By the time of Pidianiske’s grandmother’s birth in the early 1600s, European merchants had figured out that large profits could be made from the fur-bearing animals that roamed Wabanaki forests. So they set up trading posts along the Atlantic seaboard.

More than fifty thousand English had put down roots in New England, while only nine thousand French had settled in Canada.

The number of settlers was even more modest in the neighboring French colony of Acadia. That region, extending northeast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Breton and westward to the Appalachian Mountains, was home to fewer than four hundred French people–and about five thousand Wabanakis.

Roaming the woods from one Indian encampment to another, they spent most of their time beyond French settlements and became known as coureurs de bois (forest rovers). Some of the French rovers took Indian women as wives and became fathers of metis (mixed-blood) children. Unlike their Protestant neighbors in New England, the French had no policy of racial segregation.

the French trading center at Quebec lay beyond the mountains, nearly three hundred miles away, and the waterways leading to it were frozen much of the year, while the nearest English trading settlement was just around the coastal corner at Pemaquid peninsula. Besides, English merchants paid more for furs, offered a wider array of goods, and frequently brought their business right to Pentagoet.

the goods Molly Mathilde’s people wanted in exchange for their furs: needles, scissors, and cloth; steel axes and iron kettles; arms, powder, and shot; wine, brandy, and tobacco; and flour, peas, and biscuits. Dependence on the fur trade made ammunition a most important commodity among Wabanaki hunters.

he joined Wabanakis in their seasonal wanderings, and this was the very essence of sauvage, the term used by the French for “wild” or “uncontrolled,” as well as for “Indian.”

Each spring, after the Sowing Moon, most Pigwackets paddled and portaged their canoes sixty miles downriver to the Atlantic Coast. Setting up camp on a peninsula flanked by mudflats rich with the dank odors of shellfish and seaweed, they spent the summer months gathering clams and mussels, hunting seals, spearing fish, and collecting berries. In autumn they returned to Pigwacket for the corn harvest. After storing the crop in earth pits lined with bark, the tribe broke into small family groups that traveled to various hunting districts farther inland. There they remained until the Moon of Blinding Snow chased them back to their village.

Like most Wabanaki women of her time, however, her major work was basketry. Baskets were now vital to the livelihood of Wabanakis, and basketmaking was one of the few ways to earn cash without surrendering traditional life. Besides providing income, baskets were becoming a symbol of Wabanaki culture.