The Historical Erasure of an Indigenous Identity in the Borderlands: The Western Abenaki of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec

Abstract

Current and former US and Canadian governments have denied indigenous status to the Western Abenaki who claim what is now Vermont, New Hampshire and southern Quebec as their traditional territory. This article seeks to demonstrate the ways in which these borderlands people were separated from their lands and communities by imperial powers, surveyors and settlers, and historical chroniclers. In so doing, an alternative interpretation of the past was created in which the Abenaki were inhabitants of both the United States and Canada but indigenous to neither.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sarah Sorenson, Carolyne Blanchard and Jody Robinson for their research contributions to this article.

Notes

There are also the Eastern Abenaki who are more well known. They also consist of several groups, among them the Passamoquoddy, Androscoggin, Wawenocks, and Penobscots.

See, for example, http://www.abenakination.org and Wiseman (2001).

Information provided by Patrick Coté, former curator of the Musee des Abenaki, Odanak, Quebec.

The following summary is a compilation of common ideas and interpretations taken from Colin Calloway, Gordon Day, Thomas Charland and J.P. Kesteman.

The one slight exception to this is the recent recognition by then-Vermont Governor Howard Dean that the Abenaki “have always been here.” See Wiseman (2001, 186–87).

See, for example, Library and Archives Canada, MG1, Series C11A, Reels C-2383, 2384 and 2385.

There is a vast literature on liberalism. For a recent discussion on nineteenth-century liberalism in Canada, see, for example, Harris (2002), Herring (1998), Korneski (2006), McKay (2000), and Sandwell (2003).

Conversely, First Nations continue to maintain their trans-border identity as a means of self-expression and as a counter to colonialist oppression. See Hele (2008) and McManus (2005).

The point where Lake Magog flows into the St. Francis River is an historic Abenaki site, a place of Indian legend, and became the scene for a celebrated novel by Oscar Masse, more of which will be discussed below.

There is a plethora of literature on Mexico and its migrant population, much of which has been documented elsewhere. For additional information on how anti-conquest literature relates to Mexican migrant communities and Mexico itself, see Gonzalez (2004).

Translation: It appears that there were no humans permanently living in our immediate region before the end of the 1600s. Without doubt, some Amerindians traversed our territory through their migrations. In 1682, Frontenac, governor of New France, “installed at the mouth of the St. Francis (Odanak) some hundreds of Abenaki families that had come from Maine, where the advance of the English of Boston [brought] war, famine and death.” He gave them, at the same time, the right to hunt and fish throughout the St. Francis basin.

Translation: At the beginning of the seventeenth century, northern Vermont and the Eastern Townships were situated within the area controlled by the Mohawks.

Translation: Mena-sen, the rock of the solitary pine.

Translation: . . . This time, the omen was good as Sked8a8asino had already rushed to and climbed the rock where he intoned a husky chant. The wild men jumping or rather vibrating as if under the power of some solemn frenzy circled around the rock shouting guttural answers to the vehement invocations of the medicine man.

Translation: an enraged shout.

Translation: faces hideous, like fiendish assassins.

Translation: the death of the heretics but their ransom.

Translation: “Red-skins.”

Translation: Yes, I will be brave. If my will fails me, love will sustain me.

Translation: The formidable god demanded, according to Abenaki mythology, that before passing beyond it, it was necessary to propitiate it by some atoning sacrifice. It was said . . . a dolmen had a taste for victims.

Translation: Feebly, Robert turns towards Mena'sen with a look of searing distress, waves his arms and collapses into the river.

Translation: The wrath of the implacable Menas'en was satisfied/satiated.

Translation: Love fertilized the sterile rock. The funeral pine spread its roots to the heart of which the rock entombed in order to draw from the beneficial fruit which gave it life. Love challenged time and survived death. Mena'sen lost its ferocious aspect: the sacrifice had exorcized it. The mystery which surrounded it was no longer terror but appeasement.