People of the Dawn: the Abenaki

As seen in yesterday's blog, the first Native person the Pilgrims encountered was an Abenaki sagamore/sachem, named Samoset. Samoset picked up English from visiting the fishing camps along the coast, making it more likely that the Abenaki were the first contact for many Europeans fishing the waters of the upper Atlantic coast.  The Abenaki live in what is now the northern New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, along with the Canadian Provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick.  Like most Native tribes, their territory decreased after European settlement.  They are an Algonquian-speaking people, their name meaning 'people of the dawn'.  Abenaki refer to themselves in their language as Alnobak, or 'real people'.  There is no single Abenaki tribe, but rather several bands of Natives with similar language and customs.  In turn, the various Abenaki bands were part of the larger Wabanaki Confederacy taking in, as well, the Maliseet, Mikmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot.  They would have been familiar with trails and paths branching off from the Great Warpath and leading further up the coast through New England and into Newfoundland.

The main rivals of the Abenaki were the Iroquois tribes in the New York area.  The Abenaki were originally nomadic hunters and fishermen, but adopted agriculture in their efforts to combat the Iroquois expansion.  Nevertheless, there was continuing conflict between the two groups.  Abenaki along the Atlantic coast were vulnerable to being captured by unscrupulous European fishermen.  A group of two dozen Abenaki youth were captured by Captain Thomas Hunt in 1614, who sold them to Spanish slavers.  They were among the group in Spain given shelter by Franciscan monks and would have crossed paths with Squanto.  The situation in their homeland grew more tense as colonization in Quebec and Massachusetts increased.  During the Beaver Wars of the seventeenth century, and the French and Indian wars of the eighteenth, they often sided with the French forces.  During King Phillip's War (1675-1678), the Abenaki sided with the Wampanoag, traditional allies, against the Settlers.  In times of peace, though, the Abenaki were willing to trade with English or French colonists.

Abenaki culture was similar to that of their surrounding neighbors in the respect that they cultivated fields of squash, beans and corn.  However, there were significant differences.  They divided themselves into bands of extended families and each had their own leadership and hunting ranges.  Their society was patrilineal, meaning that inheritance and property rights passed through the father's line.  While some Abenaki used oval-shaped longhouses, most preferred wigwam-style housing.  Though they had chiefs and other leaders, the Abenaki followed a consensus-based method for most village decisions.  Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, around 1564-70, several epidemics of an unknown illness swept through the population.  Another large epidemic hit the Abenaki and surrounding Native tribes between 1614-1619.  These illnesses were likely caused by contact between the Natives and the European fishermen along their costal lands.  Several more epidemics further reduced their population as more colonists moved into their rangelands.  As their own population declined, they took in refugees from other Native tribes who had been displaced through illness, warfare or colonization.