Situated between New France and New England, Norridgewock played an important role during the French and Indian Wars. Found deserted in the winter of 1705 because its occupants had been warned of an impending attack, the village was burned by 275 British soldiers under the command of Colonel Winthrop Hilton. He was retaliating for the tribe's participation in a force consisting of 500 Indians and a few French, commanded by Alexandre Leneuf de Beaubassin, that raided Wells on August 10 and 11, 1703. With the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, however, peace was restored between France and England. Terms of the treaty required that the French yield Acadia to the English. But what exactly was Acadia? The two nations disagreed, and consequently imperial boundaries between Quebec and the Province of Massachusetts Bay remained unclear and disputed until the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

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