Bates librarian finds Indigenous land grant from 1860s, complicating college’s history

LEWISTON — In the conventional sense, the University of Maine is the state’s only land-grant university: it received Indigenous land from the federal government over 150 years ago as an early endowment. By another definition, Colby and Bowdoin, to which the state gave a combined [234,000 acres](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/31/how-maines-elite-private-colleges-sold-wabanaki-land-to-bankroll-early-construction/), were the first land-grant colleges in Maine. Now, add to that list Bates College. The Legislature granted the Lewiston college 57,000 acres in northwestern Maine in the 1860s. That gift has gone unacknowledged in Bates’ own historical accounts — the school has [said it received $15,000 in lieu of land](https://www.bates.edu/150-years/months/march/maine-wins/). Documentation of the land transfers has been buried deep in legislative records and trustee minutes until a librarian recently unearthed it. Sam Howes, who works in the college’s Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, found a [record of the Legislature’s 1864 grant](https://lldc.mainelegislature.org/Open/Laws/1864/1864_RES_c284.pdf) several years ago when researching the institution’s transition from the Maine State Seminary, chartered in 1855, to Bates College. Advertisement The state land agent transferred the deed for two townships to the college in 1865, and Bates sold its land two years later for $23,000 (roughly $518,000 today). [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/08/31794440_SJ.CITbatesConstructionSAP.081222-6.jpg) The campus of Bates College in Lewiston contains numerous buildings and sports facilities over 133 acres. The football field seen Thursday is at upper right. [Purchase this image](https://dev.mainetodaymedia.com/smugmug/upload.php?data=%7B%22src%22%3A%22https%3A%5C%2F%5C%2Fwww.pressherald.com%5C%2Fwp-content%5C%2Fuploads%5C%2Fsites%5C%2F4%5C%2F2022%5C%2F11%5C%2F31794440_SJ.CITbatesConstructionSAP.081222-6-1667523613.jpg%22%2C%22caption%22%3A%22The%20campus%20of%20Bates%20College%20in%20Lewiston%20contains%20numerous%20buildings%20and%20sports%20facilities%20over%20133%20acres.%20The%20football%20field%20seen%20Thursday%20is%20at%20upper%20right.%22%7D) None of this meant all that much to Howes at the time. But last fall, curiosity got the best of him. Joe Hall, a professor of colonial North American and Indigenous history at Bates, had long-held curiosity about the institution’s role in the transformation of Wabanaki land into the state of Maine. During an unrelated visit to the archives, Hall noticed a map Howes had left out. “I was shocked,” he said, when Howes told him it was a map of Bates’ land grants. [](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/31/how-maines-elite-private-colleges-sold-wabanaki-land-to-bankroll-early-construction/) Related [How Maine’s elite private colleges sold Wabanaki land to bankroll early construction](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/31/how-maines-elite-private-colleges-sold-wabanaki-land-to-bankroll-early-construction/) Now, several Bates students are trying to interrogate Bates’ connection to land that once belonged to the Wabanaki people. Advertisement Administrators at the college were not aware of the grants until a Portland Press Herald inquiry last week. “As we learn more about the land grant and its implications, I don’t doubt the college will incorporate it into ongoing conversations on campus about the college’s shared history with Maine’s Wabanaki Nations,” college spokeswoman Mary Pols said in an email, noting various undertakings at Bates including the [Taking Responsibility Learning Group.](https://www.bates.edu/equity-inclusion/our-collaborators/) Throughout the 1700s and into the early 1800s, colonists in Massachusetts, which governed what was until 1820 the District of Maine, leveraged violence, treaties, cartography and settlement to take land from its Indigenous inhabitants. [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/43655260_20260617_BatesLand-3.jpg) Bates College archivist Sam Howes holds the original “Maine State Seminary Records 1855-1868” detailing land sales with Bates College at the Muskie Archives in Lewiston. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer) Maliseet people, known in their own language as Wolastoqey, controlled much of the region where Bates’ land grants were located. They were not party to most treaties of the era and were generally pushed off their unceded lands along the St. John, or Wolastoq, river, without compensation, said Osihkiyol “Zeke” Crofton-Macdonald, tribal ambassador for the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. Land grants, like those made to Bowdoin and Colby, were of mutual benefit to the schools, which needed funding, and the state, which wanted to draw settlers into Maine. They came at a cost for the Indigenous inhabitants of those lands, and foreshadowed a nationwide trend. Advertisement In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act, granting 10.7 million acres in the American West to various state university systems, [including UMaine](https://www.landgrabu.org/), and established what would be known as “land-grant universities.” Howes discovered in a bound collection of longhand meeting minutes that Bates needed money in 1864, as it grew from a small seminary into a collegiate institution, and followed suit. The college secured from the state a grant of two townships in northwestern Maine, not far from land granted to Colby a few years earlier. It was the middle of the Civil War, and lawmakers required that Bates not only raise $30,000 in matching funds, but offer 10 scholarships for the children of fallen veterans, to be selected by the governor. [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/43655260_20260617_BatesLand-1.jpg) In 1867, Bates sold the land to brothers George and Isaiah Stetson, both prominent businessmen and politicians in the state, for $23,000 (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer) An assessment of the land determined the volume of lumber it contained, measured in board feet (a 12-inch by 12-inch by 1-inch board is a single board foot). Trustee minutes show Bates land contained 10 million feet of pine, 2 million feet of spruce and 800,000 feet of tamarack (referred to as juniper). In 1867, it sold the land to brothers George and Isaiah Stetson, both prominent businessmen and politicians in the state. For Hall, this revelation crystalizes what had been a hazier picture of Bates’ connection to colonization. Advertisement  “It makes more concrete what it is that everybody already knows — which is that Maine is a state that is made from Wabanaki homelands — all of it,” he said. Juniors Paul Schmitz, Sarah McOsker and Sofia Schaffer dug into the history for a final project in a four-week intensive on Wabanaki history with Hall this spring. And senior May Fastaia, who is studying anthropology, is incorporating the work into a thesis. They all hope the realization will prompt a deeper exploration of the college’s engagement with its colonial entanglements. “Specific history spurs specific action,” Schmitz said. Bates does not have a standard land acknowledgement. For now, Hall doesn’t think that’s such a bad thing. A statement means little unless it drives action, engagement and relationships, [experts agree.](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/31/how-maines-elite-private-colleges-sold-wabanaki-land-to-bankroll-early-construction/#:~:text=But%20acknowledgment%20alone%20is%20insufficient%2C%20said%20Ranco%2C%20the%20UMaine%20anthropologist.%20It%20must%20be%20accompanied%20by%20action%2C%20he%20said.) This discovery will ground that conversation — literally. _Reuben M. Schafir is a [Report for America](https://www.reportforamerica.org/) corps member who writes about Indigenous and rural communities for the Portland Press Herald._ Copy the Story Link Tagged: [bates college](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/bates-college/), [history](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/history/), [indigenous](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/indigenous/), [wabanaki nations](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/wabanaki-nations/) [](https://www.pressherald.com/author/reuben-schafir) [Reuben M. SchafirStaff Writer](https://www.pressherald.com/author/reuben-schafir) Reuben, a Bowdoin College graduate and former Press Herald intern, returned to our newsroom in July 2025 to cover Indigenous communities in Maine as part of a Report for America partnership. Reuben was. [More by Reuben M. Schafir](https://www.pressherald.com/author/reuben-schafir)