As early as 1615, there were two branches of the Sokokis tribe under the leadership of two subordinate chiefs. One of these communities was the Pequawket settlement and the other was at the mouth of the Great Ossipee, where before King Phillip’s War, they employed English carpenters from down river to build them a strong timber fort, having stockaded walls fourteen feet in height, to protect them against the blood-thirsty Mohawks whose corning these Indians anticipated. Upon the removal of these people from the locality of their early home on the lower waters of the river to the interior, their names were changed to Pequawkets and Ossipees; the former word meaning the crooked place, the other either taking the name of or giving their name to the river and lake upon which they lived.

A terrible fatal pestilence, thought to have been the small pox, which prevailed in 1617 and 1615 among the Indians of this and other tribes, swept them away by thousands, some of the tribes having become extinct from its effects. At a treaty assembled at Sagadahoc in 1720, there were delegates from the Winnesaukes, the Ossipees, and the Pequawkets. When the treaty was holden in Portsmouth in 1713, the Pequawket chiefs were present. Adeamando and Scawesco signed the articles of agreement with a cross at the treaty held at Arrowsic in 1717.