The Battle of Pequawket (also known as Lovewell's Fight) occurred on May 9, 1725 (O.S.), during Dummer's War in northern New England. Captain John Lovewell led a privately organized company of scalp hunters, organized into a makeshift ranger company, and Chief Paugus led the Abenaki at Pequawket, the site of present-day Fryeburg, Maine. The battle was related to the expansion of New England settlements along the Kennebec River (in present-day Maine).
The battle was the last major engagement between New England and the Wabanaki Confederacy in Governor Dummer's War. The fight was celebrated in song and story for at least several generations and became an important part of regional lore—even influencing the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the early 19th century as well as other writers. Its importance is often exaggerated in local histories, as arguably the August 1724 New England raid on Norridgewock was probably more significant for the direction of the conflict and in bringing the Abenaki to the treaty table.
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended Queen Anne's War, had facilitated the expansion of New England settlement. The treaty, however, had been signed in Europe and had not involved any tribes of the Natives' Wabanaki Confederacy. Since they had not been consulted, they protested this incursion into their lands by conducting raids on British fishermen and settlements.
For the first and only time, Wabanaki would fight New Englanders and the British on their own terms and for their own reasons and not principally to defend French imperial interests.
In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the Governor of Nova Scotia, Richard Philipps, built a fort in traditional Mi'kmaq territory at Canso, Nova Scotia, in 1720, and Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory at the mouth of the Kennebec River. The French claimed the same territory on the Kennebec River by building churches in the Abenaki villages of Norridgewock and Medoctec further upriver. These fortifications escalated the conflict.
In early September 1724 some Indians came to Dunstable and captured two men. When they did not return from work, a party of ten or more men started in pursuit. One man, Josiah Farwell, warned the leader of the possibility of running into an ambush. Despite this the posse rushed ahead, with Farwell following behind. They were ambushed and eight of the men were killed; the others, excepting Farwell who barely escaped, were captured.
Because of these attacks it was thought best to carry on the war more vigorously. Bounties for scalps were once again offered by the provincial government in order to encourage volunteer companies to form (and save the colony the time and expense of raising troops). John Lovewell quickly organized a company of amateur scalp-hunters from the Dunstable area. While they were favored by a grant from the provincial assembly, these troops were not part of the Massachusetts military establishment, but rather a privately organized group of raiders. Lovewell was not a commissioned officer in the provincial forces. Lovewell, whose maternal grandparents had been killed and scalped by Indians, raised the company of thirty men and was appointed by them as captain. In part because of Farwell's common sense Lovewell selected him as his second-in-command and made him lieutenant. Lovewell and Farwell went on three scalp hunting expeditions from December to May.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
This page covers Battle of Pequawket (Pigwacket) 1725. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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