Abenaki


The Abenaki are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
While Abenaki peoples share cultural traits, they historically did not have a centralized government. They came together as a post-contact community after their original tribes were decimated by colonization, disease, and warfare.

Names

The word Abenaki and its syncope, Abnaki, are both derived from Wabanaki, or Wôbanakiak, meaning "People of the Dawn Land" in the Abenaki language. While the two terms are often confused, the Abenaki are one of several tribes in the Wabanaki Confederacy.
Alternate spellings include: Abnaki, Abinaki, Alnôbak, Abanakee, Abanaki, Abanaqui, Abanaquois, Abenaka, Abenake, Abenaki, Abenakias, Abenakiss, Abenakkis, Abenaque, Abenaqui, Abenaquioict, Abenaquiois, Abenaquioue, Abenati, Abeneaguis', Abenequa, Abenkai, Abenquois, Abernaqui, Abnaqui, Abnaquies, Abnaquois, Abnaquotii, Abasque, Abnekais, Abneki, Abonakies, and Abonnekee.
Wôbanakiak is derived from wôban and aki — the aboriginal name of the area broadly corresponding to New England and the Maritimes. It is sometimes used to refer to all the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the area—Western Abenaki, Eastern Abenaki, Wolastoqiyik-Passamaquoddy, and Mi'kmaq—as a single group.
The Abenaki people also call themselves Alnôbak, meaning "Real People", and by the autonym Alnanbal, meaning "men".
Historically, ethnologists have classified the Abenaki by geographic groups: Western Abenaki and Eastern Abenaki. Within these groups are the Abenaki bands:

Western Abenaki

Smaller tribes:
Smaller tribes:
  • Apikwahki
  • Amaseconti, potentially related to the Androsgoggins, they lived between the upper Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers in western Maine, their central village was somewhere near modern-day Farmington.
  • Kwupahag
  • Ossipee, lived along the shores of Ossipee Lake in east-central New Hampshire. Sometimes classed as Western Abenaki.
  • Rocameca, they were one of the major bands of the Androscoggins, lived along the upper Androscoggin River, centred around Canton, Maine.
  • Wawinak, lived in the coastal areas of southern Maine.
Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy:
  • Wolastoqiyik, lived in the inland of upper Maine and middle New Brunswick along the St. John River. Principal villages: Meductic, Aukpaque. Now a separate federally recognized tribe.
  • Passamaquoddy, lived on the Passamaquoddy Bay coast and inland, between the St. John, St. Croix and Penobscot rivers, in present-day Maine and New Brunswick. Principal village: Machias. Now a separate federally recognized tribe.

    Location

The homeland of the Abenaki, called Ndakinna, previously extended across most of what is now northern New England, southern Quebec, and the southern Canadian Maritimes. The Eastern Abenaki population was concentrated in portions of New Brunswick and Maine east of New Hampshire's White Mountains. The other major group, the Western Abenaki, lived in the Connecticut River valley in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The Missiquoi lived along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. The Pennacook lived along the Merrimack River in southern New Hampshire. The maritime Abenaki lived around the St. Croix and Wolastoq Valleys near the boundary line between Maine and New Brunswick.
English colonial settlement in New England and frequent violence forced many Abenaki to migrate to Quebec. The Abenaki settled in the Sillery region of Quebec between 1676 and 1680, and subsequently, for about twenty years, lived on the banks of the Chaudière River near the falls, before settling in Odanak and Wôlinak in the early eighteenth century.
In those days, the Abenaki practiced a subsistence economy based on hunting, fishing, trapping, berry picking and on growing corn, beans, squash, potatoes and tobacco. They also produced baskets, made of ash and sweet grass, for picking wild berries, and boiled maple sap to make syrup. Basket weaving remains a traditional activity practiced by some tribal members.
During the Anglo-French wars, the Abenaki were allies of France, having been displaced from Ndakinna by immigrating English settlers. An anecdote from the period tells the story of a Wolastoqew war chief named Nescambuit, who killed more than 140 enemies of King Louis XIV of France and received the rank of knight. Not all Abenaki people fought on the side of the French, however; many remained on their Native lands in the northern colonies. Much of the trapping was done by the people and traded to the English colonists for durable goods. These contributions by Native American Abenaki peoples went largely unreported.
Two tribal communities formed in Canada, one once known as Saint-Francois-du-lac near Pierreville, and the other near Bécancour on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, directly across the river from Trois-Rivières. These two Abenaki reserves continue to grow and develop. Since the year 2000, the total Abenaki population has doubled to 2,101 members in 2011. Approximately 400 Abenaki reside on these two reserves, which cover a total area of less than. The unrecognized majority are off-reserve members, living in various cities and towns across Canada and the United States.
There are about 3,200 Abenaki living in Vermont and New Hampshire, without reservations, chiefly around Lake Champlain. The remaining Abenaki people live in multi-racial towns and cities across Canada and the US, mainly in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and northern New England.

Language

The Abenaki language is closely related to the Panawahpskek language. Other neighboring Wabanaki tribes, the Pestomuhkati, Wolastoqiyik, and Mi'kmaq, and other Eastern Algonquian languages share many linguistic similarities. It has come close to extinction as a spoken language. Tribal members are working to revive the Abenaki language at Odanak, a First Nations Abenaki reserve near Pierreville, Quebec, and throughout New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York state.
The language is polysynthetic, meaning that a phrase or an entire sentence is expressed by a single word. For example, the word for "white man" awanoch is a combination of the words awani meaning "who" and uji meaning "from". Thus, the word for "white man" literally translates to "Who is this man and where does he come from?"

History

There is archaeological evidence of Indigenous people in what is today New Hampshire for at least 12,000 years.
In Reflections in Bullough's Pond, historian Diana Muir argues that the Abenakis' neighbors, pre-contact Iroquois, were an imperialist, expansionist culture whose cultivation of the corn/beans/squash agricultural complex enabled them to support a large population. They made war primarily against neighboring Algonquian peoples, including the Abenaki. Muir uses archaeological data to argue that the Iroquois expansion onto Algonquian lands was checked by the Algonquian adoption of agriculture. This enabled them to support their own populations large enough to have sufficient warriors to defend against the threat of Iroquois conquest.
In 1614, Thomas Hunt captured 24 Abenaki people, including Squanto and took them to Spain, where they were sold into slavery. During the European colonization of North America, the land occupied by the Abenaki was in the area between the new colonies of England in Massachusetts and the French in Quebec. Since no party agreed to territorial boundaries, there was regular conflict among them. The Abenaki were traditionally allied with the French; during the reign of Louis XIV, Chief Assacumbuit was designated a member of the French nobility for his service.
Around 1669, the Abenaki started to emigrate to Quebec due to conflicts with English colonists and epidemics of new infectious diseases. The governor of New France allocated two seigneuries. The first, of what was later to become Indian reserves, was on the Saint Francis River and is now known as the Odanak Indian Reserve; the second was founded near Bécancour and is called the Wôlinak Indian Reserve.