A museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, dedicated to the art, culture, and heritage of the Wabanaki Nations, is in the process of repatriating 17 items to the Native American confederation. (The four local nations are the Penobscot Nation, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, the Mi’kmaq Nation, and the Houlton band of Maliseet Indians.) According to an article in the Portland Press Herald, the objects are a human tooth and various funerary objects: tools, animal hides, and fabric materials.
A Field Register notice published by the National Park Service September 11, 2025, traces the complicated history of these objects. It explains that 15 of the 16 funerary objects were “likely excavated by Warren K. Moorehead in the late 19th century and donated to the R.S. Peabody Museum in Andover, Mass.” Then they made their way to the Bangor Historical Society in the early 20th century, and finally to the Abbe in 1997.
A record-keeping snafu occurred when a loan to a professor (who died in 2016) at the University of Maine, in Orono, was not recorded. The objects didn’t make their way back to the Abbe until earlier this year.
The 16th object, a tear-shaped stone tool called a plummet, “was donated to the Abbe Museum by Walter B. Smith in 1927 and was recorded in the original ledger book as coming from a ‘Red Paint Cemetery in Blue Hill, ME.,’” according to the Register. The plummet was returned to the Abbe last year as part of a separate undocumented loan.
Meanwhile, the saga of the single tooth is detailed in a separate Field Register notice filed the same day. It was part of a collection of “faunal materials” removed from a site in Gouldsboro, Maine, in 2011. Last summer, the Abbe engaged a team of researchers at Boston University to analyze the materials, which revealed a human tooth.
All 17 objects will be repatriated “on or after October 14, 2025,” according to both Field Register postings.
For its part, the Abbe is committed to analyzing its collection and repatriating any objects that belong to one of the local tribes. According to the Herald, the museum’s board is majority Wabanaki, including cochair Newell Lewey (Passamaquoddy). There is also a separate Wabanaki Council made up of members appointed by each of the four tribal leaders.
