John R. Maass grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and is the founder of the Rockbridge Civil War Roundtable. He holds a PhD in early American history from The Ohio State University and is a historian at the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC. He serves on the editorial staff of the Journal of Backcountry Studies.

For eight decades, an epic power struggle raged across a frontier that would become Maine. Between 1675 and 1759, British, French, and Native Americans soldiers clashed in six distinct wars to claim the land that became the Pine Tree State. Though the showdown between France and Great Britain was international in scale, the decidedly local conflicts in Maine pitted European settlers against Native American tribes. Native and European communities from the Penobscot to the Piscataqua Rivers suffered brutal attacks. Countless men, women and children were killed, taken captive or sold into servitude. The native people of Maine were torn asunder by disease, social disintegration and political factionalism as they fought to maintain their autonomy in the face of unrelenting European pressure. This is the dark, tragic and largely forgotten struggle that laid the foundation of Maine.