Battle of Caribou
The Battle of Caribou was a minor and ultimately bloodless skirmish between U.S. and British armed lumberjacks during the Aroostook War. It added to the growing tensions between the respective governments and encouraged the mobilization of local militias to the area, which nearly sparked an armed conflict.
Background
The end of the American War for Independence defined the border between Canada and Maine only vaguely, and this was not clarified at the end of the War of 1812. The result was that both sides claimed the land there, but got along relatively well.At one time the St. John River basin had been valued by the British government as a source of timber for ships' masts and other military uses, but the government had found other sources by 1804 and turned a blind eye to stealing timber on those lands. By the 1830s Canadians and Americans held markedly different views toward the issue of poaching timber there, whether poached by Canadian or U. S. citizens. The city of St. John came to depend on the sale of this poached timber.
U. S. settlers continued to move up closer to the St. John River and British officials mostly left them alone until they began to organize themselves into a town subject to U. S. law, which resulted in British attempts to arrest the participants. During the winter of 1838–39 tensions flared over which government owned the territory in the vicinity of Caribou, Maine, near the Aroostook River. Lumberjacks from both Maine and New Brunswick each wished to harvest wood to the exclusion of their competitors from across the border, and by December 1838, competition coupled with fierce national pride led both sides to carry weapons for their own protection.