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ThE TarraTinES & ThE TarraTinE WarS
Most historians agree it was the Tarratine War, beginning
in Massachusetts about 1615, that first compromised
Nanepashemet and his people. A series of plagues or
epidemics, beginning about 1617, further reduced the
Massachusett strength after the war commenced.
Who were the Tarratines and what was their war? There
are at least thirty-two common English spellings of the name
Tarratine: Taranteen, Tarateen, Tarenteen, Tareteen, Tarranteen, Tarrateen, Tarrenteen, Tarreteen, Teranteen, Terateen,
Terenteen, Tereteen, Terranteen, Terrateen, Terrenteen, Terreteen, Tarantine, Taratine, Tarentine, Taretine, Tarrantine,
Tarratine, Tarrentine, Tarretine, Terantine, Teratine, Terentine, Teretine, Terrantine, Terratine, Terrentine, and Terretine.
The origin is not well documented. Wikipedia, for example,
just notes the following:
“The Tarrantines are or were a First Nation or
Native American group located in the Canadian
Maritimes and northeastern United States. They
were most commonly found in Maine. The word
“Tarrantine” seems to be in the past used for many
different tribes or as an example of the tribes of the
Abenaki and the Micmac.”
27
Part of the confusion may
lie in the fact that the Tarratines
moved by water from Nova
Scotia, to coastal Maine and
Massachusetts. The prevailing
theory espoused by the Davistown Museum and others in
Maine is that they originated in Nova Scotia, as the early
Micmac, who, under the guidance of Membertou  (FigurE
6), befriended the French and gained access to French technologies and weapons. Henri Membertou was a Catholicized
Mi’kmaq Indian chief who established a palisaded Indian
village close to Samuel de Champlain’s French settlement at
Port Royal, Nova Scotia. In the early seventeenth century, he
was very elderly, a shaman as well as a sagamore, and a very
influential Mi’kmaq leader who sported a beard.
28
Some Maine scholars suggest that the name Tarratine
derived from an old Basque word meaning “trader” or “trader
and raider” with an emphasis on raiding. However, o