Abenaki

Name

The name Abenaki (pronounced ah–buh–NAH–key ) means “people of the dawnlands.” The Abenaki people call themselves Alnombak, meaning “the people.” The Abenaki (also called “Abanaki” or “Abnaki”) were part of the Wabanaki Confederacy of five Algonquian-speaking tribes that existed from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s.

Location

The group known as Abenaki was actually a union of many tribes. They were divided into eastern and western branches. The eastern Abenaki resided in Maine, east of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The traditional territory of the western Abenaki groups included most of Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as the northern part of Massachusetts. In the mid-2000s there were Abenaki reservations in Maine and additional ones in Canada. Other groups of Abenaki people who do not have reservations are spread across northern New England and throughout Quebec and New Brunswick, Canada.

Population

In 1524 there were about forty thousand Abenaki (ten thousand western Abenaki and thirty thousand eastern Abenaki). In the 1990 U.S. Census, 1,549 people identified themselves as Abenaki. By 2000 that total rose to 2,544, and 6,012 people claimed some Abenaki heritage. In 1991 Canadian Abenaki numbered 945; by 2006 they numbered 2,164.

Language family

Algonquian.

Origins and group affiliations

Some historians believe that the ancestors of the tribes making up the Abenaki confederacy first arrived in North America about three thousand years ago. The eastern Abenaki, the larger of the two branches, included the Penobscot, the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Ossipee, and Pigwacket tribes. The western Abenaki tribes included the Sokoki, Cowasuck, and Missiquoi.

For thousands of years the Abenaki people lived tranquil lives, hunting and fishing in the forests, ocean, lakes, and rivers of present-day Maine. Then Europeans came, and from the 1600s through the 1800s the lives of Abenaki groups were terribly affected by war, starvation, and disease. Some tribal groups were forced to abandon their villages in New England and regroup in Canada during times of armed conflict. While the Native Americans were away from their New England territory, white settlers took over the land. The Canadian Abenaki managed to maintain peace and retain many of their customs and traditions. The Abenaki who remained in their homelands in the United States also tried to live quietly and avoid trouble with European settlers, but they were not always able to do so.

History

Mythical city lures Europeans

Around the early 1500s people in Europe heard rumors of a wealthy Native city called “Norumbega,” which was said to be located in northern Maine. Although Norumbega never existed, tales about the mythical city lured explorers to the area. One of the earliest was a French expedition led by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano (c. 1485–c. 1528) in 1524. Though suspicious of the foreigners, many of the Abenaki tribes engaged in fur trade with Europeans, especially the French and the British. In return they received knives, iron axes, fishhooks, brass for making arrowheads, and cloth.

In 1604 French explorer Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635), visited many Abenaki villages while on a mission to trade furs and establish a French fort on the St. Croix River (in territory that is now part of the state of Maine). The British tried to establish a colony on Abenaki land in 1607, but, partly because of hostile encounters with the tribes, the settlement lasted less than a year.

Important Dates

1524: The Abenaki encounter the expedition of Giovanni da Verrazano.

1689–1763: The Abenaki are caught up in wars between European nations.

1805: The British government sets aside land near St. Francis, Quebec, to accommodate the flood of Abenaki moving there from the United States.

1980: President Jimmy Carter signs a bill granting the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot $81 million to make up for the loss of their homelands.

1982: The Vermont Abenaki apply for recognition by the U.S. government. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled against them. The fight still continued in the mid-2000s.

2006: The Vermont Abenaki are recognized by the state.

Abenaki relations with the French

For the next fifty years the British and the French fought several wars for control of the Abenaki homeland, even though it belonged to the Native peoples of the area. All this tension led the Abenaki tribes to fight among themselves, and their competition for trade with the French only compounded problems. The French traded mostly with the Penobscot, who became the most powerful of the Abenaki tribes.

The Abenaki had no true friends among the European nations, but their relationship with the French was much better than with the British colonists. The French won over the Natives by providing them with guns and promising them protection from their longtime enemies, the Iroquois (see entry), who conducted raids on Abenaki villages throughout the 1600s.

The Abenaki Confederacy and the Great Council Fire

The Abenaki (also known as Wabanaki) Confederacy was composed of a group of Algonquian–speaking tribes who banded together in the mid–1600s for common defense against the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy. The Iroquois had overtrapped furs in their own homelands and began attacking nearby tribes to gain new hunting territories. The hostilities were further fueled by the Iroquois alliance with the British. At the time, England and France were bitter enemies. Both countries sought to stake their claim of New World lands and dominate the unsettled territory. The Abenaki were pro-French.

Conflicts between the tribes of the Abenaki Confederacy and the Iroquois Confederacy were settled through a peace pact called the Great Council of Fire, made in 1749. Despite the differences between Abenaki and Iroquois tribes, the Great Council endured for more than 25 years. When the American Revolution began in 1775, some Abenaki groups supported the American colonists in their fight for independence from Britain. However, other Abenaki and Iroquois tribes, including the Passamaquoddy (Abenaki), sided with the British and withdrew from the Great Council of Fire. By 1862 the Abenaki Confederacy ceased to exist.

The British and the Iroquois

The British were unsuccessful in their attempts to befriend the Abenaki. Between 1616 and 1619 deadly epidemics (uncontrolled outbreaks of disease) swept through Native territories, killing many Abenaki. The French convinced the Native Americans that the British were solely responsible for the devastation of the tribe. The British chose to seek the friendship and support of the Iroquois tribe instead.

During the 1660s a civil war took place in England. …