The first inhabitants of Maine—dating from 3000 to 1000 BC —are known to archaeologists as the Red Paint People because of the red ocher that has been found in their graves. This Paleolithic group had evidently disappeared long before the arrival of the Algonkian-speaking Abnaki (meaning "living at the sunrise"), or Wabanaki. Just at the time of European settlement, an intertribal war and a disastrous epidemic of smallpox swept away many of the Abnaki, some of whom had begun peaceful contacts with the English. After that, most Indian contacts with Europeans were with the French.
The first documented visit by a European to the Maine coast was that of Giovanni da Verrazano during his voyage of 1524, but one may infer from the record that the Abnaki he met there had encountered white men before. Sometime around 1600, English expeditions began fishing the Gulf of Maine regularly. The first recorded attempts to found permanent colonies, by the French on an island in the St. Croix River in 1604 and by the English at Sagadahoc in 1607, both failed. By 1630, however, there were permanent English settlements on several islands and at nearly a dozen spots along the coast.
The first grant of Maine lands was to Sir Ferdinando Gorges from the Council from New England, a joint-stock company that received and made royal grants of New England territory and which Gorges himself dominated. He and Captain John Mason received the territory between the Merrimack River (in present-day New Hampshire and Massachusetts) and the Kennebec River in 1622. Seven years later, the two grantees divided their land at the Piscataqua River, and Gorges became sole proprietor of the "Province of Maine." The source of the name is not quite clear. It seems likely that some connection with the historical French province of the same name was intended, but the name was also used to distinguish the mainland from the islands.
Sir Ferdinando's various schemes for governing the territory and promoting a feudal-style settlement never worked. A few years after his death in 1647, the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony began absorbing the small Maine settlements. Massachusetts purchased the title to Maine from the Gorges heirs in 1677, and Maine became a district of Massachusetts with the issuance of a new royal charter in 1691. During the first hundred years of settlement, Maine's economy was based entirely on fishing, trading, and exploitation of the forests. The origin of the Maine shipbuilding industry, the early settlement of the interior parts of southern Maine, and the beginning of subsistence farming all date from about the time that New England's supply center of white-pine masts for the Royal Navy moved from Portsmouth, N.H., to Falmouth (now the city of Portland).
The first naval encounter of the Revolutionary War occurred in Machias Bay, when, on 12 June 1775, angry colonials captured the British armed schooner Margaretta . On 8 October 1775, a British naval squadron shelled and set fire to Falmouth. Wartime Maine was the scene of two anti-British campaigns, both of which ended in failure: an expedition through the Maine woods in the fall of 1775 intended to drive the British out of Quebec, and a disastrous 1779 expedition in which a Massachusetts amphibious force, failing to dislodge British troops at Castine, scuttled many of its own ships near the mouth of the Penobscot River.
The idea of separation from Massachusetts began surfacing as early as 1785, but popular pressure for such a movement did not mount until the War of 1812. The overwhelming vote for statehood in an 1819 referendum was a victory for William King, who would become the first governor, and his fellow Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans. Admission of Maine as a free state was joined with the admission of Missouri as a slave state in the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Textile mills and shoe factories came to Maine between 1830 and 1860 as part of the industrialization of Massachusetts. After the Civil War, the revolution in papermaking that substituted wood pulp for rags brought a vigorous new industry to Maine. By 1900, Maine was one of the leading papermaking states in the US, and the industry continues to dominate the state today. Shipbuilding joined paper manufacturing as a leading employer in the state, enjoying a boom in government contracts in the 1980s.
In 1972, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians filed a land claims suit against the federal government for property that amounted to the northern two-thirds of Maine, claiming that a 1794 treaty, under which the Passamaquoddy handed over most of its land while receiving nothing in exchange, had not been ratified by Congress, and therefore violated the Indian Non-Intercourse Act of 1790. The Government settled the suit in 1980 by paying the tribes $81.5 million, which was allocated to purchase commercial and industrial properties in Maine.
The rise of tourism and the often conflicting concerns for economic development and environmental protection have been key issues in the state since the 1940s. Tourism grew substantially in the 1980s and through the 1990s, especially in coastal areas, where an influx of residents changed the character of many seaside towns. Former seasonal resorts were converted to year-round communities, posing new challenges for growth management. The state's environmental concerns included sewage treatment, deforestation, overfishing, and hazardous waste disposal.
Maine's economy turned in its best performance in more than a decade in 1999, with strong job growth, continued increases in retail sales, and significant improvement in nearly all other indicators. The state's income growth topped the national average from 1998 to 1999, finishing among the five fastest growing states. According to government figures, income growth in Maine, which still had the lowest per capita income in New England, was fueled by higher wages in services, construction, finance, insurance, and real estate. At the same time, there were concerns that the gain in income was the result of Maine workers holding down more than one job in order to make ends meet. Analysts also warned that the hot state economy could be threatened by a shortage of workers, since the state's population was not growing at a commensurate rate.
Maine's economy suffered with that of the nation's in the early 2000s, coming on the back of a recession in 2001. By 2003, Maine had a $24 million budget deficit. Governor John Baldacci had plans to implement a large-scale healthcare program for state employees, open it to private employers, and pay for it without increased taxes. A citizen initiative set for referendum in November 2003 was to mandate a large increase in state assistance to local school systems.