The terrorist attack of Sept. 11 and the government-issued orange alerts that have followed have made us feel threatened in new ways. However, this is not the first time in history that the residents of Western Maine have feared a surprise assault by foreigners.

During the War of 1812, residents feared that Indians, in league with the British, could strike at any minute. Rumors abounded that “savages” would make their way from Canada to infiltrate the mountain settlements of Western Maine, scalping men, women and children and torching their homes and barns. Consequently, nervous residents were ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation.

Billy Thompson, a farmer in Avon, was an excitable man with a bad stutter. On a summer day in 1813 he was searching for lost cattle in the woods when something set him off. Whatever sound or sight scared Billy that day has been lost to history. But something alarmed him, and soon he was frantically running and shouting “Indians! Indians!”

Residents took Billy seriously. Without delay they left their homes and fields to band together in some of the bigger, more sturdy, structures. Fifty years later a writer for the Farmington Chronicle, who called himself only “Senex,” looked back on this overreaction with bemusement.

“Being without arms and ammunition with which to defend themselves,” he wrote, “their congregating together would only have enabled the savages, had they really come, to have killed them with less trouble than to have gone from house to house to find their victims.”

Even though no tangible sign of an Indian attack could be demonstrated, settlers in the Avon and Phillips area remained huddled together for days. The usual routine of tending farm animals and fields was suspended as families braced themselves as best they could for the dreaded Indians.

When the feeling of terror finally began to subside, Elijah Howland, Elijaha Clark and James Thompson from Avon, as well as Mr. Hardy and Mr. Davenport from Phillips, decided it was time to go on a scouting party. Their search yielded no enemy or sign of enemy, but it did have one unforeseen and positive consequence: In their travels the men passed beyond Saddleback Mountain and saw the Rangeley Lakes for the first time. Near the area that is now Rangeley village, the explorers found something even more intriguing than the lake itself: great quantities of trout; enough, in fact, to fill a barrel.

As time went by, and the Indian threat subsided, the residents of Avon and Phillips could actually look back on their phantom attack with humor. Over time, the incident came to be known as the Thompson Indian War.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past 10 years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.