Quezi

Abenaki man - public domain image

The question should almost be “Who ‘were’ the Abenaki Indians?”

The Abenaki have lived in a region extending across most of northern New England into the southern part of the Canadian Maritimes for perhaps 10,000 years.

Prior to European contact, the Abenaki numbered about 40,000.  At one time that number dwindled to only a thousand but has since returned to about 12,000 living in Canada and the U.S.

The Eastern Band of Abenaki were mostly located in Maine east of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.  The Western Band of Abenaki lived west of the mountains across Vermont and New Hampshire and to the eastern shores of Lake Champlain.

Disease was the major culprit in the population decline which almost wiped them out.  The first contact between Abenaki and Europeans took place in the 1500s and the negative effects of that contact were for all practical purposes, immediate.

Before 1600, two epidemics swept through the Abenaki, first in 1564 and a second, of typhus, in 1586.  Then in the early 1600s, three more swept through.  In 1617, it was smallpox and the Eastern Band population fell to just about 5000.  The isolation of the Western Band kept them from being so badly hit, but they still lost half their population.  During the next 150 years, they were hit by as many as 20 additional epidemics from smallpox, to influenza and measles.  They had little to no natural resistence to these Old World diseases.  The Abenaki population dropped from 40,000 to just over 1000 in only 150 years.  Following is a partial list of those epidemics:

smallpox 1631, 1633, and 1639
unknown epidemic 1646
influenza 1647
smallpox 1649
diphtheria 1659
smallpox 1670
influenza 1675
smallpox 1677 and 1679
smallpox and measles 1687
and smallpox 1691, 1729, 1733, 1755, and 1758.

Within the United States, the Abenaki are not, and never have been a federally recognized tribe.

The Abenaki Confederation tribes are Amaseconti, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Maliseet, Ouarastegouiak, Passamaquoddy, Patsuiket, Penobscot, Pigwacket, Rocameca, Sokoni, and Wewenoc.  Though they were also confederation members, the Micmac and Pennacook have been listed listed as separate tribes.

For more information about the Abenaki People