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Publication Date

1-1-2013

Document Type

Article

First Page

42

Last Page

67

Abstract

Soon after the American Revolutionary War began, Colonel Benedict Arnold led an American invasion force from Maine into Quebec in an effort to capture the British province. The trek through the wilderness of western Maine did not go smoothly. This territory was a unique borderland area that was not inhabited by colonists as a frontier society, but instead remained a largely unsettled region still under the control of the Wabanakis. On the northern periphery of this borderland the Quebecois and Wabanakis supplied Arnold and his men with provisions, aid, and intelligence. It was the assistance of French habitants and Wabanakis in Quebec that saved the mission. Historians who have written about Arnold’s march through this borderland region have tended to view it as simply a heroic feat by the American force. Yet, both the natural and human environment of this borderland region played a significant role in the expedition’s near failure to escape the Maine wilderness and ultimately its success in reaching Quebec City. The author is a graduate student at the University in Maine, focusing on the environmental history of the American Revolution. He is the secretary of the Environmental Studies Coalition at the University of Maine, co-editor of the Khronikos blog and journal, and the webmaster of the Northeastern Atlantic Canada Environmental History Forum.

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