Showing posts with label Abenaki indians. Show all posts

Friday, April 23, 2021

Abenaki Indian Photographic Gallery

1907 photograph of an Abenaki Indian family with traditional clothing.

1920s photograph o Abenaki Indian women building a canoe.

Abenaki Indian women in traditional clothing. Photograph from the 1930s.

Abenaki Indian family circa 1910.

1895 photo o Abenaki Indians at Moosehead Lake in Maine .

Early 1900's Abenaki Indian girl.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Early Historical Account of the Native American Tribes of the New England

Abenaki Photo Gallery

The present spirit of inquiry into the early history of New England is bringing forth additional facts and evolving new light, by which we are every day seeing more clearly the true motive and incentives for its colonization. But whenever the student turns to investigate the history of the aboriginal tribes, who once inhabited this part of the country, he is struck, not so much with the paucity of materials, as with the complication and difficulties which our earlier and later writers have thrown around the subject, as well as the very different light with which they have viewed it.

The first explorers of our coast, whose intercourse with the Indians was limited to trading for furs and skins, seem to have had a much better opinion of them than Mather, Hubbard, and some still later writers. It is not to be supposed that while a large part of the population were smarting from the distress of almost continued Indian wars, that even the most candid could coolly investigate and impartially record the history, character, and wants of such a people. But the time has arrived, when, divesting ourselves of all prejudice, we can examine carefully their true situation, and making allowance for their condition, write their history with fairness and candor.

Abenaki Indian Village

The present sketch is confined to a brief notice of the tribes who inhabited the territory now constituting the States of Maine and New Hampshire, all of which may be considered as embraced under the name of Abenakis, or more properly Wanbanakkie. It has often been supposed that this name was given them by the French, but it is undoubtedly their original appellation, being derived from Wanbanban, which may be defined the people of aurora borealis or northern light.

It is only now intended to sketch their earlier history, and to trace the various emigrations to the present residence of the Abenakis proper, in Canada; and viewing this tribe as the living representative of our extinct ones, to consider its interesting history, so clearly connected with New England frontier life, although most of that history is but a record of war and wretchedness.

Capt. John Smith,

The celebrated discoverer, Capt. John Smith, in his general history, furnishes the earliest and most reliable description of the Indians on the coast of Maine, as they were in 1614; other writers give accounts of tribes there, some of which it is difficult to distinguish or locate; but it may be best to consider all that were residing in the two States above-mentioned as embraced in about eight distinct tribes, namely: Penobscots or Tarrentines, Passamaquodies or Sybayks, Wawenocks, Norridgewoks or Canibas, Assagunticooks, Sokokis or Pequakets, Pennacooks, Malacites or St. Johns.

Penobscot Indian

The Penobscots were probably the most numerous and influential tribe. Their chief or bashaba was said to have been acknowledged as a superior as far as Massachusetts Bay. They occupied the country on both sides of the Penobscot Bay and River; their summer resort being near the sea, but during the winter and spring they inhabited lands near the falls, where they still reside. It is somewhat strange to find a tribe numbering about five hundred still remaining in their ancient abode, and, though surrounded by whites, retaining their language, religion, and many of the habits and customs of centuries past, with a probability of perpetuating them for ages to come. Their name is from penobsq, rock, and utoret, a place, literally, rocky-place,—which no doubt refers to the rocky falls in the river near their residence. It is not supposed that many of this tribe emigrated to Canada, although they had constant intercourse with that country.

Passamaquoddy Indians Photographed in Massachusetts

The Passamaquodies were found occupying the northeastern corner of Maine, if, as it is generally supposed, they are the descendants of those seen and described by De Monts, who spent the winter of 1604 near their present head-quarters. Their subsequent history for more than a century was but a blank, as in all that time they are not mentioned by any writer, or named in any of the treaties, till after the conquest of Canada. This omission is certainly strange, as in the ones of 1713 and 1717 now published in this volume, mere fragments of tribes are named and represented.

Still, if any reliance can be placed on their own traditions, they had resided for generations previous to the Revolution around the lower Schoodic Lake, where the recent discovery of stone hatchets and other implements of an ancient make would seem to verify their assertions. They also point out the place of a fight with the Mohawks, who two centuries ago carried terror into all the Indian villages from Carolina to the Bay of Fundy. It is probable that from their distant inland and secluded position, as well as their limited numbers, they were in no way connected with the various wars which the other tribes waged against the colonists, and so were unnoticed. As their residence on the lake was nearer Machias than any other available point on the sea coast, it may be that to trade with this people the trading house was established there by the Plymouth Colony, in 1630, and they were often called the Machias Indians. Although their intercourse has long continued with Canada, up to this time they have sent no emigrants there. They number at present between four and five hundred souls, and still adhere to the religious forms taught them by the Jesuits. This tribe designate themselves by the name of Sybayk.

The Wawenocks were located on the sea-coast, and inhabited the country from the Sheepscot to the St. George; they are quite fully described by Capt. John Smith, who had much intercourse with them. From their situation on the rivers and harbors, they were much sooner disturbed by the settlements than any other of the tribes in Maine. In 1747 there were but a few families remaining. At the treaty at Falmouth, in 1749, they were associated with the Assagunticooks, among whom they were then settled, and with whom they soon after removed to Canada. The Canibas or Norridgewoks occupied the valley of the Kennebec, from the tide water to its sources; their principal residence was at Norridgewock. Here the Jesuit missionaries, at an early period, taught them their religious faith, and by sharing with them their privations and hardships, obtained a controlling influence over them.

As they inhabited fertile intervale land, they gave more attention to agriculture than any of the neighboring tribes, and appear to have been originally more peaceably inclined towards the whites than some of their neighbors. Residing so far inland, they were but little acquainted with the prowess of the whites, and sent out their war parties to commit murders and depredations on the unprotected settlers, without expecting a retribution on their own heads. After a long succession of murders and captures in the English settlements, by this tribe, instigated, as was believed, by their priest, Sebastian Rasle, an expedition was sent against them, consisting of about two hundred men, who killed about thirty Indians, including Rasle, and destroyed the place, without the loss of a man. This broke their power, but they continued to reside there for many years, and gradually retired to the St. Francis,—the last family migrating near the end of the last century.

The Assagunticooks were a numerous tribe who inhabited the country along the whole valley of the Androscoggin; and although their lands were not occupied by whites, they were frequently bitter enemies, and were the first to begin a war and the last to make peace. Their location gave them easy access to the settlements, from Casco to Piscataqua, which they improved to glut their thirst for blood and slaughter. About 1750 they moved to Canada and joined the St. Francis tribe. They could then muster about one hundred and fifty warriors, and being much the most numerous tribe that emigrated there, it is supposed they had the greatest influence, and that their dialect is more truly perpetuated than any other in that confederacy.

The Sokokis inhabited the country bordering on the Saco River, but were mostly limited to its head waters. Their villages were located on the alluvial lands in what is now Fryeburg, Me., and Conway, N. H. The Pegwakets and Ossipees were either identical with or branches of this tribe. In 1725 Capt. John Lovewell with about fifty soldiers, on a scouting adventure in the vicinity, fell in with a war party of the tribe, and a sanguinary battle ensued, disastrous to both parties. Their chief, Paugus, was slain; and within a short period the remainder of the tribe, dispirited by their misfortunes, retired to Canada.

The Pennacooks were probably the only occupants of the waters of the Merrimac, and perhaps included nearly all the nations who resided in what is now the State of New Hampshire. Their principal residence was at Amoskeag Falls, the site of the present manufacturing city of Manchester. It is usual to name the Pennatuckets, Wambesitts, Souhegans, and some others as tribes, but there can be no doubt they all owned fealty to the head sagamore of the Pennacooks, and were only branches of that tribe, as were all the Indians on the Piscataqua and its waters. It is also probable the small band of Cowasacks, on the upper Connecticut, were of this tribe. The Pennacooks must have been at one time a numerous community, and were less warlike than any of the Abenaki race. It is likely they were more disposed to cultivate the soil, and their historian, Judge Potter, represents them as amiable and friendly to the whites. Notwithstanding, they were the earliest emigrants to Canada. They left their pleasant hunting grounds with regret, and often returned to cultivate their ancient fields; but few of them resided permanently there after about 1700.

Abenkai Indians

It is proper to add to the names of the original Abenaki tribes, that of the Malacite or Amalecite, who have always resided on the St. John. It is not known that any part of this tribe emigrated to Canada with those of Maine, but in 1828 about thirty families emigrated there, and settled on a branch of the River Verte. But the largest part still reside in New Brunswick.

We come now to trace the emigration of the Abenakis to the banks of the St. Lawrence. As the Jesuits had been in constant communication with the tribes in Maine for more than half a century, the Indians had learned the way to Quebec, and it is probable that during Philip’s war some of the tribes obtained arms and ammunition from that place. During this war the Pennacooks, under the influence of their chief, Wonnolancet, had remained neutral, and in July, 1676, at Chocheco, signed with some others a treaty of perpetual peace. Still, the feeling of the whites was so strong against all the race, that they placed little reliance on their former good conduct or present promises. A few months after this treaty, they induced a large number of Indians, from the various tribes, to come to the same place, and where all the militia of the provinces had assembled, and while professing to practice some sham evolutions, the Indians were suddenly surrounded and captured. Many of the prisoners so treacherously obtained were executed, and others sold into slavery for having been in arms against the whites.

Although Wonnolancet and his tribe were discharged, this breach of faith must have taught him that he could not rely on the white man’s promise, and that neither he nor his tribe was safe on the Merrimac. With this feeling he, with a part of them, left for Canada in the autumn of 1677. Although he subsequently returned to visit his former hunting and fishing grounds, his real home was, for the remainder of his life, near Quebec, and he with his band became the nucleus of the Indian settlement there; but it is not apparent that he was at any period the enemy of the English. Abenaki Pics Here

In the course of the war, nearly all the tribes in New England had been more or less involved in it. The colonists now looked upon them as a conquered race of heathen, and that their duty was to drive them out, and enjoy their lands in the manner of the Israelites of old. On the other hand, the Indians who had made terms of peace, having now for the first time realized that they had not the ability to cope with the English in war, and could not trust their friendship in peace, naturally looked to the French as the protectors of their villages and hunting grounds. Many of them were willing to place themselves and their families under their care.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Early Accounts of American Indians in Canada

CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

In thirty-two volumes

Part I

The First European Visitors

THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY

A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

By

STEPHEN LEACOCK

TORONTO, 1915

THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA

Of the uncounted centuries of the history of the red man in America before the coming of the Europeans we know very little indeed. Very few of the tribes possessed even a primitive art of writing. It is true that the Aztecs of Mexico, and the ancient Toltecs who preceded them, understood how to write in pictures, and that, by this means, they preserved some record of their rulers and of the great events of their past. The same is true of the Mayas of Central America, whose ruined temples are still to be traced in the tangled forests of Yucatan and Guatemala. The ancient Peruvians also had a system, not exactly of writing, but of record by means of QUIPUS or twisted woollen cords of different colours: it is through such records that we have some knowledge of Peruvian history during about a hundred years before the coming of the Spaniards, and some traditions reaching still further back. But nowhere was the art of writing sufficiently developed in America to give us a real history of the thoughts and deeds of its people before the arrival of Columbus.

This is especially true of those families of the great red race which inhabited what is now Canada. They spent a primitive existence, living thinly scattered along the sea-coast, and in the forests and open glades of the district of the Great Lakes, or wandering over the prairies of the west. In hardly any case had they any settled abode or fixed dwelling-places. The Iroquois and some Algonquins built Long Houses of wood and made stockade forts of heavy timber. But not even these tribes, who represented the furthest advance towards civilization among the savages of North America, made settlements in the real sense. They knew nothing of the use of the metals. Such poor weapons and tools as they had were made of stone, of wood, and of bone. It is true that ages ago prehistoric men had dug out copper from the mines that lie beside Lake Superior, for the traces of their operations there are still found. But the art of working metals probably progressed but a little way and then was lost,—overwhelmed perhaps in some ancient savage conquest. The Indians found by Cartier and Champlain knew nothing of the melting of metals for the manufacture of tools. Nor had they anything but the most elementary form of agriculture. They planted corn in the openings of the forest, but they did not fell trees to make a clearing or plough the ground. The harvest provided by nature and the products of the chase were their sole sources of supply, and in their search for this food so casually offered they moved to and fro in the depths of the forest or roved endlessly upon the plains. One great advance, and only one, they had been led to make. The waterways of North America are nature's highway through the forest. The bark canoe in which the Indians floated over the surface of the Canadian lakes and rivers is a marvel of construction and wonderfully adapted to its purpose: This was their great invention. In nearly all other respects the Indians of Canada had not emerged even from savagery to that stage half way to civilization which is called barbarism.

These Canadian aborigines seem to have been few in number. It is probable that, when the continent was discovered, Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, contained about 220,000 natives—about half as many people as are now found in Toronto. They were divided into tribes or clans, among which we may distinguish certain family groups spread out over great areas.

Most northerly of all was the great tribe of the Eskimos, who were found all the way from Greenland to Northern Siberia. The name Eskimo was not given by these people to themselves. It was used by the Abnaki Indians in describing to the whites the dwellers of the far north, and it means 'the people who eat raw meat.' The Eskimo called and still call themselves the Innuit, which means 'the people.'

The exact relation of the Eskimo to the other races of the continent is hard to define. From the fact that the race was found on both sides of the Bering Sea, and that its members have dark hair and dark eyes, it was often argued that they were akin to the Mongolians of China. This theory, however, is now abandoned. The resemblance in height and colour is only superficial, and a more careful view of the physical make-up of the Eskimo shows him to resemble the other races of America far more closely than he resembles those of Asia. A distinguished American historian, John Fiske, believed that the Eskimos are the last remnants of the ancient cave-men who in the Stone Age inhabited all the northern parts of Europe. Fiske's theory is that at this remote period continuous land stretched by way of Iceland and Greenland from Europe to America, and that by this means the race of cave-men was able to extend itself all the way from Norway and Sweden to the northern coasts of America. In support of this view he points to the strangely ingenious and artistic drawings of the Eskimos. These drawings are made on ivory and bone, and are so like the ancient bone-pictures found among the relics of the cave-men of Europe that they can scarcely be distinguished.

The theory is only a conjecture. It is certain that at one time the Eskimo race extended much farther south than it did when the white men came to America; in earlier days there were Eskimos far south of Hudson Bay, and perhaps even south of the Great Lakes.

As a result of their situation the Eskimos led a very different life from that of the Indians to the south. They must rely on fishing and hunting for food. In that almost treeless north they had no wood to build boats or houses, and no vegetables or plants to supply them either with food or with the materials of industry. But the very rigour of their surroundings called forth in them a marvellous ingenuity. They made boats of seal skins stretched tight over walrus bones, and clothes of furs and of the skins and feathers of birds. They built winter houses with great blocks of snow put together in the form of a bowl turned upside down. They heated their houses by burning blubber or fat in dish-like lamps chipped out of stones. They had, of course, no written literature. They were, however, not devoid of art. They had legends and folk-songs, handed down from generation to generation with the utmost accuracy. In the long night of the Arctic winter they gathered in their huts to hear strange monotonous singing by their bards: a kind of low chanting, very strange to European ears, and intended to imitate the sounds of nature, the murmur of running waters and the sobbing of the sea. The Eskimos believed in spirits and monsters whom they must appease with gifts and incantations. They thought that after death the soul either goes below the earth to a place always warm and comfortable, or that it is taken up into the cold forbidding brightness of the polar sky. When the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, streamed across the heavens, the Eskimos thought it the gleam of the souls of the dead visible in their new home.

Farthest east of all the British North American Indians were the Beothuks. Their abode was chiefly Newfoundland, though they wandered also in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Belle Isle and along the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. They were in the lowest stage of human existence and lived entirely by hunting and fishing. Unlike the Eskimos they had no dogs, and so stern were the conditions of their life that they maintained with difficulty the fight against the rigour of nature. The early explorers found them on the rocky coasts of Belle Isle, wild and half clad. They smeared their bodies with red ochre, bright in colour, and this earned for them the name of Red Indians. From the first, they had no friendly relations with the Europeans who came to their shores, but lived in a state of perpetual war with them. The Newfoundland fishermen and settlers hunted down the Red Indians as if they were wild beasts, and killed them at sight. Now and again, a few members of this unhappy race were carried home to England to be exhibited at country fairs before a crowd of grinning yokels who paid a penny apiece to look at the 'wild men.'

Living on the mainland, next to the red men of Newfoundland lay the great race of the Algonquins, spread over a huge tract of country, from the Atlantic coast to the head of the Great Lakes, and even farther west. The Algonquins were divided into a great many tribes, some of whose names are still familiar among the Indians of to-day. The Micmacs of Nova Scotia, the Malecite of New Brunswick, the Naskapi of Quebec, the Chippewa of Ontario, and the Crees of the prairie, are of this stock. It is even held that the Algonquins are to be considered typical specimens of the American race. They were of fine stature, and in strength and muscular development were quite on a par with the races of the Old World. Their skin was copper-coloured, their lips and noses were thin, and their hair in nearly all cases was straight and black. When the Europeans first saw the Algonquins they had already made some advance towards industrial civilization. They built huts of woven boughs, and for defence sometimes surrounded a group of huts with a palisade of stakes set up on end. They had no agriculture in the true sense, but they cultivated Indian corn and pumpkins in the openings of the forests, and also the tobacco plant, with the virtues of which they were well acquainted. They made for themselves heavy and clumsy pottery and utensils of wood, they wove mats out of rushes for their houses, and they made clothes from the skin of the deer, and head-dresses from the bright feathers of birds. Of the metals they knew, at the time of the discovery of America, hardly anything. They made some use of copper, which they chipped and hammered into rude tools and weapons. But they knew nothing of melting the metals, and their arrow-heads and spear-points were made, for the most part, not of metals, but of stone. Like other Indians, they showed great ingenuity in fashioning bark canoes of wonderful lightness.

We must remember, however, that with nearly all the aborigines of America, at least north of Mexico, the attempt to utilize the materials and forces supplied by nature had made only slight and painful progress. We are apt to think that it was the mere laziness of the Indians which prevented more rapid advance. It may be that we do not realize their difficulties. When the white men first came these rude peoples were so backward and so little trained in using their faculties that any advance towards art and industry was inevitably slow and difficult. This was also true, no doubt, of the peoples who, long centuries before, had been in the same degree of development in Europe, and had begun the intricate tasks which a growth towards civilization involved. The historian Robertson describes in a vivid passage the backward state of the savage tribes of America. 'The most simple operation,' he says, 'was to them an undertaking of immense difficulty and labour. To fell a tree with no other implements than hatchets of stone was employment for a month. ...Their operations in agriculture were equally slow and defective. In a country covered with woods of the hardest timber, the clearing of a small field destined for culture required the united efforts of a tribe, and was a work of much time and great toil.'

The religion of the Algonquin Indians seems to have been a rude nature worship. The Sun, as the great giver of warmth and light, was the object of their adoration; to a lesser degree, they looked upon fire as a superhuman thing, worthy of worship. The four winds of heaven, bringing storm and rain from the unknown boundaries of the world, were regarded as spirits. Each Indian clan or section of a tribe chose for its special devotion an animal, the name of which became the distinctive symbol of the clan. This is what is meant by the 'totems' of the different branches of a tribe.

The Algonquins knew nothing of the art of writing, beyond rude pictures scratched or painted on wood. The Algonquin tribes, as we have seen, roamed far to the west. One branch frequented the upper Saskatchewan river. Here the ashes of the prairie fires discoloured their moccasins and turned them black, and, in consequence, they were called the Blackfeet Indians. Even when they moved to other parts of the country, the name was still applied to them.

Occupying the stretch of country to the south of the Algonquins was the famous race known as the Iroquoian Family. We generally read of the Hurons and the Iroquois as separate tribes. They really belonged, however, to one family, though during the period of Canadian history in which they were prominent they had become deadly enemies. When Cartier discovered the St Lawrence and made his way to the island of Montreal, Huron Indians inhabited all that part of the country. When Champlain came, two generations later, they had vanished from that region, but they still occupied a part of Ontario around Lake Simcoe and south and east of Georgian Bay. We always connect the name Iroquois with that part of the stock which included the allied Five Nations—the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas, and Cayugas,—and which occupied the country between the Hudson river and Lake Ontario. This proved to be the strongest strategical position in North America. It lies in the gap or break of the Alleghany ridge, the one place south of the St Lawrence where an easy and ready access is afforded from the sea-coast to the interior of the continent. Any one who casts a glance at the map of the present Eastern states will realize this, and will see why it is that New York, at the mouth of the Hudson, has become the greatest city of North America. Now, the same reason which has created New York gave to the position of the Five Nations its great importance in Canadian history. But in reality the racial stock of the Iroquois extended much farther than this, both west and south. It took in the well-known tribe of the Eries, and also the Indians of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac. It included even the Tuscaroras of the Roanoke in North Carolina, who afterwards moved north and changed the five nations into six.

The Iroquois were originally natives of the plain, connected very probably with the Dakotas of the west. But they moved eastwards from the Mississippi valley towards Niagara, conquering as they went. No other tribe could compare with them in either bravery or ferocity. They possessed in a high degree both the virtues and the vices of Indian character—the unflinching courage and the diabolical cruelty which have made the Indian an object of mingled admiration and contempt. In bodily strength and physical endurance they were unsurpassed. Even in modern days the enervating influence of civilization has not entirely removed the original vigour of the strain. During the American Civil War of fifty years ago the five companies of Iroquois Indians recruited in Canada and in the state of New York were superior in height and measurement to any other body of five hundred men in the northern armies.

When the Iroquoian Family migrated, the Hurons settled in the western peninsula of Ontario. The name of Lake Huron still recalls their abode. But a part of the race kept moving eastward. Before the coming of the whites, they had fought their way almost to the sea. But they were able to hold their new settlements only by hard fighting. The great stockade which Cartier saw at Hochelaga, with its palisades and fighting platforms, bore witness to the ferocity of the struggle. At that place Cartier and his companions were entertained with gruesome tales of Indian fighting and of wholesale massacres. Seventy years later, in Champlain's time, the Hochelaga stockade had vanished, and the Hurons had been driven back into the interior. But for nearly two centuries after Champlain the Iroquois retained their hold on the territory from Lake Ontario to the Hudson. The conquests and wars of extermination of these savages, and the terror which they inspired, have been summed up by General Francis Walker in the saying: 'They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent.'

The Iroquois were in some respects superior to most of the Indians of the continent. Though they had a limited agriculture, and though they made hardly any use of metals, they had advanced further in other directions than most savages. They built of logs, houses long enough to be divided into several compartments, with a family in each compartment. By setting a group of houses together, and surrounding them with a palisade of stakes and trees set on end, the settlement was turned into a kind of fort, and could bid defiance to the limited means of attack possessed by their enemies. Inside their houses they kept a good store of corn, pumpkins and dried meat, which belonged not to each man singly but to the whole group in common. This was the type of settlement seen at Quebec and at Hochelaga, and, later on, among the Five Nations. Indeed, the Five Nations gave to themselves the picturesque name of the Long House, for their confederation resembled, as it were, the long wooden houses that held the families together.

All this shows that the superiority of the Iroquois over their enemies lay in organization. In this they were superior even to their kinsmen the Hurons. All Indian tribes kept women in a condition which we should think degrading. The Indian women were drudges; they carried the burdens, and did the rude manual toil of the tribe. Among the Iroquois, however, women were not wholly despised; sometimes, if of forceful character, they had great influence in the councils of the tribe. Among the Hurons, on the other hand, women were treated with contempt or brutal indifference. The Huron woman, worn out with arduous toil, rapidly lost the brightness of her youth. At an age when the women of a higher culture are still at the height of their charm and attractiveness the woman of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled hag, horrible to the eye and often despicable in character. The inborn gentleness of womanhood had been driven from her breast by ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of the warriors surpassed the unhallowed fiendishness of the withered squaw in preparing the torments of the stake and in shrieking her toothless exultation beside the torture fire.

Where women are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them to admire.

North and west from the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois were the family of tribes belonging to the Athapascan stock. The general names of Chipewyan and Tinne are also applied to the same great branch of the Indian race. In a variety of groups and tribes, the Athapascans spread out from the Arctic to Mexico. Their name has since become connected with the geography of Canada alone, but in reality a number of the tribes of the plains, like the well-known Apaches, as well as the Hupas of California and the Navahos, belong to the Athapascans. In Canada, the Athapascans roamed over the country that lay between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains. They were found in the basin of the Mackenzie river towards the Arctic sea, and along the valley of the Fraser to the valley of the Chilcotin. Their language was broken into a great number of dialects which differed so widely that only the kindred groups could understand one another's speech. But the same general resemblance ran through the various branches of the Athapascans. They were a tall, strong race, great in endurance, during their prime, though they had little of the peculiar stamina that makes for long life and vigorous old age. Their descendants of to-day still show the same facial characteristics—the low forehead with prominent ridge bones, and the eyes set somewhat obliquely so as to suggest, though probably without reason, a kinship with Oriental peoples.

The Athapascans stood low in the scale of civilization. Most of them lived in a prairie country where a luxuriant soil, not encumbered with trees, would have responded to the slightest labour. But the Athapascans, in Canada at least, knew nothing of agriculture. With alternations of starvation and rude plenty, they lived upon the unaided bounty of tribes of the far north, degraded by want and indolence, were often addicted to cannibalism.

The Indians beyond the mountains, between the Rockies and the sea, were for the most part quite distinct from those of the plains. Some tribes of the Athapascans, as we have seen, penetrated into British Columbia, but the greater part of the natives in that region were of wholly different races. Of course, we know hardly anything of these Indians during the first two centuries of European settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century, when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into the North Pacific,—the Tlingit of the far north, the Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai. It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific Indians belong to one kindred stock. There are, it is true, many distinct languages between California and Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics of the natives show a similarity throughout.

The total number of the original Indian population of the continent can be a matter of conjecture only. There is every reason, however, to think that it was far less than the absurdly exaggerated figures given by early European writers. Whenever the first explorers found a considerable body of savages they concluded that the people they saw were only a fraction of some large nation. The result was that the Spaniards estimated the inhabitants of Peru at thirty millions. Las Casas, the Spanish historian, said that Hispaniola, the present Hayti, had a population of three millions; a more exact estimate, made about twenty years after the discovery of the island, brought the population down to fourteen thousand! In the same way Montezuma was said to have commanded three million Mexican warriors—an obvious absurdity. The early Jesuits reckoned the numbers of the Iroquois at about a hundred thousand; in reality there seem to have been, in the days of Wolfe and Montcalm, about twelve thousand. At the opening of the twentieth century there were in America north of Mexico about 403,000 Indians, of whom 108,000 were in Canada. Some writers go so far as to say that the numbers of the natives were probably never much greater than they are to-day. But even if we accept the more general opinion that the Indian population has declined, there is no evidence to show that the population was ever more than a thin scattering of wanderers over the face of a vast country. Mooney estimates that at the coming of the white man there were only about 846,000 aborigines in the United States, 220,000 in British America, 72,000 in Alaska, and 10,000 in Greenland, a total native population of 1,148,000 from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.

The limited means of support possessed by the natives, their primitive agriculture, their habitual disinclination to settled life and industry, their constant wars and the epidemic diseases which, even as early as the time of Jacques Cartier, worked havoc among them, must always have prevented the growth of a numerous population. The explorer might wander for days in the depths of the American forest without encountering any trace of human life. The continent was, in truth, one vast silence, broken only by the roar of the waterfall or the cry of the beasts and birds of the forest.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Abenaki Indians and Language

THE ABENAKI INDIANS;

THEIR TREATIES OF 1713 & 1717, AND A VOCABULARY:

THE ABENAKI INDIANS.

The Penobscots[1] were probably the most numerous and influential tribe. Their chief or bashaba was said to have been acknowledged as a superior as far as Massachusetts Bay. They occupied the country on both sides of the Penobscot Bay and River; their summer resort being near the sea, but during the winter and spring they inhabited lands near the falls, where they still reside. It is somewhat strange to find a tribe numbering about five hundred still remaining in their ancient abode, and, though surrounded by whites, retaining their language, religion, and many of the habits and customs of centuries past, with a probability of perpetuating them for ages to come. Their name is from penobsq, rock, and utoret, a place, literally, rocky-place,—which no doubt refers to the rocky falls in the river near their residence. It is not supposed that many of this tribe emigrated to Canada, although they had constant intercourse with that country.

Therefore the Jesuits, who had for a long time been their spiritual, and often their temporal advisers, began to turn the steps of the broken and scattered remnants of the tribes who had suffered most in the war, to the feeble settlement of the Pennacooks, near Quebec, and as early as 1685, the Governor of that colony granted a tract of land at a place called Côte de Lauzon, opposite that city, for their use. Up to the commencement of the war, a considerable number of Indians had continued to reside on the Connecticut river, above Northampton; they had fought against the whites, and at the death of Philip, fled and took up their abode at Scauticook, above Albany, and were afterwards increased by additions from other tribes.

After a few years, the government of New York became desirous of being rid of such neighbors, whom they could not trust or control, and induced them to remove to Canada, where most of them were settled before the close of that century, with or near the Pennacooks.

Early in the eighteenth century, the numbers of refugee Indians attracted the attention of the Governor of Canada, and as the whole of the French population of that colony did not then number ten thousand souls, he saw they would materially add to the strength of his command, and could be used most effectually against the frontiers of New England. He therefore took measures to give them a home there. As the grant near Quebec was found not adapted to their needs and condition, probably from its close contiguity to that city, two convenient tracts of land were granted for their use; the first bears date Aug. 23, 1700, the second, May 10, 1701. These were on the St. Francis river, which has given a name to the tribe. In 1704 another settlement of refugees from New England received a grant of land at a place called Beçancour, near Three Rivers, and during this year the Governor addressed a letter to the ministry in France, giving his reasons for inducing the Abenakis to settle in his colony, and from this period it was a constant policy to encourage their immigration there, for more than half a century.

Here was the place where parties were to be fitted out to carry war, destruction, and misery to the frontiers of New England.

In 1704 these Indians piloted a body of French to the vicinity of their former homes, on the Connecticut, and entirely destroyed Deerfield. The writer not long since conversed with an ancient member of this tribe, who claimed to be the great grandson of Esther Williams, daughter of Rev. John Williams, who was, with his family, captured at that time. In 1707 this tribe, piloted by the Pennacooks down the Merrimac, destroyed Haverhill, murdering and capturing most of its inhabitants. It would fill a volume to relate the bloody tragedies acted and instigated by this tribe; it seems almost incredible that any people could exist for a generation amidst such repeated incursions of a relentless enemy.

In November, 1724, Vaudreuil, Governor General of Canada, addressed an urgent letter to the Minister of War in France, giving an account of the attack on Norridgewock, and the death of Father Rasle, with a full account of the losses and sufferings of that tribe, and asking for a grant of ammunition, guns, and blankets to supply their losses, and enable them to make war on the English settlements. He also gives a particular account of the condition of the Abenakis, and says, “of all the Indians in New France, they are in a position to render the most service; this nation consists of five villages, which number, altogether, about five hundred warriors. Two of these villages are situated on the St. Lawrence, near Three Rivers—one below that town called Beçancour, the other ten leagues above, called St. Francis, the three others are in the direction of Acadie, called Narantsouak, on the River Kanibekky, Panagamsdé, on the Pentagouet (Penobscot), and Medocteck, on the River St. John. These three villages have different routes, each by its own river, whereby they can reach Quebeck in a few days.”[3]

In April, 1725, a delegation of three gentlemen visited Montreal with a letter from the Governor of Massachusetts, in reply to one addressed to him some months previously by M. Vaudreuil, relative to the attack at Norridgewock, and the death of Father Rasle. They demanded that the prisoners held by the Abenakis should be given up, and a perpetual peace established.

The Indians, who were entirely under the influence of the French, were extremely haughty in their language and deportment; they demanded that the English should restore their lands, rebuild their church, which they had destroyed at Norridgewock, and when asked what land they referred to, said “that their land commenced at the River Gounitogon, otherwise called the long river,[4] which lies to the west beyond Boston, that this river was formerly the boundary which separated the lands of the Iroquois from those of the Abenakis, that according to this boundary, Boston and the greater part of the English settlements east of it are in Abenakis’ lands; that they would be justified in telling them to quit there, but that they had considered that their settlements were established and that they were still inclined to tolerate them; but they demanded as an express condition of peace that the English should abandon the country from one league beyond Saco River to Port Royal, which was the line separating the lands of the Abenakis from those of the Micmaks.”[5]

The Abenakis denied that they had ever sold any land to the English, and when the latter claimed that much of it was theirs by a possession of more than eighty years, and that this possession gave them a title, the Indians replied, “We were in possession before you, for we have held it from time immemorial.” The English delegates conceded that they did not claim beyond the west bank of the Narantsouak (Kennebec), and that the fort at St. George was built not by them, but by the government of Port Royal.

The meeting seems to have been unsatisfactory to the delegation, and no treaty or arrangement was made. The French governor denied that they had furnished the Indians with arms, or instigated them to attack the English, although Vaudreuil’s letters to his government in France bear abundant evidence that this was his constant policy.

In the treaty with many of the tribes, held at Deerfield in 1735, the St. Francis Indians were represented, and agreed to the arrangement for perpetual peace; but a few years elapsed before they were again engaged in their bloody pastime. War was declared against France in 1744, and the Abenakis were soon hovering on the frontiers. In 1746, Keene and Concord, in New Hampshire, felt their power, and many captives were carried to Canada. In 1752 Capt. Phineas Stevens proceeded to Canada, as a delegate from the governor of Massachusetts, to confer with the Abenakis, and to redeem some prisoners they had in their possession. At a conference had with them in the presence of the governor of Canada, Atewaneto, the chief speaker, made an eloquent reply, in which he charged the English with trespassing on their lands: he said, “We acknowledge no other land of yours than your settlements, wherever you have built, and we will not consent, under any pretext, that you pass beyond them. The lands we possess have been given us by the Great Master of Life, we acknowledge to hold only from him.”

In 1755 they were again in the field, and followed the French armies to the head of Lake George, and carried terror into the new townships on the Connecticut river. Some of their small parties at that late day penetrated within sixty miles of the capital of New England. But these long continued aggressions were soon to meet a fearful retribution. The capture of Quebec, which gave North America to England, had changed the relation of the Abenakis. Capt. Kennedy having been sent to their villages with a flag of truce, was, with his whole party, made prisoners. To chastise them for this outrage, as well as to retaliate for their continued cruelty and murders on the defenseless frontier settlements, Gen. Amherst dispatched the celebrated Major Rogers with a detachment of his rangers to the villages on the St. Francis. Just before daybreak, on the fifth of October, he surprised and killed at least two hundred Indians, and burnt all their wigwams, plunder, and effects. Rogers in his journal says: “To my own knowledge, in six years’ time, the St. Francis Indians had killed and carried into captivity on the frontiers of New England, four hundred persons; we found in the town, hanging on poles over the doors &c., about six hundred scalps, mostly English.”

The power of the tribe for evil was gone, and we hear no more of them till the Revolution, when their warriors followed Burgoyne to Saratoga, where they again used the tomahawk and scalping knife, but when his fortunes began to wane, they retired to the banks of the St. Lawrence. Again in the war of 1812, they joined the English, but their numbers were few, and after a brief campaign, they, for the last time, retraced their steps to their own homes.

A few more remarks will close the history of this tribe, once the terror of New England.

The present condition of the Abenakis is given in a report made in 1858 to the Legislative Assembly of Canada. This states that the tribe on the St. Francis has diminished to three hundred and eighty-seven persons; they live mainly by agriculture, but everything is done in so rude a way, that they gather but scanty crops. Part of them, through the exertions of one of their own number, have been induced to discard their ancient faith, and are now professed Methodists. This change has involved the tribe in continual feuds and difficulties, which will prevent any improvement, and will probably lead to a permanent division and removal of one of the parties. They often undergo much privation for want of proper food and other necessaries of life. The portion of the tribe at Beçancour presents a still more degraded condition. There remain but thirty families, in all one hundred and seventy-two individuals. They still remain Roman Catholics, have no schools, and seem to have reached the extreme of misery and destitution, and so completely have this people intermixed, that their missionary writes, “he does not know of a single pure Abenaki among them.”

The vocabulary now published is copied from a small volume printed about thirty years ago, entitled “Wobanaki Kimzowi Awighigan,” i.e. Abenaki Spelling Book. It was procured by the writer with much difficulty, as it was the only copy that could be obtained among them. It is supposed by those qualified to judge, to be a fair specimen of the dialect formerly spoken on the Androscoggin and Kennebec, although there are in it many words originally borrowed from the French and English. From a memorandum made when with them a few years since, the name of their tribe, as near as can be written and pronounced in English, is W’Banankee, accenting the last syllable.

The treaties, now for the first time printed, are copied from the original in the possession of the writer; they will be perused with pleasure by those interested in antiquarian researches. But at the present day it is difficult to realize the interest which these proceedings and documents excited; they were often considered almost a matter of life or death to the frontier settlers. It is apparent that every chief had then his peculiar totem, or symbol. At a later period this system was abandoned, and they used only a simple cross. Among the chiefs who signed, is to be found the totem of Bombazeen and some others, whose names are perpetuated in history for their bloody exploits. The autographs annexed show the names of men then prominent in both provinces, and some of them afterwards attained the highest positions in political life.

The vocabularies and treaties are now submitted for publication by request of the Maine Historical Society.

Boston, August, 1859.