Joseph Orono (25 November 1688 — 5 February 1801) was a

Penobscot The Penobscot (Abenaki: ''Pαnawάhpskewi'') are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic pr ...

Indian chief or

sachem Sachems and sagamores are paramount chiefs among the Algonquians or other Native American tribes of northeastern North America, including the Iroquois. The two words are anglicizations of cognate terms (c. 1622) from different Eastern Al ...

who lived on the

Penobscot River The Penobscot River (Abenaki: ''Pαnawάhpskewtəkʷ'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 22, 2011 river in the U.S. state of Maine. Including the river's We ...

in present-day

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

. The town of

Orono, Maine Orono () is a town in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. Located on the Penobscot and Stillwater rivers, it was first settled by American colonists in 1774. They named it in honor of Chief Joseph Orono, a sachem of the indigenous Penobscot ...

, which contains the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...

, is named for him. By the time Orono was born, the

Penobscot people The Penobscot (Abenaki: ''Pαnawάhpskewi'') are an Indigenous people in North America from the Northeastern Woodlands region. They are organized as a federally recognized tribe in Maine and as a First Nations band government in the Atlantic ...

had been in close contact with French Catholic

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

and traders for over a generation, and Orono was himself of mixed ancestry, probably the grandson of

Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin (1652–1707) was a French military officer serving in Acadia and an Abenaki chief. He is the father of two prominent sons who were also military leaders in Acadia: Bernard-Anselme and Joseph. He is the nam ...

, The 3rd Baron Castin, who had settled at the mouth of the

(the site of the present town of

Castine, Maine Castine ( ) is a town in Hancock County in eastern Maine.; John Faragher. ''Great and Nobel Scheme''. 2005. p. 68. The population was 1,320 at the 2020 census. Castine is the home of Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year institution that graduate ...

) in the 1660s. Saint-Castin married the daughter of Penobscot sachem

Madockawando Madockawando (born in Maine c. 1630; died 1698) was a sachem of the Penobscot, an adopted son of ''Assaminasqua,'' whom he succeeded. He led the Penobscot on the side of the French against the English during King William's War. Biography The Penob ...

. In 1774

American colonists The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the ...

founded a village called Stillwater, (Maine), just below "Indian Old Town" at the site of a falls. Relations between the colonists and Indians were sufficiently peaceful that, when Stillwater incorporated as a town in 1806, it named itself Orono after the recently deceased Penobscot sachem, who had lived to the age of 113.

References

*Indian Tribes of New England" in Alvan Lamson, Ezra Stiles, et al. ''Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany'', v. 62 (Boston, 1857), pp. 27–54 (full text accessible through Google Book Search)
Sprague's journal of history of Maine, p. 9
Native American leaders Native Americans in the American Revolution Penobscot people 1688 births 1738 deaths Orono, Maine People from Hancock County, Maine {{NorthAm-native-bio-stub