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Monday, November 8, 2010

State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 49 to 56:

The CD-ROM indexes for the 1870 and 1880 censuses disclose the names of the
families classified as Indian. The Indian families on the 1870 census include two New Jersey families—the Jacksons. The others are listed as having emigrated from Canada—indicating they are not long-standing Vermont residents. Moreover, none of these families is listed as living in Franklin County, the area of the petitioner's supposed traditional home (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Family Quest 1870).
The 1880 census gives similar information. It shows four families of Indians
Jackson, Emory, Koska and Bomsawin. Only one of the heads of families was born in Vermont—the others are immigrants from Canada, Massachusetts, or New Jersey. Two of the families lived well south of Missisquoi—In Rutland and Addison Counties. The Jackson family, shown living in Essex County, was from New Jersey, and is not a native Vermont family. The last one is the Obomsawin family a well-known name in the records of Odanak/St. Francis. The Obomsawins maintained continuous contact with and membership in the Odanak Reserve. None of the families listed in the 1880 census appears on the genealogical charts submitted by the petitioner. 35. See discussion in section on Criterion

(e)—Descent From Historic Tribe.
The 1890 census was the first of three federal censuses to specifically seek out
Indians and enumerate them on special forms. In Vermont, this census listed 34 Indians. Although the individual listings of the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire, a compilation summarizing the results of the Indian census survived. This compilation shows the counties
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FOOTNOTE:
35. The two members of the Obomsawin extended family shown on the 1880 census are William and Mary Obomsawin. They are not included in the petitioner's Family Descencdancy Charts. The only Obomsawin alive in 1880 who is included on those genealogical Charts is Simon Obomsawin. Simon reportedly came to Vermont in the early twentieth century (Huden 1955).
in which those 34 Indians lived; none lived in Franklin County. It disclosed thirteen Indians in Essex County, quite likely the Jackson family, which showed up there in the previous census. It also listed eight in Chittenden County, eight in Windsor County—in the far-southeastern corner of Vermont—and five others scattered around the state. However, no Indians were uncovered in Franklin County (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1894:602). These census materials are consistent with the observations of the local historians and surveyors who reported no Indian communities in Vermont after 1800. The lack of any significant numbers of Indians in the federal censuses confirms the views of those local reporters that the Indians they saw were travelers visiting the state.

Sightings of Indian Visitors and the Basket Trade
So what is the explanation for these traveling Indians who were sighted in Vermont? The trade in baskets provides one answer. The St. Francis Abenakis, like Indians from other tribes, made woodsplint baskets in the winter and sold them to whites in the summer. The tradition of making twined bags for carrying things was an older aboriginal custom. The practice of making splint baskets to sell to whites was more recent, spreading from the Indians of the Delaware Valley northward in the eighteenth century (Brasser 1975:8, 20-21). When the Indians no longer were able to rely on fur trading for subsistence, they turned to making and selling baskets (Brasser 1975:15, 28). The earliest known trade in baskets in Vermont is from 1799, when a group of starving Indians from Odanak/St. Francis came down the Missisquoi to Troy, Vermont (Brasser 1975:21, 27, Sumner 1860:22, 26). The only other evidence of an early nineteenth century Indian basket made for whites is from the
1820's: a Mahican basket lined with pages from the Vermont newspaper the Rutland Herald (Ulrich 2001:352).

A few local reports of traveling families of Indians loaded with basketmaking
supplies confirm that the families seen in Vermont were part of the Canadian Indian basketmakers. One such account comes from the journal of Edwin H. Burlingame, an instructor at the Barre Academy in Barre, Vermont. He wrote of this encounter in his diary in October 1853:

Towards night Moore and myself walked about a mile above the village to an encampment of Indians who have been stopping here for a few days. We found them with their tents pitched near the river, a couple of distinct tribes, one from St. Francis in Canada, and the other from Maine. The tents were of white cotton cloth in the triangular shape and large enough to hold four or five persons comfortably. They were filled up with basket stuff and material for bows and arrows. The basket stuff was in strips, some of them dyed blue, yellow, and red, while heaps of finished baskets of all shapes and sizes were piled up in the middle. (Burlingame 1853:16).

Another similar reference to Abenakis traveling down the Connecticut River to sell their wares appears in the History of Barnet, Vermont written in 1923:

Yet within the recollection of many who are still living, small bands of the Abenaquis Indians came down the river in birchbark canoes in summer during several years. Men, women and children built wigwams In true Indian fashion, covered with bark and the skins of wild animals, bringing with them baskets and other trinkets which they had made during the winter. The men spent most of their time in fishing and hunting, while the women sold their wares from house to house. Such a company visited Newbury as late as 1857. (Wells 1923:4). 36.

One further account of Indian visitors from out of state comes from Lyman Haves, History of the Town of Rockingham in the southeastern part of Vermont.

During all the first half of the last century small parties of more civilized and peaceable Abenaqui Indians used to visit Bellows Falls nearly every summer, coming from their homes in Canada and New York state. They came down
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FOOTNOTE:
36. Newbury and Barnet are located on the Vermont-New Hampshire border along the Connecticut along River (see map above, p. vi).
the Connecticut in their canoes, usually bringing supplies of baskets and other trinkets which they had manufactured during the previous winters, which they sold to citizens of Bellows Falls and the then large number of summer visitors....The last remnant of this tribe came to Bellows Falls early in the summer, about 1856, in their birchbark canoes. (Hayes 1907:48-49).

The narrative goes on to portray the old chief who came to Rockingham with his
family. It recounts stories the old man told about his war service with the English, and his visits to England. It describes the large silver medal from King George III which he wore. Most of his family returned to Canada at the end of the summer, but the old man, in ill health, stayed until he died there late that autumn. After burying him, his son returned to Canada, and no further mention of Indians in the area appears in the town history (Hayes 1907:49-50).


It is worth noting that these sightings of Indians were in parts of Vermont far from Swanton. Barnet is in the northeastern part of the state. Barre is in the central part of the state, and Bellows Falls is in the southeastern section. In two of the three accounts, the Indians are specifically identified as coming from Canada, Maine, or New York. In the third, the Indians came down the river to Barnet—which means down the Connecticut River, from the northern tip of New Hampshire, Canada, or Maine. In none were the Indians described as residing in the area. They were seasonal visitors who lived most of the year in Canada.
All the sightings above appeared before 1860. After 1860, to 1920, the Abenakis of Odanak/St. Francis made baskets for the tourist trade. They took their baskets directly to the emerging resorts and set up shops to sell their wares all summer (Pelletier 1982: 1, 5, Pierce 1977:48-49 citing conversation with Stephen Laurent; McMullen & Handsman 1987:28).
These resorts were not located in the areas of any historic Indian villages. The
baskets made during this time period were fancy baskets for wealthy tourists, they were more elaborate than the previous period's utilitarian woodsplint baskets (Ulrich 2001:347, Lester 1987:39). During this time, entire families from Odanak/St. Francis would move to a tourist
area in the United States and stay there from the spring to fall. They sold baskets that they had made during the winter (Pelletier 1982:1, 5). This was a prosperous livelihood:

Each family chose a different resort area to which they usually returned annually and where they either owned a house or rented one. A basket stand or shop was erected on the premises from which they displayed their work and demonstrated their craft....In order to make the maximum number of baskets in the summer, the women were often freed from their household responsibilities by hiring local people to do the domestic work for them (Pelletier 1982:5).

The resorts to which these families of Odanak/St. Francis traveled to set up shop included Highgate Springs, Vermont, on the border with Canada (Hume 1991:106). This Highgate resort area, along with others in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; Lake Placid, Lake George, Lake Mahopak, and Saratoga Lake, New York, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Michigan, was chosen for its high concentration of tourists--the basket-buying customers of the Victorian age. Odanak/St. Francis Abenaki chief Joseph Laurent made a conscious effort to develop the basket selling business at such resorts by establishing seasonal Abenaki camps in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (Hume 1991:103). After over thirty years of selling baskets from this Intervals, New Hampshire, camp, the area became known as a center for Indians from Odanak despite the fact that they had no previous historical tie to the area (Hume 1991:105, 111). Two members of the Obomsawin family interviewed by Gordon Day in 1957 stated that they did not believe that Abenaki families from Odanak/St. Francis returned to their historic place of origin to sell baskets. Rather, they believed sites for selling were chosen based on the ability to make sales (Day 1948-1973:14).
The fact that the Abenakis of Odanak/St. Francis developed these successful outlets for their baskets at resorts in the White Mountains, Adirondacks, and elsewhere, may explain why there were less frequent sightings of traveling basketmakers peddling baskets house to
house in Vermont in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Indians were focusing on more lucrative resort markets mostly outside of Vermont. This is a more sensible explanation for the lack of Indian sightings than the idea that they took their identities underground for protection.
The connection between Indians and basketmaking should not be extended so broadly that it obscures other facts. Just because someone is identified as a basketmaker does not necessarily mean he or she is Indian. There were Yankee baskets of oak splints produced by whites in the second half of the nineteenth century (McMullen 199 1:77). Whites also learned basketmaking from Indians in the nineteenth century and developed their own industries as a result (Brasses 1975:23). Moreover, not only the basketmakers sold baskets. There were also gypsies who bought up baskets front Penobscot Indians in Maine and sold them elsewhere in their travels (Lester, 1987:53, 57). One basket in a Vermont museum is reported to have been traded to a family in northeastern Vermont by gypsies in the late nineteenth century in exchange for hay for the travelers' horses (Vermont Historical Society 1983). 37.
37. 
Covered Basket
c. 1865 - 1890
Artist unknown, Abenaki
South Walden, Vermont
Brown ash
12" H x 11" W x 11" D
Loaned by Elizabeth White
"Gypsies" used to winder in South Walden every year near the railroad tracks. The local farmers used to raise a good crop of hay and the "Gypsies" would come up and trade baskets in exchange for hay for their horses.
The Vermont Historical Society Museum
Museum Collection And Loans
Museum Number: 1983.12.1 a-b
Date and Place Received: March 23, 1983, Mple
SOURCE: White, Elizabeth S.
Box 574 in West Yarmouth, Mass. 02673
TITLE: Abenaki covered basket
PLACE AND DATE: 186501890, South Walden, Vermont
MEDIUM: Brown Ash
Covered basket made in the Abenaki tradition in South Walden, Vt. about 1865-1890. Slightly flared sides and deep lid. A row of three dimensions weave "cowes" around the three dimensional weave. (Loops out, see diagram above for the weave). Solid ash handle, about 1/2" inch wide. Lid is 1 3/4" to 2" inches deep.
HISTORY: "Carroll White, born in South Walden, Vermont lived on the ancestral farm there. This basket was given to his parents by gypsies (Indians?) in payment for hay for their horses." donor. From Vermont Vital Records: Carroll H. White born on May 31, 1876 in Walden, Vermont, the son James Dodge White (James D. White was born c. 1833 and died on June 18, 1900 in Walden, Vt.) and Sarah E. (nee: Hill) who was born in Walden, Vt. James and Sarah married January 21, 1862 in Hardwick, Vermont. James Dodge White's parents were Robert and Mary (nee: Durant) White of Walden, Vt.
REMARKS: Basket is illustrated on Page 57 of Always in Season: Folk Art and Traditional Culture in Vermont. By Jane Beck, ed. Montpelier; Vermont Council on the Arts, 1982

[Back to Page 54 of the State Response....]
The association of horses and baskets with gypsies is not unusual. Indeed, Romnichel Gypsies from Britain brought horses to the United States from Canada during the decades after 1860 (Salo & Salo 1982:286). And there were gypsies known to live in eastern Canada during that time period (Salo & Salo 1977). Moreover, basketmaking was a common trade for gypsies in New England (Salo & Salo 1982:288-91).
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FOOTNOTE:
37. The VHS accession sheet notes that the donor made a parenthetical comment that the gypsies who traded the basket may have been Indians. This shows the confusion between gypsies and Indians that has developed in recent years.
In sum, from 1800 to 1860 the sightings of Indians in Vermont represented traveling families from Canada and Maine selling baskets and wares. Such sightings diminished and were unmentioned after 1860 as the Abenakis found better markets in resort towns outside of Vermont. The occasional mention of basketmakers in Vermont after 1860 can be attributed to whites and gypsies who took up the trade.

Rowland Robinson's Indian Friends
Vermont author and illustrator Rowland E. Robinson ( 1834-1900) was known in the late nineteenth century for his naturalistic stories about Vermont. His writings are sometimes cited in support of arguments that the Abenakis maintained a continuous presence in Vermont (Dann 2001 ). Robinson's works are instructive, but not for the proposition that there was an uninterrupted Abenaki presence in Vermont. The Indians about which he wrote were from Odanak/St. Francis.
Robinson lived in Ferrisburgh, at the southern end of Lake Champlain. While his
stories were published as fiction, they are widely acknowledged to be faithful renditions of people, scenes, and events (Collins 1934: 5-6, Martin 1955:11 ). 38. Robinson's stories include a detailed description of the construction of an Indian canoe, Indian folk legends, and many Indian names for places in Vermont. He gleaned this information from Indians with whom he became friends. This is attested to by some of his personal journals and correspondence that are still extant. 39.
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FOOTNOTES:
38. Collins wrote: "Every reader of Robinson will grant, however. that he was one of those Vermonters who seem gifted with the mind of natural-born investigator. Upon readers of Robinson, whether  folk-lore, essays, or history, is laid the conviction that here is an author who knows whereof he writes" (Collins 1934:6).

39. His papers are housed at the Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt., and the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont, Middlebury, Vt.
Gordon Day drew on Robinson's writing as a source of ethnological material (Day writing 1978a). In the following, summary, Day pointed out that the Indians with whom Robinson was familiar were visitors from St. Francis:

Did he know the Indians? According to Collins: "Almost every year small bands of St. Francis Indians ... camped about Vergennes," Vergennes being at the first falls of Otter Creek and close to Robinson's home. In his geographical essay entitled Along Three Rivers, Robinson writing about Lewis Creek said, "I remember visiting with my grandfather a camp of St. Francis Indians, in a piney hollow that divides the South bank." A footnote in his historical sketch of Ferrisburgh, written in 1860, proves that he was already acquainted with John Watso, the Abenaki Indian who became his principal informant. His letter to Manley Hardy of Brewer, Maine. implies that he was still in touch with this informant in 1896. Such direct testimony does not need support, but again Robinson's own work confirms it. The Indian characters whom he introduced into his stories bore family names which were current in the St. Francis band in the 19th century, names like Wadzo, Takwses, and Otodosan. (Day 1978a:37).

Day believed Robinson had seen the Indians from St. Francis coming to sell their baskets in the 1850's (Day 1978a:39). Indeed, the Indians who visited Vermont in Robinson's narratives came to sell baskets and moccasins around the countryside (Robinson 1921a:92, 1921 b:136 ).
Among the indications that the Indians who visited Ferrisburgh and neighboring
Charlotte were not local residents is Robinson's identification of them as "Waubanakee of Saint Francis." In his article on the history of Ferrisburgh in Maria Henenway" Vermont Historical Gazetteer, Robinson related information he personally gathered from "John Watso, or Wadhso, an intelligent Indian of St. Francois" (Robinson 1867:32). This was contemporaneous information from an Abenaki living in 1858. 40. Watso related the history of the departure of Indians from Vermont as follows:
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FOOTNOTE:
40. Collins says that Hememway met Robinson in 1858 and that his essay on was first Ferrisburgh published by her in 1860 (Collins 1934:8-9).

State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 41 to 48:

swayed by recent scholarship that itself relies on unsubstantiated claims in the original petition.

Countervailing Evidence that the Missisquoi Did Not Return to Vermont as a Tribe After 1800
As pointed out above, the weight of the evidence cited by the petitioner in favor of its case for continuity of Missisquoi settlement and community is questionable given the ambiguities in the material and the amount of guessing necessary to interpret it. The speculative conclusions that the petitioner draws from the scarce evidence it cites must be viewed in context. There is a large body of evidence that indicates that during the nineteenth century there was no continual presence of any Indian tribe in the Missisquoi, or elsewhere in northwestern Vermont This evidence includes journals of travelers, surveys of Indians, town histories, and census records..

Travelers. Historians. and Surveyors of Indians
There were a number of travelers and contemporary historians who wrote about
Vermont during, the nineteenth Century. Some of these individuals took a specific interest in Indians,  whenever they encountered them. The fact that they never came across a community of Indians in northwestern Vermont along Lake Champlain is significant. One of the earliest of the journals is that of Edward Augustus Kendall relating his travels in northern New England during 1807, 1808, and 1809 (Kendall: 1809). He devoted six chapters of the book to Vermont. He appeared to have more than a passing familiarity with the northwestern part of Vermont and the lake. He wrote of the beauty of the landscape between Burlington and St. Albans, having "passed this road more than once, both in summer and in winter," and
indicated that he "had occasion to pass through this part of the country of Lake Champlain a second time, in the middle of the year 1808, and again in the beginning of that of 1809" (Kendall 1809:276, 293). Moreover, Kendall wrote that "[I]n June, 1808, I was two days upon the lake, making a circuitous voyage, between Saint-John's, or Fort de Saint-Jean, [Quebec,] and Burlington" (Kendall 1809:293; see map above, p.6). He even traveled to "Swanton Falls, a cataract on the Michiscoui...[which] empties itself in a large bay, to which it gives its name" (Kendall 1809:2)76). Kendall wrote of meeting Indians at St. Francis, Quebec, and Indians in Maine, but made no mention of any in Vermont (Kendall 1809:66-St. Francis—not from any 69). He learned the meaning of Michiscoui, 30. from the Indians at St. Francis Indians in Vermont, apparently having encountered no Indians in Vermont. 31.
In 1822, Jedediah Morse was given the task of ascertaining the number of the various tribes in the United States for a government report. He compiled an extensive list and enumeration of Indians throughout the Country entitled Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the Summer of 1820. He found "Abenaquies" In Maine, but listed no Indians of any sort in Vermont (Morse 1822:67). His statistical table identified Indians in New England in enclaves as small as 40 "souls" (Morse 1866:361-74). Any group of Indians functioning and holding itself out as a tribe should have received notice, so it is significant that there was no mention of any as a tribe Abenakis in Missisquoi, let alone elsewhere in Vermont.
FOOTNOTES:
30. " He writes, "The word Michiscoui is of the Indian tongue, but of French orthography. By the English, it is sometimes, but illiterately, spelt Missisque" (Kendall 1809:276).
31. He writes, "upon inquiry, of the Indians of Saint-Francis, both for the true name and signification, I found them agreed in calling the river Miskiscoo, Miskiski, for Missi kiscoo, which they interpret them calling the river abounding in waterfowl" (Kendall 1809:276).
Samuel Drake, an avid student of "Indian History" undertook to "locate the various bands of Aborigines, ancient and modern, and to convey the best information respecting their numbers our multifarious sources will warrant" in his comprehensive survey of Indians published in 1845 called The Book of the Indians: or, Biography and History of the Indians of North America, from its First Discovery to the year 1841. He was a sympathetic observer of Indians, taking pains in the Preface to his book to criticize the wrongs done to the Cherokees (Drake 1845:v). He identified the "Abenakies" as "over Maine until 1754, then went to Canada; 200 in 1689; 150 in 1780" (Drake 1845:v). In his detailed list of 465 Indian groups in the United States he included specific Abenaki groups such as the Penobscots, Marachites, 32. St. John's, 33. and Wawenoks (Drake 1845:v-xii). He did not detect any Missisquois or Vermont Abenakis.
One of the foremost authorities on the Indians of the nineteenth century was H.R. Schoolcraft. His six-volume tome, Historical and Statistical Information on the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851-54), was prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was an extensive study of the numbers, location, and status of Indians at the time. None of the tables in Schoolcraft's work indicates the presence of Missisquois or Abenakis in Vermont. None of the references to the Abenakis located them around Lake Champlain in the mid-nineteenth century when he was writing. Instead, he described them as "[a] tribe of Indians formerly inhabiting the territory which now comprises a part of the States of Maine and New Hampshire" (Schoolcraft 1851-54:vol. III, 512). He wrote that the
FOOTNOTES:
32. This may be the Malacites.
33. These Indians are described as living on the St. Johns River, which is in Maine. This is quite distant and should not be confused with the town and fort of St. Jean/St. John on the Richelieu River in Quebec.
Abenakis are now "seated at the village of St. Francis" in Quebec. He said the territory they inhabit is "situated on the south of the St. Lawrence, between the St. John's of New Brunswick and the river Richelieu, Canada" (Schoolcraft 1851-54:vol. IV, 542). The only explanation for his failure to detect any Abenakis in Vermont must be the lack of any identifiable Indian community there at the time. Schoolcraft was familiar with the region and had spent a considerable amount of time there. He was born not far from Vermont, in Albany County, New York, and he attended Middlebury College in western Vermont. He spent time at Trois Rivieres, Montreal, and Caughnawagha learning the Mohawk language in the 1790's. His interest in Indian Culture was strong and sympathetic, and he was married to a Chippewa woman (Nichols 1954:1521). If there was a large Abenaki community at Missisquoi at that time, as petitioner claims, then one would expect Schoolcraft to be aware of it, since he was very familiar with the surrounding areas.
In addition to these national surveys of Indians, there were histories of Vermont
written in the nineteenth century which could be expected to at least mention the Abenakis if they were still functioning as a community. For example, Francis Smith Eastman's A History of Vermont, From its First Settlement to the Present Time, published in 1828, stated that the original inhabitants of Vermont were the Coos Indians. He wrote about some of their cultural practices, but made no mention of the Missisquoi as a tribe indigenous to Vermont or continuing to live there (Eastman 1828:16-20). Eastman also recounted the claims made by the Caughnawagha Indians of Canada for land in Vermont 1798. Again he did not relate this to any Indians living in Vermont at the time of his writing (Eastman:78-79).
A few decades later, S. R. Hall wrote The Geography and History of Vermont (2nd ed. 1868) as a textbook for students. An entire lesson was devoted to the history of the Indians and their interactions with the white settlers from 1609 through 1761. In this section, Hall stated "the Iroquois owned the land in the west part of Vermont, and once had numerous habitations on the lake and on the rivers that flow into it. Indians from the Cossack and St. Francis tribes frequented other parts, rather as hunting ground than as a place of permanent residence" (Hall 1868:100).

Training one's eyes closer, on a local level, leads to Hamilton Child's Gazetteer and Business Directory of Franklin acid Grand Isle Counties, Vt., for 1882-83. Child included a short history of the "aboriginal occupancy" of these two counties ill his book. He recognized the presence of Indians in Franklin County—the county in which one finds Swanton and the Missisquoi region—in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but observed that they did not maintain settlements in more recent times. He wrote:

A branch of the Abenaquis tribe were the aboriginal Mal occupants of this section of the country; and, indeed, they lingered upon their rightful soil, at the mouth of the Lamoille along the river, and thence north along the Missisquoi bay, for a long time after the French and English had taken possession of the country to the north and south of them....[I]n 1755, the northern parts of Lake Champlain were in the possession of the St. Francis tribe of Indians, who wintered there in large numbers and subsisted by hunting and fishing; and as late as the time of the Revolutionary war, a branch of this tribe had a village at Swanton, consisting of about fifty huts, with a church, Jesuit missionary, and had some land under cultivation. (Child 1883:38).

Going on to note the abundance of arrowheads found near Franklin pond, he wrote of many tribes having contact with the area:

neither this nor any other locality in the State seems to have been the Redman's home, at least not with historic times. Vermont was rather a territory to which all laid claim, and was used in common as a hunting, fishing, and battle-ground, by the St. Francis tribe on the north, their principal settlement being at Montreal, or Hockhelaga, as it was then called; the
Narraganset on the east, with their principal settlement on the Merrimac river; the Pepuquoits on the south, inhabiting the northwestern part of Connecticut; and the Iroquois, or Mohawks, as they were commonly called, on the southwest, their principal settlement being at Schenectady, N.Y., on the Mohawk river. (Child 1883:38).

This narration demonstrates that the late nineteenth century observers discerned no contemporaneous Indian residents in Franklin or Grand Isle Counties. There was no obvious community of Indians remaining, there in the late nineteenth century.
Perry's history of Swanton included one contemporary Illustration of the Indians.
After stating several times that the Indians of Missisquoi had retreated to St. Francis, "their principal centre," he wrote in 1863 that "a few from time to time have been, & are still, in the habit of visiting their old home" (Perry 1863:240-42). During these visits, he described them"liv[ing] for the most part by making baskets, moccasins, and trinkets, by hunting and by hunting fishing, as well as by an indifferent cultivation of the soil" (Perry 1863:242). Thus Perry knew of Indians, but they were visitors. There was no continuous community inhabited by Indians in Swanton; rather there were Indians from Quebec who traveled through to sell their wares.

Federal Census Enumerations
Besides the surveyors and historians who looked for Indians and wrote local histories, there were government officials examining the populace. Vermont has never conducted any censuses of its own, 34. but the federal census materials are broken down by state and county in compilations that analyze the data. The federal censuses from 1860 onward used the category "Indian" as a race in the enumerations. The census identified only 20 individuals as
FOOTNOTES:
34. The petition states that it drew on the state census for some material. but this is impossible (Second Addendum:6). There never has been any Vermont state census (Eichholz 1993:20-22).
Indian in Vermont that year, and none were in Franklin County (U.S. Bureau of Census 1864:493). The enumerations for the following three federal censuses were similar. There were fourteen, eleven, and thirty-four individuals identified as Indian in the respective censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1890 (U.S. Bureau of Census 1872:68, 1901:561, Table 19).
Table 1:
Summary of Indian Population in Vermont
as Shown in Federal Census Reports
COUNTIES
1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
(See Document Image Page 48 for details)

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Census 1864, 1872, 1894, 1901, 1922, 1932, 1943. 1952, 1961, 1973, 1982, 1992.

For 1910 census, this figure is for counties other than Addison, Bennington, Caledonia, Chittenden, Franklin, Orleans, Rutland, Windham, or Windsor.

+ For 1950 census, this figure is for counties other than Chittenden.

++ Foreign born figures are not available for all years. When given, they are included in the figures for counties, not in addition to them.

For 1880 census, no county breakdown is available.
For 1940 census, no county breakdown is available.

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