State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 9 to 16:

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.

State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 1 to 8:

INTRODUCTION

This Response to the Petition for Federal Recognition of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont is submitted by the Vermont Attorney General's Office on behalf of the State of Vermont. The response follows the format of recent proposed findings and final determinations issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs ("BIA"). After an examination of the historical background of Indians in Vermont, the response addresses four of the criteria for federal acknowledgment set forth in the federal regulations at 25 C.F.R. 87.
Two affidavits of experts consulted by the State are attached to this Response to the Petition. Accompanying this filing is a collection of Exhibits comprised of articles, government records, newspapers, and manuscripts that are referred to in the response. 1.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Historic Tribe Elusive
A natural starting point in the historical examination of an Indian tribe would be the identification of the historic tribe. In this case, that is not so easy. The petition itself illustrates the difficulty. The original petition was submitted in 1982 by the St. Francis/ Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont. See "Resolution of Abenaki Tribal Council" (Petition:ii). Later correspondence to the BIA is from the Sovereign Republic of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi. See, e.g., 1995 Certification of Records with re-submitted
FOOTNOTE:
1. To avoid duplication, for the most part, documents cited in the Response which were provided to the BIA's Branch of Acknowledgment and Research by the petitioner have not been included in the State's exhibits.

petition. These two different names for the petitioner suggest three possible historic tribes: St. Francis Abenaki, Sokoki, and Missisquoi.

The St. Francis Abenaki is, and was, a Canadian tribe based in St. Francis, Quebec, also known as Odanak, Quebec. The Sokoki, a tribe within the Wabanaki confederacy, inhabited the Connecticut River Valley along the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they resettled at Odanak. Francis. In fact they may have been the earliest residents of Odanak. Francis (Day 1981 b: 12-15, Haviland & Power 1994:219-27). The Missisquois inhabited the upper Lake Champlain region on the western side of Vermont. They have often been thought to be an offshoot of the Abenaki tribe at Odanak/St. Francis. 2. Even the petitioner admits that "the
Missisquoi villagers were never a tribe," but rather a changing groups of families who hunted in the area (Petition: 15). The confusion in nomenclature in the petitioners own submissions may indicate a more serious ambiguity as to identity and an uncertainty about community and descendancy.

The word Abenaki (or Wabanaki) refers to a group of Algonquian speaking tribes in Northern New England. Abenaki means "people of the dawn." They are divided into the Eastern Abenaki and the Western Abenaki. The Eastern Abenakis originally inhabited Maine and parts of New Hampshire. The name for these people stems from coastal view of the sun rise. Eastern Abenaki groups or tribes include the Penobscot and Maliseet. Western Abenaki include the Sokokis and Cowasucks of the upper and middle Connecticut River
FOOTNOTE:
2. Indeed, the relationship between the St. Francis Abenaki and the Missisquoi
groups is an intriguing puzzle embedded in this petition. If the Missisquoi was a separate tribal entity from the Abenaki at Odanak/St. Francis, then that historic tribe would have a claim for acknowledgment in the United States. If the Abenakis at Missisquoi were only an outlying temporary settlement of the St. Francis Abenakis then their claim should be directed toward Canadian First Nation status and the reservation

Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, the Pennacooks and Winnepesaukees of the upper Merrimack River in New Hampshire, and the Missisquoi on Lake Champlain (Calloway 1986:198, Dickason 1990:87).

The petitioner claims its historic origins lie in the northern Lake Champlain Valley,
near Missisquoi Bay in Swanton, Vermont, the same area in which most of its members reside at present. This would suggest that petitioner's members view themselves as descendants of the Missisquoi, not the Sokokis. The history of the Abenakis of Missisquoi and those of Odanak/ St. Francis is extensively intertwined. The inclusion of the St. Francis tribal name in the petitioner's original submission indicates a sense of affiliation with that Canadian tribe. One theme of this Response to the Petition is that the Missisquois drew closer and closer to the Abenakis of Odanak/ St. Francis so that by 1800 they were
indistinguishable.

Major Scholars of the Western Abenakis

The scholar who devoted the most time to studying the Western Abenaki was Gordon Day. He was an ethnolinguist at Dartmouth College and the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization) in Hull, Quebec, where he held increasingly responsible positions over 35 years. Through his efforts to find native speakers of the Abenaki language, he uncovered the history of the people. As a child growing up in Vermont, he was intrigued by stories of Indians. Day spent two decades searching for and
FOOTNOTES:
2. (continued) established in Quebec. As will become evident in this Response, the ultimate significance of this puzzle may not matter, given the post-1800 history of Indians, or the lack thereof, in Vermont.
3. In this historical survey, care has been taken to avoid generalizations about Abenakis, or even Western Abenakis, since it is not clear that the history of the Missisquoi, for example, is the same as the history of the Sokokis, Cowasucks or Penobscots.

interviewing Abenaki speakers in Vermont, New York, Maine, and Quebec in the 1950's and 1960's. He continued his analysis and writing about Western Abenaki through the 1980's.

For details of his life, see the biography of Day in the "Introduction" to In Search of New England's Native Past: Selected Essays by Gordon M. Day edited by Michael K. Foster and William Cowan (1998).
One of the scholars who Day met in his travels was a Catholic priest in Quebec who was himself an expert on the Abenakis. Father Thomas M. Charland made a significant contribution to the understanding of the history of the Abenaki with his work, including his book Histoire des Abenakis d'Odanak, 1675-1937 (1964). Day met Charland during his research trips and described him as a "careful scholar" (Day, 1981b:39).
Among more contemporary scholars, the one who has written and published the most about the Western Abenaki is Colin Calloway. Calloway's contribution lies less in the realm of significant new research, than in his clear and graceful writing. He primarily took Gordon Day's work and put it in a larger perspective or connected it to other events in New England. 4. The only area in which Calloway adds information to Day's work is in his smattering of references to events in the nineteenth century. However, this is not his own research, rather, it is traceable to unpublished writings of John Moody, an advocate for the Abenaki who authored the instant petition (Haviland & Power, 1994: 301, Petition: ii-iii). Moody's writing and his influence will be discussed in the section, Comments on Recent Scholarship.
FOOTNOTE:
4. In his book The Western Abenakis of Vermont 1600-1800 (1990:xix) Calloway wrote: "Anyone familiar with the literature will recognize my indebtedness to the handful of scholars who have published on the western Abenakis. Without the pioneering work of Gordon M. Day, Director Emeritus of the Canadian Ethnology Service, students of western Abenaki history and culture would still be groping in the dark."

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Seventeenth-Century History is Sketchy
We have a sketchy picture of Indians in northwestern Vermont for most of the seventeenth century. As Gordon Day wrote in the Handbook of North American Indians, of an unknown quantity to historians "The Western Abenaki have always been something something of an unknown to ethnographers" (Day 1978b:149). The history of the Indian village of Missisquoi and the identity of the people there have posed particular difficulties for historians over the years. The origins of Missisquoi are unknown (Day 1981 b:64). "This problem is part of a larger phenomenon, namely, a general deficit of ethnographic information for all northwestern New England (Day 1971:116). The movements of the Western Abenaki people "were not the principal concern of historians, either French or English, and this has weakened the record" (Day 1981 b:62).
Most histories have dealt with the lack of direct information about Missisquoi and
Indians in northwestern Vermont by writing around them. For example, in The Original Vermonters, William A. Haviland and Marjorie W. Power approach the seventeenth-century history of Vermont by devoting their discussion of that time period to "places other than Vermont." (Haviland & Power 1994:206-30). The bulk of the histories of Abenakis focus on the Eastern Abenakis of Maine, their migration to Quebec, and the subsequent events surrounding Odanak/St. Francis.
While Samuel de Champlain visited Vermont and the lake that bears his name in

1609, he did not interact with any Indians on the northern end of the lake. His guides told him that the lake's eastern shore and islands had been deserted (Calloway 1990a:71).

Gordon Day believed that the area had been fairly recently deserted—by Abenakis who fled the wars between the Iroquois and Mahicans (Day 1971:117-18).

There seems to be general agreement that Lake Champlain was a boundary between the Iroquois and the Western Abenakis (Day 1971:passim). However, at various times the Iroquois had claimed lands on the eastern side of the lake, and both Iroquois and Abenakis had hunted and traveled through areas east of lake (Calloway 1986:197, 215 & n.59). It is also known that Lake Champlain was used as a major travel route by Iroquois for attacks on New France in the seventeenth century (Day 1971:118).
By 1682 there were probably Pennacook and Sokoki Indians on Lake Champlain.
However speculation remains as to whether they were at the northern most reaches of the lake in Canada, or on parts of the lake in Vermont (Day 1981 b:22-24, 38, Dickason 1990: 87). How many natives lived or hunted in this area is a subject of debate. The petition claims there were as many as 4,000 Abenaki in the Missisquoi region (Petition: 13). Professor John Dickinson, an historian at the Universite de Montreal, disputes this figure (Dickinson Affidavit, Attachment B, 2). 5. Noting the tendency of authors at certain periods to exaggerate population, he states that

[t]only clear evidence available concerns the eighteenth century, and it would seem that the 60 to 80 warriors mentioned in French documents regarding the village Missisquoi relate to an Abenaki community of some 300-400 people. (Dickinson Affidavit, Attachment B, 2).

The petitioner's interest in rejecting the lower figure for population size is evident: if, as they argue, there was a greater number of natives as Missisquoi in the seventeenth century, then that bolsters the argument that the migration to Canada in the eighteenth
FOOTNOTE:
5. Professor Dickinson's affidavit is attached to this Response.

century accounted for only a small portion of their numbers and left a significant

number still at Missisquoi. 6.

Some Noteworthy Events of the Seventeenth-Century
In 1662-64 the Western Abenaki began to retreat, in small numbers, to Quebec due to wars with the Iroquois (Dickason 1990:86 n. 28). During this time, the Iroquois terrorized all the Algonquian tribes as far east as Maine (Haviland & Power 1994:225). The Abenakis,for the most part, were allied with the French, so they tended to seek refuge in New France 7. (Haviland & Power 1994:2119-23). By contrast, the Iroquois were allies of the English. Around this same time, the first settlement of Europeans in the area of Lake Champlain occurred in the form of a French mission and fort of Sainte-Anne on Isle la Motte in 1666 (Huden 1956:116, Calloway 1990a:72).
The year 1675 was a significant one for the Western Abenaki (Dickason 1990:86). In that year, King Philip's War erupted—a war between the British colonists and Indians in southern New England. 8. One immediate consequence of King Philip's War was the creation of the refugee village at Schaghticoke on the Hudson River in New York. Many Indians from the Connecticut River valley, including Sokokis, fled to Schaghticoke at this time (Day 1981 b:29). A further effect of the war was the movement of large numbers of Western Abenakis into Canada (Dickason 1990:86, Calloway 1990:75).
FOOTNOTES:
6. The petition rejects, as low. Day's estimate of 5,000 natives for the larger region encompassing not only Lake Champlain, but also the Merrimack River in New Hampshire and the upper Connecticut River (Petition: 12). Professor Dickinson's own studies of native populations led him to conclude Day's estimate was quite reasonable. (Dickinson affidavit, Attachment B, 2).
7. The alliance of the Abenakis with the French was not entirely consistent and continuous. It required maintenance by the French in order to prevent it from deteriorating (Dickason 1990).

The search for safer regions during King Philip's War in 1675 led some natives to move to Missisquoi as well (Haviland & Power 1994:227, Day 1978b:150-51). Over the next 25 years, the Lake Champlain Valley was visited by hunters from Schaghticoke, and groups of Indians left Schaghticoke and settled for a time at Missisquoi before moving on to settle farther north in Quebec (Day 1981b:30, Calloway 1986:208-10, 216, Haviland & Power 1994:228).

The wars between the Abenakis and the English, coupled with the English alliance with the Abenakis' historic enemy the Iroquois, had the effect of increasing ties between the Abenakis and the French (Dickason 1990:86, Calloway, 1990a:73). The French Jesuits' spread of Catholicism to the Abenakis also firmed up ties between them (Calloway, 1990a:72). The influx of Western Abenakis, from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, filled the French mission at Sillery, near Quebec City. This prompted the Jesuits to establish a new mission to accommodate 600 Abenakis in 1683 at St. Francois-de-Sales on the Chaudiere River (Dickason 1990:88, Calloway 1986:221. Dickinson & Grabowski 1993:59).
In 1700 this mission was transferred to the one on the St. Francis River (Dickason 1990:88).
The latter became the site of the Indian village of St. Francis, also known as Odanak.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Population Movements In and Out of Missisquoi During the Eighteenth Century

Describing both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Calloway wrote: Describing eighteenth Calloway:


Direct documentary evidence of the western Abenakis is scarce in the early historic period. The sources are relatively rich in information about the colonists' dealings with the Iroquois of New York, the eastern Abenakis of
FOOTNOTE:
8. Named for the Wampanoag Indian Chief Philip, King Philips War was the start of a series of wars between the British and the Abenakis, which lasted 85 years (Haviland & Power 1994:227).