Abbe Museum, Acadia, Maine

There are two Abbe Museums, one in downtown Bar Harbor and the other near the Seiur de Monts Spring in Acadia National Park. This tip is about the museum in the Park.

Abbe Museum exists to study and showcase Native American culture and its history in Maine. Descendants of this culture are known today as the Wabanaki or "People of the Dawn." This includes four Indian tribes: the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac and Maliseet.

The Abbe Museum, which opened in 1928, was one of the first museums built in Maine and is the only museum devoted solely to Maine's Native American heritage. Originally, it was conceived as a trailside museum and was the vision and labor of love of Dr. Robert Abbe (1851-1928), an eminent New York physician with a strong interest in archaeology. Today the museum is one of only two remaining private trailside museums in the National Park system.

Archaeological collections at the museum consist of more than 50,000 objects spanning 10,000 years of history. These include many stone based tools such as knives, axes, projectile points and fishing weights. There are also objects shaped from bone such as combs, needles, fish hooks and harpoons; a very rare, 3000 year old flute was made from the bone of a swan. There is also native pottery and more recent collections of beads, copper tools, pipes, jewelry, woodcarving and basketry.