Its importance is often exaggerated in local histories, as arguably the August 1724 New England raid on Norridgewock was probably more significant for the direction of the conflict and in bringing the Abenaki to the treaty table.

However, the Norridgewock raid, also celebrated in song and poetry, has been less well remembered, probably because it was essentially a massacre of Indian civilians by New England forces.

[4] For the first and only time, Wabanaki would fight New Englanders and the British on their own terms and for their own reasons and not principally to defend French imperial interests.

[4] In response to Wabanaki hostilities toward the expansion, the Governor of Nova Scotia, Richard Philipps, built a fort in traditional Mi'kmaq territory at Canso, Nova Scotia, in 1720, and Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute built forts on traditional Abenaki territory at the mouth of the Kennebec River.

The French claimed the same territory on the Kennebec River by building churches in the Abenaki villages of Norridgewock and Medoctec further upriver.

Bounties for scalps were once again offered by the provincial government in order to encourage volunteer companies to form (and save the colony the time and expense of raising troops).

While they were favored by a grant from the provincial assembly, these troops were not part of the Massachusetts military establishment, but rather a privately organized group of raiders.

Lovewell, whose maternal grandparents had been killed and scalped by Indians, raised the company of thirty men and was appointed by them as captain.

[6] With men who were more inexperienced and far fewer in number than in the earlier expeditions, they left from Dunstable (present day Nashua, New Hampshire) on April 16, 1725.

On May 9, as the 34 militiamen were being led in morning prayer by chaplain Jonathan Frye, a lone Abenaki warrior was spotted hunting at the lakeshore.

[7][8] Suspecting that this man was a decoy and that there was an Indian force in front of them, nonetheless the rangers decided to hide their packs and proceed cautiously.

After the initial volleys the battle turned into a firefight with individuals on both sides hiding behind trees in the pine plain.

They then withdrew eastward to a location passed twice earlier that day where, in addition to the lake protecting them from the south, they had a swollen stream on the east (now named Fight Brook), flooded land to the north and fallen trees to the west.

The story of the Battle of Pequawket recounted below was originally told by a daughter of Powack, a chief of the Penobscot people, allied with the Abenaki in the Wabanaki Confederacy.