page_title: Penobscot River
section_title: French colony
hierarchical_section_title: Penobscot River / History / French colony
caption_attribution_description: English: I took photo of Penobscot River at Bangor, ME, with Canon camera.
context_page_description: The Penobscot River is a 109-mile-long river in the U.S. state of Maine. Including the river's West Branch and South Branch increases the Penobscot's length to 264 miles, making it the second-longest river system in Maine and the longest entirely in the state. Its drainage basin contains 8,610 square miles.
  It arises from four branches in several lakes in north-central Maine, which flow generally east. After the uniting of the West Branch with the East Branch at Medway, the Penobscot flows 109 miles south, past the city of Bangor, where it becomes navigable. Also at Bangor is the tributary Kenduskeag Stream. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Penobscot Bay. It is home to the Penobscot people that live on Indian Island.
  The United States government maintains three river flow gages on the Penobscot river. The first is on the East Branch in Grindstone where the rivershed is 1,086 square miles. Flow here has ranged from 400 to 1,300 cubic feet per second. The second is in West Enfield where the rivershed is 6,671 square miles. Flow here has ranged from 4,410 to 9,660 cubic feet per second.
context_section_description: The first European known to have explored the river was the Portuguese Estêvão Gomes in 1524, followed by the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain in 1605. A few years later French Jesuit priests came among the Penobscot people as missionaries and converted them to Catholicism. The French settlement of Pentagouet, now Castine, was founded at the point where the river becomes Penobscot Bay, and the Penobscot people made a permanent settlement at Indian Old Town, Maine on an island above the head of navigation, around the Catholic mission. Throughout the first  half of the 17th centuries, these were likely the only permanent settlements on the river, although the Penobscots considered the entire river and bay their hunting ground and maintained other seasonal villages along its banks.
  In 1669, the Mohawk tribe made raids from the west that were very destructive to the Penobscot people. During Father Rale's War, the English settlers in Massachusetts also sent periodic raiding parties to the Penobscot, destroying the primary native village in 1723. In a treaty of 1752, however, Massachusetts laid claim to the entire Penobscot watershed, and in 1759 the Pownall Expedition, led by Governor Thomas Pownall, established Fort Pownall on Cape Jellison in what is now Stockton Springs. This signaled the beginning of English domination, and the incorporation of the Penobscot River valley into New England.
caption: The Penobscot at Bangor, Maine
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