Maine, and the Algonquian peoples of southern New England. But the Sokokis, the Cowasucks, the Missisquois and their neighbors neighbors only appear only
fleetingly in the French and English records, which offer tantalizing glimpses
rather than a composite picture of Vermont and New Hampshire's Indian inhabitants. (Calloway 1990b:xvi-xvii).
The effect of the paucity of primary sources leads to some degree of speculation and hypothesis by all the scholars who have investigated these people. The dominant feature of the eighteenth century is the ebb and flow of the population of the Indians at Missisquoi. The century ends with their retreat to the safety of Odanak/St. Francis in Canada. The central question for this time period is to what extent was there a permanent settlement of an independent tribal entity at Missisquoi.
The eighteenth century can be divided into roughly five periods to describe the
population changes at Missisquoi. The first period is the one in which Missisquoi was dominated by Chief Grey Lock, from 1711 to 1730. The second period, from 1730 to 1740, is known for an epidemic and its aftermath. The third period, from 1743 through 1760, was marked by the movement of Indians from Missisquoi to Odanak/St. Francis, resulting in an abandonment of the Missisquoi village. The fourth period, from 1763 to 1775, saw a return of Abenakis from Odanak to Missisquoi. Around 1775, with the start of the American Revolution, the Abenakis retreated to Odanak/St. Francis and were largely absent from Missisquoi for the rest of the century.
As one traces the Abenaki population at Missisquoi through the 1700's, it often bears an inverse correspondence to the population at St. Francis/Odanak. That is because when the Abenakis retreated from Missisquoi, they usually went to Odanak (Dickinson Affidavit, Attachment B, 4). At Odanak, they were farther from their English enemies and were surrounded by their French allies. Missisquoi was essentially the Southern frontier for the
French. When wars heated up between the French and the English, it was safer to retreat northward. In their article "Les Populations Amerindiennes de la Vallee Laurentienne 1608-1765," Dickinson and Grabowski examined these movements from the Canadian perspective.
They observed a growth of Indian population at the missions in Quebec (New France) during times of French-British hostilities, and a decrease in those populations as Indians returned to New England during peacetime. (Dickinson & Grabowski 1993:60). 9.At the end of the eighteenth century, the bulk of the Indians from Missisquoi
Ultimately settled at St. Francis. As Day concluded in his article "Missisquoi: A New Look at an Old Village," the Missisquoi culture and language continued to survive for centuries at Odanak, and nowhere else (Day 1973:56, Day, 1971:passim, especially 121).
Grey Lock's Dominance
The dominant character of the first period in the eighteenth century at Missisquoi was Chief Grey Lock. He was a Worronoco Indian from the Westfield River region of Massachusetts. His Indian name was Wawenorrawot. 10. Historians believe he was a refugee from King Philip's War (1675-76), who was pushed out of Massachusetts and went to the Hudson River region of New York (Calloway 1987, Day 1966). He settled for a time at Schaghticoke in Mahican territory, and was at Missisquoi as early as 1712. (Haviland & Power 1994:230). By 1723 Grey Lock was the leader of a large group of warriors from Schaghticoke who settled with him in the Missisquoi region of Lake Champlain. His base
FOOTNOTES:
9. They wrote: If around 1710, the population of the missions approached 3,000, it shrank to around 2,300 in 1715. But the tensions between Abenakis and British became newly embittered starting in 1722, creating a new wave of migrations [to the missions in New France].
10. Day traces this name to Wahawanulet and Wawanolet at St. Francis/ Odanak, and to the Nolet family at Odanak in the twentieth century (Day 1981b:99).
was a palisaded area, sometimes called Grey Lock's Castle, some distance from the main Missisquoi settlement (Calloway 1986:2 18). Grey Lock continued to attract warriors from Schaghticoke during the 1720's. He was well known to the English for the raids he conducted on their settlements in Massachusetts from 1712-1727. This period of growth at Missisquoi was marked by Grey Lock's dominance and raids on European settlers.
Epidemic and Slow Repopulation: 1730- 1740
In 1730 there was a smallpox epidemic at Missisquoi. 11. As a result, the Indians abandoned the village and went north to St. Francis (Perry 1882:954, Haviland & Power 1994:233, Day 1981b:64). Some of these Indians began to return to Missisquoi in 1731, but the village was not completely resettled until 1740. So, during the decade of the 1730's there was a gradual movement of Indians from St. Francis down to Missisquoi (Day 1981b:38-40, 64). As Professor Dickinson points out, there is no definitive proof as to whether or not the Indians who settled at Missisquoi during this period were originally from the area (Dickason Affidavit, Attachment B, 4).
As a general matter, the French saw their friendship with (indeed, their reliance upon) the Abenakis as the best possible protection against their enemies, the English and the Iroquois (Dickason 1990:91, 93-94). The French encouraged the Indians to return to Missisquoi to provide a buffer between their own settlements to the north and the English settlements farther south (Haviland & Power 1994:233). They undertook several efforts in
FOOTNOTE:
11. One source states there was a plague at Missisquoi in 1725. It is unclear whether this was a separate event from the smallpox epidemic or not. The effect seems to have been the same (Aldrich, 1891:27-28).
this connection. In 1731 they built Fort St. Frederic, at Crown Point, on the southern part of Lake Champlain. There was an Abenaki interpreter employed at the fort (Charland 1961:4).
The French also encouraged the settlement of an Indian village on the northern end of Lake Champlain to prevent the isolation of the fort. And there is evidence that the Abenaki of Missisquoi used Fort St. Frederic for religious purposes. The role of missionaries in furthering the French-Abenaki alliance was key (Dickason 1990:88-89). The French wanted to cultivate ties to the Abenakis at Missisqoui to prevent them from becoming too friendly with the English, and from trading beaver pelts with them instead of with the French (Charland 1961:6-7). The French viewed the Indians at Missisquoi as part of the St. Francis Indians, as evidenced by a French warrior count in 1736 that listed them altogether as if all of one group (Day 1981 b:40, Charland 1961:9). The French efforts to encourage Abenaki migration from Odanak/St. Francis to Missisqoui during the 1730's reflect this. Missisquoi Villagers Move to Odanak/ St. Francis: 1744-1760
The third period, from 1744 to 1760, saw a general exodus, in varying degrees, from Missisquoi to St. Francis. While the first four years of this period saw two seemingly contradictory trends, the last decade saw the abandonment of the village at Missisquoi. The years of 1744-1748 were the years of King George's War, the wars of the Austrian Succession. Most of the Indians evacuated the Missisquoi village during this war (Calloway, 1986:218). Missisquoi warriors aided the French in military campaigns during these years (Charland 1961:9-10).
At the same time, King Louis XV of France sought to find ways to wean the
Abenaki from the English and keep them at Missisquoi (Day 1973:53). So, the French
established a Jesuit mission at Missisquoi and even built a house for a missionary there (Charland 1961:7). They built a chapel as well, though in Alburg, not Missisquoi (Haviland & Power 1994:234). Father Etienne Lauverjat, formerly missionary to Abenakis at St. Francis and at Old Town, Maine, was sent to Missisquoi and stayed there from 1744 to 1748 (Ledoux 1988:136). In addition to serving the Abenakis who were at Missisquoi, the French also hoped to attract the "Loups from Orange" (Albany, NY), by which they probably meant the Schaghticokes (Calloway 1986:218). These efforts were quite successful, and there was a steady exodus of Schaghticokes from 1744 through 1754 to both Missisquoi and St. Francis (Calloway, 1986:208-210. In addition, one seigneur in Quebec sought to transfer all the Abenakis from his fief to Missisquoi so he could have more land to himself (Day 1973:53, Charland 1961:4-6).
In sum, the years 1744-1748 were marked by two movements: (1) the movement of Abenakis out of the Missisquoi village either to aid in the war against the English or to seek shelter, and (2) the movement of Schaghticokes into Missisquoi, often as a pass through on their way to St. Francis. The French were happy to attract the Schaghticoke, and they also attempted to slow down the exodus out of Missisqoui. Their placement of a Jesuit missionary in the area was an attempt to encourage the Abenaki to stay at Missisquoi.The net effect of these movements by the end of the war was a fairly empty village at Missisquoi, no missionary presence, and no significant buffer against the English. So, in 1748 the French King, granted a seigneury at Missisquoi to Levasseur, the King's shipbuilder. He built a sawmill in 1749 (Haviland & Power 1994:234). In this same year French court documents reveal that the King was once again seeking to establish a mission for the Abenakis at Missisquoi and thereby protect the French by creating a buffer against the hostile
English in New England (Charland 1961:8-9). The Missisquoi village's population was reestablished in 1749 (Charland 1961:9).
The petitioner overstates the size of the Abenaki population at Missisquoi during this period (Petition:32). It asserts that Missisquoi grew at the same rate as Odanak/St. Francis (Petition:32). This theory is unsupported and contrary to other research. As Professor Dickinson explains:The population counts on page 32 are speculative. There was a lot of population movement, but it is unlikely that the Abenaki of St. Francois and Missisquoi would have grown to more tha[n] 1300-1500 in the period. The Missisquoi population for the 1750s seems very optimistic since the village was on the front line and the growth of Odanak is probably attributable to families moving back there from Missisquoi. The number of hunting bands in the interior would have been based at a permanent settlement (probably St-Francois). (Dickinson Affidavit, Attachment B, 4).
The petition calculates a population of 500-750 at Missisquoi based on Bougainville's count of 100-150 warriors (Petition:33). According to Dickinson, this is a misreading of Bougainville's figure:
Bogainville's report concerns warriors that were with the army and they came from St-Francois as well as from Missisquoi. I believe that it would be wrong to assume that the 100 to 150 men were all from Missisquoi. (Dickinson Affidavit, Attachment B, 4-5).
This resettlement at Missisquoi was short-lived. The Seven Years' War, from 1754 to 1760, caused further upheavals. The French were defeated at Lake George, just south of Lake Champlain, in 1755, bringing the war closer to Missisqoui. In 1757 the British burned the sawmill at Missisquoi (Haviland & Power 1994:236). By 1757 Abenakis stopped going to Fort St. Frederic because it was unsafe: they went north to Chambly or Fort St. Jean in Canada instead (Haviland & Power 1994:236). Then, in 1759, the French blew up Fort Carillon and Fort St. Frederic to prevent their capture and use by the British (Charland
1961:11, Haviland & Power 1994:236). The Abenakis departed Missisquoi in 1758 and early 1759 to seek shelter at the two well-established Abenaki communities in Quebec: St. Francis and Becancour (Calloway 1990a:75, Charland 1961:11, Day 1981b:65). Thus this period ends with the abandonment of the Missisquoi village.
Between the third and fourth periods there is some uncertainty about the village at Missisquoi. Rogers' Rangers attacked St. Francis in October of 1759. While many, many Abenakis were killed in that raid, Day has established that the entire village was not wiped out (Day 1981b:43-46, Haviland & Power 1994: 237). The Abenakis of St. Francis scattered to Maine, St. Regis (Akwesasne), west to the Mississippi, and other places after the raid (Day 1981 b:47-48, Calloway 1990b:189). At the same time, in 1761, Father Pierre Roubaud, a Jesuit priest who had served as missionary to the Abenakis at Odanak/St. Francis for many years, advised the British Indian Officer Sir William Johnson that he would be wise to discourage the association of the Abenaki with the western Indian tribes. He advocated that efforts be made to re-connect them to their homelands:[N]othing is more prejudicial to the Service as such Journeys of Indns. To strange Nations. That wch. Would make the Abinaquis a faithful People is to draw them to their native Country, some to Acadia & others to Albany where they come from. (Calloway 1990b:191).
He makes no mention of Missisquoi. Although the petition claims (at page 33) that there was a flourishing Indian village at Missisquoi, in 1759, this is highly speculative. The claim is based on the report of an English soldier returning from war in Quebec. Day explained the unlikelihood of this statement being accurate. He concluded it was either incorrectly reported or that it referred to an empty village that the soldier knew to be normally occupied perhaps before he went off to war (Day 1981b:45).
Return to Missisquoi: 1763-1775
By 1763 many Abenakis were back at Missisquoi, and this began a period of relative stability at Missisquoi (Calloway, 1990a:75). Most of the Abenakis remained there until the start of the American Revolution, 1775 or 1776 (Day 1981 b:49). The primary characteristic of this fourth period of time during the eighteenth century was the influx of English settlers into this northern area of New England (Calloway 1986:219). The Treaty of Paris that formally ended the Seven Years' War in 1763 gave most of New France to the British. St. Francis/Odanak was within British territory after the war. Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the British Indian Department, wanted to contain all the Abenakis at Odanak where the British could keep an eye on them, but this attempt was unsuccessful (Calloway 1990a:75). After all, the British had a history of antagonistic relations with the Abenakis.The end of the war also created a boundary line between Canada and New York.
12. This created somewhat of a separation between St. Francis and Missisquoi, but a separation that the Abenakis sought to minimize (Day 1973:55). We know that at this time the Abenakis in general were closely affiliated with the Abenakis at St. Francis (Haviland & Power 1994:240). The question of how closely tied politically Missisquoi was to the St. Francis Abenaki is an enduring puzzle. It is one that we put to Professor Dickinson of the University of Montreal. Based on his extensive knowledge of the history of New France and native cultures in the region, he concluded that:
Abenaki movement to Missisquoi clearly fit in with French imperial policy but only in as much as Missisquoi was still a subdivision of the St. Francis Abenaki. Until the American Revolution, nothing disrupted the unity between two villages sharing common family ties and political goals. "Authority" was
FOOTNOTE:
12. Vermont was considered part of New York at this time.
