As recently as 400 years ago, Wabanaki people would routinely canoe roughly 9 miles down what is now called the Goose River from their fields and forests along its banks to its estuary, joining the Passagassawakeag River and ultimately widening into Penobscot Bay. There they would have raked clams, gathered mussels and oysters, and fished, too. During the British colonization of their territory, when their people were killed or driven north into the woods, the Wabanaki — Penobscots around the Midcoast's bay area — lost their connection to the coastal lands and waters that had been their home and food source since their ancestors arrived there thousands of years earlier.
