The Raid on Salmon Falls (March 27, 1690) captured and destroyed the English settlement of Salmon Falls (present-day Berwick, Maine) during King William's War. It involved Joseph-François Hertel de la Fresnière, his son Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville and Norridgewock Abnaki chief Wahowa.
The village was plundered and burnt. Thirty-four men were killed and fifty-four people, mostly women and children, were carried away captive to Canada. Militia mustered from Portsmouth gave chase but were driven off in a skirmish later that day. Hertel then continued to raid present-day Portland, Maine.
The attackers' original intent was to target the home of Edward Tyng, father of Edward Tyng, at Fort Loyal, but changed plans and attacked Salmon Falls.
Kingsford, William (1888). The History of Canada. Vol. II (1679-1725). London: Trübner & Company. p. 337.
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.
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