Joseph Orono

Who was Joseph Orono?

Joseph Orono was a Penobscot Indian chief or sachem who lived on the Penobscot River in present-day Maine. The town of Orono, Maine, which contains the University of Maine, is named for him.

By the time Orono was born, the Penobscot people had been in close contact with French Catholic missionaries and traders for over a generation, and Orono was himself of mixed ancestry, probably the grandson of Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, The 3rd Baron Castin, who had settled at the mouth of the Penobscot River in the 1660s. Saint-Castin had married the daughter of Penobscot sachem Madockawando, and their son, Bernard-Anselme d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin became the last leader of the tribe during its French alliance. His son Joseph Orono, who had to deal with the English, and then Americans, had light skin, blue eyes, and was a "zealous Catholic" according to contemporary accounts.

In the 1750s the English from nearby Massachusetts defeated the French in Acadia, which included the ancestral lands of the Penobscot. English settlers began to populate the Penobscot River valley from the 1770s, putting pressure on the tribe. Orono chose to accommodate the more numerous and better-armed white settlers as, in the course of his life-time, they gained virtually full control of Penobscot lands, restricting the tribe to its largest island-village.