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Photo 3. Shows Missisquoi filing cabinets that contain supporting recognition documents.
Tribal Roles:
The database of Missisquoi citizen's names and addresses are maintained and updated at tribal headquarters in Swanton. The Missisquoi Tribal Roles are presented in Appendix 1.
OK, SO THE SWANTON BASED "ST. FRANCIS/SOKOKI" "BAND OF THE ABENAKI" "NATION", "SOVEREIGN ABENAKI REPUBLIC" SUBMITTED THEIR "TRIBAL ROLLS" WITH THE NAMES OF THEIR MEMBERS, AND THEIR ADDRESSES....
DOES THE "ST. FRANCIS/SOKOKI GROUP ASSUME THAT THIS MAKES THEIR PETITION MORE LEGITIMATE, AUTHENTIC AND OF MORE MERIT BECAUSE THEY HAVE A LIST OF NAMES WITH ADDRESSES IN THEIR APPLICATION VS. THE OTHER ALLEGED AND REINVENTED "ABENAKI" CORPORATE ENTITIES?
AGAIN, SHOWING AND PROVIDING A PHOTOGRAPH OF FILING CABINETS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THERE IS ANYTHING IN THOSE PARTICULAR FILING CABINETS. FOR ALL ANYONE KNOWS, EACH AND EVERYONE OF THOSE CABINETS IN THAT PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE COULD VERY WELL BE EMPTY.
EVEN IF THEY WEREN'T, WHAT MAKES ANYONE ASSUME THAT THE FAMILIES AND/OR THE PERSONS ON THIS MEMBERSHIP LIST, IS OF ABENAKI DESCENT? IF THE GROUP COULD NOT PROVE EVEN 1% PERCENT OF THEIR MEMBERSHIP WAS OF ABENAKI DESCENT IN 2006-2007 AFTER 38-40+ YEARS, WHAT MAKES THESE PEOPLE ANYMORE AUTHENTIC OR PROVEN "ABENAKIS"?
"NATIVE" "NATIVE AMERICAN" OR "INDIAN" DOESN'T MEAN "ABENAKI" NOR THAT THESE PEOPLE COME FROM AN "ABENAKI COMMUNITY." WHAT THESE PEOPLE DO COME FROM IS A 1974-1976 CREATED CORPORATE ENTITY THAT ATTEMPTS TO STEAL THE IDENTITY OF BEING ABENAKI, FROM THOSE WHO ARE LEGITIMATELY ABENAKI, BY WAY OF HISTORICAL ABENAKI COMMUNITY, HISTORICAL ABENAKI GENEALOGICAL CONNECTION(S), AND PRE-1970'S SOCIAL INTERACTION(S) WITH OTHER LEGITIMATE NATIVE COMMUNITIES THROUGHOUT N'DAKINNA.
IF SUCH "MISSISQUOI FILING CABINETS" CONTAIN SUPPORTING RECOGNITION DOCUMENTS, HISTORICALLY, GENEALOGICALLY AND SOCIALLY, THEN WHY DIDN'T THIS GROUP GET FEDERAL RECOGNITION IN THE FIRST PLACE ca. NOVEMBER 2006-JULY 2007?
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§ 853 (c) (5) The applicant has an enduring community presence within the boundaries of Vermont that is documented by archaeology, ethnography, Physical anthropology, history, folklore, or any other applicable scholarly research and data.
Introduction
Today, Missisquoi is a distinct Native "town-resident" community historically associated with portions of modern Swanton, Alburg and Highgate towns in Franklin Comity, VT. Specifically, Missisquoi was also a historically well-known Abenaki village located about a mile to the northwest of Swanton, Vermont; which figures prominently in the ethnohistories of early and mid 18"' century Northern New England such as Gordon Day's 1981 Identity of the St. Francis Indians or Colin Calloway's 1990 The Western Abenakis of Vermont. In addition, its specific location has been known and mapped as a Euroamerican determination of Indigenous ethnicity (i.e. the "Indian Castle" of the famous 1763 "Murray and Collins Map" of Lake Champlain).
Illustration
Figure 1. Detail showing "Indian Castle," Murray, and Collins map of Lake Champlain, 1763.
This was the period when several Missisquoi families leased sections of their land in the Missisquoi River valley to an Englishman in "Robertson's Lease," a document confirming an Abenaki presence at the "Indian castle" area in the period slightly before our narrative begins. Haviland and Power's The Original Vermonters and Fred Wiseman's Voice of the Dawn, both published by University of New England in 2001, and Against the Darkness, a DVD from
The Original Vermonter's 1st Edition and the 2nd Edition by William Haviland, as well as Voice of the Dawn, An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation and the DVD "Against the Darkness" by Frederick M. Wiseman were all reviewed, studied and addressed by the Office of Federal Acknowledgement, of the Bureau of the Indian Affairs.
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Title VII Indian Education (Swanton, VT), deal with 19th and 20th century Missisquoi Abenaki culture in detail. However, a few salient, and mostly unpublished, historical references from the post-1780 era are presented below.
The origin of the word Missiquoi is "Masipskoik" a word that means place where there are boulders, more specifically "boulders point. " We have enquired among the old Abenaquis and they all agree about this interpretation as a thing known among them for a long time.
Father de Gonzague, Missionary to the Odanak Abenakis
In A study of the etymology of the place name Missisquoi
G. McAleer 1906:p. 8
Old records existing in Swanton, VT (originally found by ethnohistorian John Moody) revealed in 1790, there were "fifty Abenaki Lodges near Swanton Village..." This site was probably downriver a mile or so from modern Swanton, where their burial ground was discovered in 2000, and where their "Indian Castle' or palisaded village was located thirty years before that. The fact that they were described as "lodges" rather than houses provides evidence of the typical conical, single-family wigwam, although the possibility of "Quonset-hut" style multi-family longhouses cannot be ruled out. This figure also implies a minimum Missisquoi Village population over 100 Native persons if we only assume 2 people per family. If we use the anthropological standard of 5.2 persons/family/wigwam, the Native population would be over 250 persons. The Abenakis seemed to be in a defensive mode at the time, for they were accused of burning a barn that same year in Sheldon, twelve miles upriver from their village. Twenty years later produced the only known painting of Missisquoi Native people (Figure 2). A War of 1812-era oil painting on canvas "Tyler's Farm near Highgate" by a Benson (given name unknown) in the....
Illustration
Figure 2. Tyler's Farm near Highgate" by a Benson circa 1812.
....Shelburne Museum collection forms the cover of John Duffy's 1985 book Vermont, an Illustrated History (City Reports). The painting clearly depicts a birch bark canoe on Missisquoi
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Bay, with two women and a child in the canoe, The women were clearly wearing the ethnically distinct peaked hood characteristic of the Wabanaki (a collective culture group that includes the Abenakis, Penobscots, Maliseets, Passamaquodies and Micmacs) Native people in file region. This is an important archival painting, in that it is the only known illustration of the traditional beadwork and ribbon-work decorated peaked hood from Vermont. There area few distinctive ca. 1810-20 Native American artifacts from the area to confirm the Identity of the people in the painting. Probably the most applicable period object is a beaded panel made of red "stroud" trade wool edged with (mostly decayed) silk ribbon (Figure 3). Mid 20th century Swanton historian and collector Ben Gravel, said it was found inside of the wall of a house in Swanton. Wiseman remembers that Gravel also had collected a pair of complete local moccasins that have disappeared since his death many years ago.Illustration
Figure 3. Red trade wool panel (epaulet or cuff)
decorated with 10/0, and 15/0 beads.
Swanton, ca. 1800-1830.
Twenty years after the Shelburne Museum painting of women paddling just off of the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, the Green Mountain Democrat of April 3, 1835 explained that there was a "tribe of the Missisques, who live a wandering life on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain." That this "wandering life" was, at least part an accommodation to European economics is documented in the coeval Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania (Oct. 3, 1835), which reports "... Indians from Lake Champlain have taken up residence in the city (Philadelphia, PA), dwelling in two birch bark tents, they propose to carry on the basket-making business." The basket making business reappears many times in the Missisquoi narrative, as we see below.
The physical nature of these mysterious early 19th century "Missisques" people was revealed at the Bushey Site, inadvertently uncovered in 2000 by construction of a residential cellar hole adjacent to the old mapped Missisquoi "Indian castle." This site consisted of a historic period graveyard, and, according to archaeologist James Petersen of the University of Vermont; was complete with the remains of softwood (not the traditional birch bark) coffins nailed with 18th and 19th century forged and cut nails. But the oils in the cedar coffins also preserved within them an additional important historical detail. In a December 08, 2002 e-mail, Dr. Petersen said "I
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looked at the (distinctive cut coffin nails Wiseman suggested he examine) nails and...they are not the single cut type, but the double cut style. I think that they are definitely a mid 19th century type." The artifacts referred to by Prof. Petersen were distinctive "cross-cut" nails found in at least two coffins, that were produced by a machine patented in the 1840's; thereby bringing the internments at Missisquoi into the mid-19th century. Unfortunately, the completely fragmented condition of the coffins precluded determination of how many coffins actually dated to the second quarter of the 19th century or any contextual relation with the human remains. Deborah Blom, the University of Vermont's physical anthropologist, studied the Bushey Site human remains dated- by Dr. Petersen's technical analysis of the coffin nails. In her March 3, 2002 technical report Human Remains from Monument Road, Highgate, Vermont Professor Blom noted that the Bushy Site burials' teeth showed "the presence of shovel-shaped incisors and evidence of an edge-to-edge bite on the anterior teeth. None of the incisors were of a blade-form (i.e. non-Native form). These observations are consistent with Native American ancestry." In the 2006 video Against the Darkness (Title VII Indian. Education), Prof. Blom also noted that the spatial distribution, burial density and relatively large estimated number of internments (approximately 30 as determined by bone analysis) from the construction area indicate that that they were interred in a graveyard. She further indicated that such a burial ground was often considered by anthropologists as evidence of a collective level of control over land resources. This archaeological and physical anthropological information is probably the best independent scientific evidence that we have for an early and mid 19th century Indigenous population in VT -- distinct in geography and genetics -- from their white settler neighbors.
One generation later, men bearing four discrete local family surnames were listed as "Indians" in an October, 1863, Civil War conscription list from the Alburg, VT Land and Miscellaneous Records Book (16:593/4), few from the Bushey Site. These explicitly listed VT Native persons (and their "same-parent" siblings) form an important identity baseline that confers documented native descendency to people from the Swanton/Alburg/Highgate area.
"This explicitly listed VT Native persons (and their "same-parent" siblings) form an important identity baseline that confers documented native descendency" Really? Not according the Office of Federal Acknowledgement of the Bureau of Indian Affairs nor according the VT Attorney General's Office Response to the Federal Petition for Federal Acknowledgement by the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation group led by April A. (St. Francis) Rushlow-Merrill.
READ THESE DOCUMENTS BY THE O.F.A., ETC !!!
For example, [REDACTED] one of the four conscripts , had a son [REDACTED] (b. 1873) who has a son [REDACTED] who had a daughter [REDACTED] nee [REDACTED] whose daughter is [REDACTED] also had a sister, [REDACTED] Elizabeth Jane Covey nee [REDACTED] Partlow (b. 1826) of the same parent as [REDACTED] Charles, so ethnicity is equivalent) who had a daughter, [REDACTED] Jenney Covey (b. 1859) who had a son, [REDACTED] Herbert Hiliker (b. 1884) who had a daughter, [REDACTED] Doris Hilliker (b..1912) who had a daughter, [REDACTED] Betty Reynolds (b. 1928) whose daugher, [REDACTED] Cathy Cline (b. 1963) is the mother of [REDACTED] Melody Walker (now married to Walker Tenney Brook), a young VT Indigenous woman pursuing a graduate degree in history at the University of Vermont. In addition, [REDACTED] Doris Hilliker had a son [REDACTED] Leonard Reynolds (b; 1926) who had a child [REDACTED] Carolee Reynolds (b. 1957) whose daughter [REDACTED] Takara C. Matthews (b. 1985), proudly serves in the VT Air National Guard, the ASHAI board and the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs.
Any part that has been REDACTED in this "Application Review" is simply STUPID and FUTILE. The material is based almost verbatim on the UNREDACTED "Decolonizing the Abenaki...." compiled, created, and advocated by Dr. Frederick Matthew Wiseman Ph.D. and his concocted "Vermont Indigenous Alliance." The material "Decolonizing the Abenaki: A methodology for detecting Vermont Tribal Identity" has ALREADY BEEN POSTED THIS BLOG verbatim....UNREDACTED. All a person has to do is conduct a comparative of these REDACTED SECTIONS, of this "Application Review" for the "St. Francis/Sokoki" group vs. the Frederick Wiseman also-created "Decolonizing the Abenaki...." to see that this group, as they all (right along with the Department of Historical Preservation people) are continuing to be deceitful, dishonest, and inappropriate in their actions, attempting to confabulate these "Abenaki" Corporate's into being alleged and reinvented "Abenaki" "Tribes" and or "Bands" by slapping each other on the backsides in the pursuit of VT Legislative "State Sanctioned" "Abenaki" Recognition by legal statute.
Thirty years after Hazard's Register reported Indian Basket makers in Northwestern VT, these craftspeople continued to work in the area; as reported in the St Albans (VT) Messenger, Aug. 4, 1874: "Last Saturday, Josh Spooner saw a man in his woods... who proved to be an old Indian quietly pursuing his avocation of making baskets." An example of Indigenous style clothing from this period (dated by the temporally distinctive brass buttons) consists of a beaded brown velvet vest (Figure 4) with added leather-fringe details, a harbinger of the later "cut-cloth fringe"
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clothing style (see below). It was the custom for may Native people in the last third of the 19th century to craft colorful clothing to reinforce an "Indian" identity for their craft-selling, and perhaps Franklin Co.'s "Indian Basket makers" used this particular vist for such a purpose.
Illustration
Figure 4. Velvet Man's vest with beadwork floral designs and appended animal-tanned leather fringe. Swanton, VT. Mid 19th century
In the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, Missisquoi-area people owned more exotic types of specially-made garments in the so-called "cut- cloth fringe" style. Scholars are most familiar with this regionally and temporally distinctive Native American clothing from late 19th and early 20"' century archival photographs of Maine Indians at "Indian Pageants" or crafts photographs Pageants such as the "Indian Village" at Bar Harbor. Although made from locally obtained materials such as tan cotton cloth, it has a distinctive detail at the hems made by repeatedly cutting, ripping or slitting cloth panels to produce a fringed effect. The desired effect was to replicate fringed buckskin clothing in a more available medium. Decoration was typically applique or embroidery. Jewelry often consisted of long "flapper length" strands of glass or ceramic beads of various sizes and colors. Occasionally older decorative accessories such as beaded panels are included. Overall the effect was striking and certainly helped craftspeople express their ethnic identity. [REDACTED] Vera Longtoe Sheehan recounts a family story from her [REDACTED] grandmother (d. 2003) of the use such "Indian clothes" at Missisquoi during this time period by "an old Indian woman," [REDACTED] Ms. Sheehan's 3rd great grandmother (d. 1932). Ms. Sheehan said "I asked my grandmother how did she know she (the 3rd great grandmother) was Indian?" Ms. Sheehan's grandmother described her as having "long braided hair and wearing Indian clothes. She wore old coins in her ears, many beads and a skirt with lots of ribbons. No white women would dress like that." Apparently these articles of clothing were local made, because Ms. Sheehan's grandmother went on to talk about "the beautiful
NOTICE: That in the "Decolonizing the Abenaki: A methodology for detecting Vermont Tribal Identity" compiled and created by the "VT Indigenous Alliance" Coordinator, "Dr." Frederick Matthew Wiseman "Ph.D.," Chair of the Department of Humanities for Johnson State College, that the pages within the "Decolonizing the Abenaki...." ARE NOT REDACTED.
So WHY go through the effort to REDACT or REMOVE sections of the genealogical evidence within their Application Review, IF these genealogical sections allegedly PROVES their "Abenaki-ness", "Native-ness" or Indian-ness"?
ANSWER:
BECAUSE WHAT DR. WISEMAN, Ph.D., HAS BEEN MANIPULATING AND THROWING OUT THERE IN HIS "SCHOLARLY WORKS" DOES NOT PROVE THAT ANY OF THESE PEOPLE WERE/OR ARE CONNECTED TO THE ABENAKI PEOPLE, HISTORICALLY OR OTHERWISE ....
IN REALITY AND TRUTH, ALL THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE, ARE MEMBERS OF SELF-CREATED "ABENAKI" CORPORATE ENTITIES, THAT ARE SANCTIONED BY THE STATE OF VT'S SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE, FOR A FEE. THEY MAY HAVE SOME NATIVE ANCESTRY (BUT NOT ABENAKI).
YET, THEIR ANCESTOR'S, WHILE RESIDING HISTORICALLY WITHIN VERMONT'S BORDERS, WERE IDENTIFYING AS ... AND HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY BY OUTSIDE PEOPLE'S AND AGENCIES HISTORICALLY... AS BEING NON-NATIVE/ FRENCH/ "WHITE" PEOPLE'S.
IN REALITY AND TRUTH, ALL THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE, ARE MEMBERS OF SELF-CREATED "ABENAKI" CORPORATE ENTITIES, THAT ARE SANCTIONED BY THE STATE OF VT'S SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE, FOR A FEE. THEY MAY HAVE SOME NATIVE ANCESTRY (BUT NOT ABENAKI).
YET, THEIR ANCESTOR'S, WHILE RESIDING HISTORICALLY WITHIN VERMONT'S BORDERS, WERE IDENTIFYING AS ... AND HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY BY OUTSIDE PEOPLE'S AND AGENCIES HISTORICALLY... AS BEING NON-NATIVE/ FRENCH/ "WHITE" PEOPLE'S.
SO THESE FOUR CORPORATE "ABENAKI" ALLIANCE GROUPS NOW REDACT/HIDE THEIR NONSENSE AND B.S. ... ON THEIR POLITICAL WAY TO GAINING VERMONT AND OR NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE LEGISLATIVE RECOGNITION BY STATUTE, FRAUDULENTLY.
AGAIN, THESE "REDACTION'S" ARE SIMPLY THE PROFESSOR'S (DR. FRED M. WISEMAN AND HIS CRONIES/ALLIES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL PRESERVATION AGENCIES) ... ATTEMPT(S) TO "HIDE" THE VT. INDIGENOUS ALLICANCE'S COORDINATOR (AND HIS "ABENAKI" CORPORATE ENTITIES "CHIEF'S") DECEITFULNESS, DECEPTION'S, AND DISHONEST TACTICS.
IN THE "DECOLONIZING THE ABENAKI: A METHODOLOGY FOR DETECTING VERMONT TRIBAL IDENTITY," DR. FREDERICK MATTHEW WISEMAN, PH.D. SIMPLY IS A REVISIONIST SCHOLAR, ALL THE WHILE, IGNORING THE FINDINGS OF DOCUMENTARY FACTUAL DATA WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN STUDIED, EVALUATED AND CONCLUDED BY THE OFFICE OF FEDERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE OF VERMONT. MR. WISEMAN Ph.D. MERELY RE-WRITES THE DISTORTIONS, THAT HE AND OTHER SCHOLARS HAVE INVENTED, IN THEIR ATTEMPTS TO RE-INVENT THE ALLEGED "MISSISQUOI ABENAKI TRIBE," CONTEMPORARILY-SPEAKING. THESE SCHOLARS ARE MERELY EVALUATING AND VALIDATING THEIR OWN PREVIOUS "SCHOLARLY WORKS."
WHAT MR. FRED M. WISEMAN HAS DONE, IS TAKE WHAT DIDN'T WORK WITH THE O.F.A., OF THE B.I.A., AND NOW ATTEMPTS TO BULLSH** THE STATE OF VERMONT LEGISLATURE, WITH THE SAME FAULTY "WISHY WASHY DATA THAT HE AND JOHN MOODY USED WITH THE FED'S PREVIOUSLY.
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ribbon and beads that the old women would sew, as they all sat around." A Missisquoi outfit of "Indian Clothes" is illustrated in Figure 5. It was found in Highgate Falls, VT in the 1970's by Swanton antique dealer Gordon Winters. It consists of a distinctive trilobate velvet "Indian Princess" crown, decorated with expedient hand-cut glass tube beads; a tan cotton dress with red cut cloth fringe and embroidered panels recycled from. Victorian lambrequin (shelf decoration). Accessories include a red cotton cloth sash and an alternating blue and white ceramic bead necklace (the other necklaces in the illustration are not original to the ensemble). These handmade, often charmingly idiosyncratic clothes are structurally and technologically unlike "Campfire Girl" and "Degree (or Daughters) of Pocahontas" manufactured costume that occasionally turns up in VT. In the early 1990's Wiseman imprudently purchased Campfire, Pocahontas and "Improved Order of Red Man" clothing and fashion accessories before lie was able to properly identify these standardized, commercially-produced Euroamerican products. Illustration
Figure 5. Missisquoi woman modeling complete woman's cut cloth fringe outfit.
Highgate Falls, VT. Late 19th century/early 20th century
