written records began with the arrival of European explorers and colonists during the Age of Discovery, beginning in the late 15th century.
European accounts by trappers, traders and missionaries give important evidence of early contact culture. In addition and anthropological research, as well as linguistics, have helped scholars piece together an understanding of ancient cultures and historic peoples. Although not without conflict, Euro-Canadians' early interactions with First Nations, Métis, Inuit populations were less combative compared to the violent battles between colonists and native peoples in the United States. Collectively, First Nations, Métis peoples constitute Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or first peoples. First Nation as a term became used beginning in 1980s to replace the term Indian band in referring to groups of Indians with common government and language; the term had come into common usage in the 1970s to avoid using the word Indian, which some Canadians considered offensive. No legal definition of the term exists; some indigenous peoples in Canada have adopted the term First Nation to replace the word band in the formal name of their community.
A band is a "body of Indians for whose use and benefit in common lands... have been set apart... moneys are held... or declared... to be a band for the purposes of" the Indian Act by the Canadian Crown. The term Indian is a misnomer given to indigenous peoples of North America by European explorers who erroneously thought they had landed on the Indian subcontinent; the use of the term Native Americans, which the US government and others have adopted, is not common in Canada. It refers more to the Indigenous peoples residing within the boundaries of the United States; the parallel term Native Canadian is not used, but Native and autochtone are. Under the Royal Proclamation of 1763 known as the "Indian Magna Carta," the Crown referred to indigenous peoples in British territory as tribes or nations; the term First Nations is capitalized. Bands and nations may have different meanings. Within Canada, First Nations has come into general use for indigenous peoples other than Inuit and Métis. Individuals using the term outside Canada include U.
S. tribes within the Pacific Northwest, as well as supporters of the Cascadian independence movement. The singular used on culturally politicized reserves, is the term First Nations person. A more recent trend is for members of various nations to refer to themselves by their tribal or national identity only, e.g. "I'm Haida". For pre-history, see: Paleo-Indians and Archaic periods First Nations by linguistic-cultural area: List of First Nations peoplesFirst Nations peoples had settled and established trade routes across what is now Canada by 1,000 BC to 500 BC. Communities developed, each with its own culture and character. In the northwest were the Athapaskan-speaking peoples, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ, Tutchone-speaking peoples, Tlingit. Along the Pacific coast were the Haida, Kwakiutl, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nisga'a and Gitxsan. In the plains were the Blackfoot, Kainai and Northern Peigan. In the northern woodlands were the Chipewyan. Around the Great Lakes were the Anishinaabe, Algonquin and Wyandot. Along the Atlantic coast were the Beothuk, Innu and Micmac.
The Blackfoot Confederacies reside in the Great Plains of Montana and Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The name "Blackfoot" came from the colour of the peoples' leather footwear, known as moccasins, they had painted the bottoms of their moccasins black. One account claimed that the Blackfoot Confederacies walked through the ashes of prairie fires, which in turn coloured the bottoms of their moccasins black, they had migrated onto the Great Plains from the Plateau area. The Blackfoot may have lived in their homeland since the end of the Pleistocene 11,000 years ago.. For thousands of years, they managed the prairie to support bison herds and cultivated berries and edible roots, they allowed only legitimate traders into their territory, making treaties only when the bison herds were exterminated in the 1870s. The Squamish history is a series of past events, both passed on through oral tradition and recent history, of the Squamish indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Prior to colonization, they recorded their history through oral tradition as a way to transmit stories and knowledge across generations. This was common among all the peoples; the writing system esta
X Games
The X Games is an annual extreme sports event hosted and broadcast by ESPN. Coverage is shown on ESPN's sister network, ABC; the inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 in Rhode Island. Participants compete to win bronze and gold medals, as well as prize money; the competition features new tricks such as Tony Hawk's 900 in skateboarding, Travis Pastrana's double backflip in freestyle motocross, Heath Frisby's first snowmobile front flip in Snowmobile Best Trick, Torstein Horgmo's first landed triple cork in a snowboard competition. Concurrent with competition is the "X Fest" sports and music festival, which offers live music, athlete autograph sessions, interactive elements; the X Games gained media exposure due to their big name sponsors, top-tier athletes, consistent fan attendance. As the Journal of Sport Management explains, Generation X and Generation Y are the two demographics most valued by marketers; this creates a broad approach on marketing towards that certain demographic, why the X Games marketing and economic outlook is so "out of the box".
According to a 2008 report by ESPN, in 1997, the Winter X Games inaugural year, 38,000 spectators attended the four-day event. In 1998, the attendance dropped to 25,000 spectators, but just two years a record attendance of 83,500 people attended the Winter X Games' East Coast debut. The X Games and Winter X Games continue to grow with the popularity of action sports and the athletes who compete in them; as part of the X Games, there have been performances by various rock bands over the years, as well as a DJ being on-site at all events. The X Games have made it a point since its founding to stage an eco-friendly event; such measures include organizing recycling campaigns. The X Games has never carried out drug tests on competitors, criticized by the World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman and the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach; the Winter X Games VIII in 2002 was the first time an X Games event was televised live and had coverage by ESPN's flagship news program, SportsCenter.
Viewership across the three networks that carried coverage of the event – ABC Sports, ESPN, ESPN2 – exceeded 2001's household average by 30% according to Nielsen Media Research. The event reached record highs in several demographic categories. To accommodate the first-time live coverage, nighttime competitions were added, resulting in record attendance for the Aspen/Snowmass venue in Colorado; the 2002 Winter X Games was a huge year for the X Games. It was the first year; the Games continued to add new events including the ski slopestyle event, ski superpipe event, skateboarding etc. The most memorable incident of the 2002 Games was when the entire 2002 U. S. Olympic freestyle snowboarding team showed up to compete in the Winter X snowboard superpipe event, just weeks before the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In 2002, ESPN announced the establishment of the X Games Global Championship; the Global Championship featured two distinct venues hosting competitions in summer and winter action sports simultaneously.
It consisted of six teams of the world's top athletes, grouped together by their region of origin, to compete in the four-day event. The winter sports were held in Whistler Blackcomb Resort in British Columbia, the events included snowboarding and skiing; the Winter X Games are held in January or February and the Summer X Games are held in August, both in the United States. The location of the Winter X Games is in Aspen, through 2019, while the location for the Summer X Games has been in Los Angeles, changing to Austin, Texas, in June 2014; the X Games has international competitions and demos around the world that are held at varying times throughout the year. The games are shown live on television; the Winter X Games are, as described by ESPN, a competition compiled of the greatest winter action sport athletes from around the world competing on an annual basis. The competition has day and evening events including skiing and snowmobiling; the first Winter X Games took place at Mountain Resort in Big Bear Lake, California, in 1997.
The following two years, the Games were held at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado. The two years following that, the Games were held in Vermont. Since 2002, the Winter X Games have been held at Aspen's Buttermilk Mountain and will continue to be until 2024, according to ESPN. During 2015's Winter X Games, ESPN used camera drones to capture aerial views of the athlete's runs; this was a first for ESPN. X Games Asia have been held annually since 1998. In May 2003, the X Games held the Global Championships, a special event where five continents competed in 11 disciplines; the event was held in two locations: the Alamodome in San Antonio and Whistler, British Columbia. The final team results, in order, were the United States, Australia and South America. In May 2011, ESPN held a bid to select three host cities in addition to Los Angeles and Tignes, France, to form a six-event calendar for the next three years beginning in 2013. In May 2012, the selected cities were announced: Barcelona, Spain.
The two European cities have hosted the Summer Olympic Games in the past, whereas Brazil has provided several X Games competitors. Despite previous plans for a three-year run, ESPN opted to cancel the global expansion after 2013. Since 2010, Winter X Games Europe have been held in Tignes. In 2018, the X Games had events in Oslo, Norway in May and Sydney, Australia in late October. In 20
Canada
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border, its capital is Ottawa, its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra, its population is urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons. Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century and French expeditions explored, settled, along the Atlantic coast.
As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces; this began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with Elizabeth II as its queen and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the federal cabinet and head of government; the country is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, education.
It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. A developed country, Canada has the sixteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the twelfth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index, its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of Canada, the name is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement".
In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona. From the 16th to the early 18th century "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named the Canadas. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth"; the government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using'Dominion' in the Statutes of Canada in 1951. In 1982, the passage of the Canada Act, bringing the Constitution of Canada under Canadian control, referred only to Canada, that year the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion. Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations, Métis, the last being a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers; the term "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act 1982. The first inhabitants of North America are hypothesized to have migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 14,000 years ago; the Paleo-Indian archeological sites at Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Canadian indigenous societies included permanent settlements, complex societal hierarchies, trading networks; some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and have only been discovered through archeological investigations.
The indigenous population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000
Gulf of Maine
The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast; the gulf includes the entire coastlines of the U. S. states of New Hampshire and Maine, as well as Massachusetts north of Cape Cod, the southern and western coastlines of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, respectively. The gulf was named for the adjoining English colonial Province of Maine, in turn named by early explorers after the Province of Maine in France. Massachusetts Bay, Penobscot Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, the Bay of Fundy are included within the Gulf of Maine system; the Gulf of Maine is a rectangular depression with a surface area of around 36,000 square miles, enclosed to the west and north by the North American mainland and communicating with the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. The region's glaciation by the Laurentide Ice Sheet stripped sedimentary soil away from the coastline, leaving a shore, predominantly rocky and scenic, lacking the sandy beaches found to the south along the Eastern Seaboard.
The only significant coastal developments are located in the Boston, Portsmouth and Saint John metropolitan areas. The underwater features of the seabed sculptured during the lower sea levels of the ice ages make the gulf a semi-enclosed sea bounded to the south and east by underwater banks. Georges Bank in particular, on its southern end, shelters the gulf from the Gulf Stream. Gulf of Maine waters are more influenced by the Labrador Current, making the gulf waters colder and more nutrient-rich than those found to the south. Undersea valleys in the central basin can reach depths of 1,500 feet while undersea mountains rise up 800 feet from the sea floor reaching the surface in some locations, or exceeding it, creating islands. There are three major basins contained within the Gulf of Maine: Wilkinson Basin to the west, Jordan Basin in the northeast, Georges Basin in the south, which are isolated from each other beneath the 650 foot isobath. Georges Basin, just north of Georges Bank, is the deepest of the three at just over 1200 feet and generates a pocket at the end of the Northeast Channel, a deep fissure between Georges Bank and Browns Bank, the southwestern edge of the Nova Scotian Shelf.
The Northeast Channel is the rest of the Northwest Atlantic. A secondary, shallower connection to the rest of the Atlantic is the Great South Channel, located between Georges Bank and the Nantucket Shoals; the cold waters, extreme tidal mixing, diverse bottom of the Gulf make it one of the most productive marine environments in the North Atlantic, it furnishes habitat for many diverse species including most notably haddock, the Acadian redfish, the Atlantic herring and the American lobster, which grows to famously large sizes in the Gulf. The waters of the Gulf of Maine system at the boundary with the Bay of Fundy are home to the summering grounds for many different bird and whale species, most notably the endangered North Atlantic right whale; the gulf was home to the sea mink until its extinction in the late 1800s. Due to rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine, the water has become too hot for cod. This, along with past overfishing, has helped pushed stocks towards collapse and hampered its recovery despite deep reductions in the number of fish caught, according to a study conducted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Traditional calculations "consistently over-estimated the abundance of cod." From 2004, temperatures rose by more than 0.4 °F per year, culminating in an ocean heat wave in the northwest Atlantic in 2012-13. The watershed of the gulf encompasses an area of 69,000 sq mi, including all of Maine, 70% of New Hampshire, 56% of New Brunswick, 41% of Massachusetts, 36% of Nova Scotia; the watershed includes a small southern portion of the Canadian province of Quebec. Significant rivers that drain into the Gulf include, from east to west, the Annapolis, Salmon, Saint John, Magaguadavic, St. Croix, Kennebec, Piscataqua and Charles rivers; the gulf's relative proximity to Europe made it an early destination for European colonization. French settlers founded a settlement on St. Croix Island in 1604. English settlers founded the Popham Colony on an island in the Kennebec River in 1607, the same year as the Jamestown settlement, followed by the Plymouth Colony on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in 1620. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a dispute between Canada and the United States over fishing and other resource rights in the Gulf of Maine the Georges Bank region.
This dispute was taken to the International Court of Justice, which delineated a maritime boundary through the Gulf in 1984. Canada and the U. S. continue to disagree on the sovereignty of Machias Seal Island and the waters surrounding it in the northeastern part of the gulf. In recognition of the Gulf's importance to marine habitat, both nations maintain complementary embargoes against offshore oil and gas exploration activities on Georges Bank in the southern part of the gulf. British colonization of the Americas French colonization of the Americas Gulf of Maine Research Institute Gulf of Maine Research Institute Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment
Penobscot
The Penobscot are an indigenous peoples in North America with members who reside in the United States and Canada. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec; the Penobscot Nation known as the Penobscot Tribe of Maine, is the federally recognized tribe of Penobscot in the United States. They are part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, along with the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi'kmaq nations, all of whom spoke Algonquian languages, their main settlement is now the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, located within the state of Maine along the Penobscot River. The word "Penobscot" originates from a mispronunciation of their name for themselves: Penawapskewi; the word means "rocky part" or "descending ledges," and referred to their territory on the portion of the Penobscot River between present-day Old Town and Bangor. The Penobscot Nation is headquartered in Maine; the tribal chief is Kirk Francis. The vice-chief is Bill Thompson.
Little is known about the Penobscot before their contact with European colonizers. Indigenous peoples are thought to have inhabited Maine and surrounding areas for at least 11,000 years, they had a hunting-gathering society, with the men hunting beaver, moose, caribou, seafood and marine mammals such as seals. The women gathered and processed bird eggs, berries and roots, all of which were found locally; the people practiced some agriculture but not to the same extent as that of indigenous peoples in southern New England, where the climate was more temperate. Food was scarce only toward the end of the winter, in February and March. For the rest of the year, the Penobscot and other Wabanaki had little difficulty surviving because the land and ocean waters offered much bounty, the number of people was sustainable; the bands moved seasonally, following the patterns of fish. During the 15th century the Penobscot had contact with Europeans through the fur trade, it was lucrative and the Penobscot were willing to trade pelts for European goods such as metal axes and copper or iron cookware.
Hunting for fur pelts reduced the game and the European trade introduced alcohol to Penobscot communities for the first time. It has been argued that the people are genetically vulnerable to alcoholism, which Europeans tried to exploit in dealings and trade. Penobscot people and other nations made pine beer, which had vitamin C; when Europeans arrived, they brought alcohol in quantity. Europeans may have developed enzymes, metabolic processes, social mechanisms for dealing with a normalized high intake of alcohol, but Penobscot people, though familiar with alcohol, had never had access to the gross quantity of alcohol that Europeans offered; the Europeans carried endemic infectious diseases of Eurasia that were new to the Native Americans, the Penobscot had no acquired immunity. Their fatality rates from the introduction of measles and other infectious diseases was high; the population declined due to fighting between the Wabanaki Federation and the powerful Mohawk people of the Iroquois League, which struggled to control the fur trade.
This catastrophic population depletion may have contributed to Christian conversion. The latter said. At the beginning of the 17th century, Europeans began to live year-round in Wabanaki territory. At this time, there were about 10,000 Penobscot; as contact became more permanent, after about 1675, conflicts arose through differences in cultures, conceptions of property, competition for resources. Along the Atlantic Coast in present-day Canada, most settlers were French; the Penobscot sided with the French during the French and Indian War in the mid-18th century after the English refusal to respect the Penobscots' intended neutrality. With the Spencer Phips proclamation of 1755, the British colonies put a bounty on the scalps of all Penobscot. With a smaller population and greater acceptance of intermarriage, the French posed a lesser threat to the Penobscots' land and way of life. After the English defeated French colonists in the Battle of Quebec in 1759, the Penobscot were left in a weakened position.
During the American Revolution, the Penobscot sided with the Patriots and played an important role in defending against British offensives from Canada. But, the new American government did not seem to recognize their contributions. Anglo-American settlers continued to encroach on Penobscot lands. In the following centuries, the Penobscot attempted to make treaties in order to hold on to some form of land, because they had no power of enforcement in Massachusetts or Maine, Americans kept encroaching on their lands. From about 1800 onward, the Penobscot lived on reservations Indian Island, an island in the Penobscot River near Old Town, Maine; the Maine state government appointed a Tribal Agent to oversee the tribe. The government believed that they were helping the Penobscot, as stated in 1824 by the highest court in Maine that "...imbecility on their parts, the dictates of humanity on ours, have prescribed to them their subjection to our paternal control." This sentiment of "imbecility" set up a power dynamic in which the gov
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