The region has been inhabited for about 11,000 years, beginning in the Paleo-Indian period.[1] Contact between native populations and Europeans occurred as early as 1600 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[4] Indigenous peoples at the time of European contact included the ancestors of the modern St. Francis (Odanak), Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Miꞌkmaq peoples, along with other Algonquian speakers referred to by French explorers as Abenaki, Etchemin, and Souriquois.[5]
The French colony of Acadia occupied roughly the same area.[6]