ABENAKI

ABENAKI. At first contact with Europeans, Abenaki peoples occupied most of northern New England. The Abenakis included the Penobscots, Norridgewocks, Kennebecs, and Androscoggins in Maine; Pennacooks and Pigwackets in the Merrimack Valley and White Mountains of New Hampshire; Sokokis and Cowasucks in the upper Connecticut Valley; and the Missisquois and other groups on the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont. Abenakis were primarily hunters, but their subsistence economy also included fishing, gathering, and corn agriculture.

English expansion northward after King Philip's War in 1675–1676 drove many Abenakis to seek refuge at French mission villages like Odanak on the St. Lawrence. In the imperial wars between 1689 and 1763, most Abenakis made common cause with the French against the English. The English retaliated with bounties on Abenaki scalps and raids on Abenaki villages, most notably the Rogers' Rangers attack on Odanak in 1759. The fall of New France opened Abenaki country to English settlement. Although many Abenakis supported their colonial neighbors in the American Revolution, encroachment on Abenaki lands continued.

After European diseases, the fur trade, and invasion disrupted their subsistence patterns, many Abenakis continued traditional ways of living in the more remote areas of their homelands. Others found work as farm laborers, basket makers, trappers, loggers, and mill workers. Some served as guides for travelers and tourists. Many married non-Indians. Most lived in poverty. By the nineteenth century, most New Englanders assumed the Abenakis had effectively "disappeared."

But Abenaki people "resurfaced" in the late twentieth century. In 1980 the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies won $81.5 million in compensation for lands taken illegally by Maine and Massachusetts. Abenakis in Vermont promoted awareness of Native issues as they fought to protect human remains, preserve the Abenaki language, and revive traditional dances and crafts. They challenged the state on issues of sovereignty and petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition, which remained undecided at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calloway, Colin G. The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600–1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Haviland, William A., and Marjory W. Power. The Original Vermonters: Native Inhabitants Past and Present. Rev. ed. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994.

Wiseman, Frederick Matthew. The Voice of the Dawn: An Auto-history of the Abenaki Nation. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001.