St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Vermont Abenakis: Proposed Finding--Summary Under the Criteria--That This Group Does Not Exist As A Indian or Abenaki Tribe: Pages 44 to 52:

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Criterion 83.7(b) requires that
a predominant portion of the petitioning group comprises a distinct community and has existed as a community from historical times until the present.

Introduction

Criterion 83.7(b) requires that a "predominant portion of the petitioning groupcomprises a distinct community." The term "predominant" establishes the requirement that at least half of the membership maintains significant social contact (59 FR 9287). This means at least half of the membership of the petitioner must participate in the social relationships, interaction, or institutions used to demonstrate community, and the remainder of the membership should be connected to those who participate.

The Federal acknowledgement regulations provide a specific definition of community.

Definition (83.1): Community means any group of people which can demonstrate that consistent interactions and significant social relationships exist within its membership and that its members are differentiated from and identified as distinct from nonmembers. Community must be understood in the context of the history, geography, culture, and social organization of the group.

To meet the requirements of 83.7(b), the petitioner must be more than a group of Indian descendants with common tribal ancestry who have little or no social or historical connection with each other. Sustained interaction and significant social relationships must exist among the members of the group. Petitioners must show interactions have occurred continuously since first sustained contact with non-Indians. Interaction should be broadly distributed among the membership, not just small parts of it.

The regulations also require the petitioner be a community distinct from other populations in the area. Members must maintain at least a minimal social distinction from the wider society. This requires that the group's members are differentiated from and identified as distinct in some way from nonmembers. The existence of only a minimal distinction provides no supporting evidence for the existence of community among the membership.

As the following analysis shows, the available evidence does not demonstrate a predominant portion of the SSA petitioning group's members or claimed ancestors have maintained consistent interaction and significant social relationships throughout history. Instead, it shows the petitioner is a collection of individuals of claimed but not demonstrated Indian ancestry with little or no social or historical connection with each other before the early 1970's. The evidence also establishes that the petitioner's claimed ancestors did not maintain at least a minimal distinction from nonmembers in the northwestern Vermont area and Lake Champlain region from historical times until the present.

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Evidence of Community before 1800

The available evidence does not demonstrate the petitioner has a historical or social connection to any Western Abenaki entity in existence before 1800. The petitioner has not provided evidence to show that a predominant portion of its claimed ancestors were interacting as a group before 1800, and therefore does not meet the requirements of criterion 83.7(b). There is no evidence to the support the petitioner's assertion that its claimed ancestors never left (or "hid out" in) Vermont. In fact, it is not known from the available evidence what the petitioner's claimed ancestors were doing before they took up residence to Vermont in the 19th century (see the following portions of criterion 83.7(b). For a discussion of this process). For additional discussion see the earlier section of the PF entitled Overview of the Petitioner and its Claimed Connection to the Historical Tribe.

Evidence of Community, 1800 to-1900

The Petitioner's Claims

In the petitioner's 1982 submission, it advanced the following theory about its claimed ancestors during the post-1800 period and relation to the present-day petitioner:

While precise figures will probably never be known for certain, it is clear by now that a number of Abenaki families never left Vermont, and that by 1830, many had begun to reestablish communities in Swanton, St. Albans Bay and Grand Isle which have a documented existence down to the present day. Some families ... adapted differently. They maintained a well hidden yet traditional pattern of subsistence, a way of life that continued at least until World War I, largely disappearing only when automobiles and telephone lines penetrated Vermont's backwoods in the years following the war. Other families adopted still a third pattern of accommodation, a more transient mode of existence that took them from town to town, traveling like gypsies (with whom they were often confused), horse trading at county fairs, settling down only briefly and then moving on. Oral histories collected in the past few years have provided evidence of these three modes of adaptation or accommodation to white settlement. All of these families maintained a flexible network of communication and intermarriage, and many have re-emerged in recent years to claim their rightful identity as the Abenaki Nation of Vermont.... (SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 9-10)

This theory was originally developed by the petitioner's researcher John Moody in a 1979 unpublished manuscript, and further developed in the group's 1982 and 1986 petitions. (31.)

Regarding the evidence to support this claim, the petitioner described four categories of records: The first was a "handful of accounts from local historians written after the Civil War which describe the sort of small parties [of Indians] in the region." The second contained "[c]hurch and town records that provide more direct confirmation of families in the area." The third included "U.S. Census Data that reveal the range of dispersed inhabitants which continued in the

FOOTNOTES:

31. See "Missisquoi Abenaki: Survival in Their Ancient Homeland," by John Moody (Moody 1979).

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nineteenth century." And the last was "genealogical research and research on Abenaki family names from the Missisquoi area" (SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 53).

In its 1982 petition, the group submitted charts for about 15 claimed family lines from the Swanton, Highgate, and St. Albans areas of Franklin County. According to those charts, some of these family lines from unidentified origins began arriving in or establishing these "neighborhoods" around the 1850's (SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 219, and Family Charts 1-8). But their point of origin is unknown and the limited available evidence does not demonstrate that these families were previously connected to one another as a group.

By 1986, the petitioner had expanded the number of claimed family lines from the 19th century to hundreds in as many as three dozen "neighborhoods" from about a dozen towns in the Franklin County area of Vermont (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 132, 133, also SSA 1996.01.17, Appendix IA). The total number of ancestors claimed by the petitioner ranged from 378 (or possibly as many as 3,000) in 1790 to 1,623 in 1910 (SSA 1996.01.17, Appendix 1A). (32.) The petitioner also indicated that many of the "neighborhoods" containing its claimed ancestors were in place as early as 1800. In its 1986 petition submission, the group concluded that the 1982 Petition's "basic position that the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi lived a dispersed, family band existence from 1790 to 1840" had been "confirmed" (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], xiv). According to the petitioner, their research had confirmed "the perspective of a large, tenacious network of families and neighborhoods which remained centered around [sic] Missisquoi in the 1800 to 1920 period" (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 1). These two conclusions seem contradictory, as the petitioner has not clearly explained the social processes that maintained both a "dispersed, family band existence" and a "large, tenacious network of families and neighborhoods" centered in the vicinity of the Missisquoi delta during overlapping time periods. However, the petitioner further explained in its 1986 petition narrative: "The distinctions between neighborhoods and the lifestyles of certain families reflected in Moody (1979) and the [first] Petition has fallen away to accomodate [sic] the commonly heard statement in the contemporary Abenaki community that 'we are all related"' (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 21).

The State's Comments

In its comments, the State disputed the petitioner's argument that the group's claimed ancestral families constituted a distinct community during the 19th century. It argued as follows:

The lifestyle and migration pattern described by the petition is not evidence that these families are Indians. The movements of these people are the same as the travel patterns of the French Canadians who were migrating into and through
FOOTNOTES:
32. The petitioner provided no membership figures for its membership from 1910 to 1980, and has not explained this gap. Census population schedules for 1920 and 1930 were not available at the time of the 1982 and 1986 submissions, but were accessible for the petitioner's 2005 submission. Presumably there is other available documentation, such as local, church, and school records, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and genealogical materials for this 70-year period that could be used to provide population data. The petitioner is encouraged to submit such evidence supported by as many copies of primary documentation as possible.

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Vermont during the same time. There is nothing in the evidence of the lifestyles that distinguishes the petitioner's relatives from the French Canadians. (VER 2002.12.00-2003.01.00 Response, 61)

Elsewhere, the State cast doubt on the petitioner's documentation of its claimed ancestral family lilies:

The petitioner has submitted various charts and lists of people who it claims are Abenaki-Indians of the Franklin County area: These lists have the quallty of shifting sands ever changing and impossible to grasp. In the 1982 submission, petitioner included family charts of approximately fifteen extended families. Petitioner also provided a small group of names from the federal censuses from the first half of the nineteenth century to demonstrate the presence of Abenakis in northwestern Vermont. In 1986, petitioner vastly expanded it's submission and included names of hundreds of families from the early nineteenth century (and into the twentieth) who it claimed were Abenakis. The 1986 list of names from the 1800 to 1830 censuses was over five times as large as the previous list submitted in 1982. The number of names that petitioner gleaned from the 1840 census and labeled as Indians grew fifteen fold between its 1982 and 1986 submissions. (VER 2002.12.00-2003.01.00 Response, 162-163).

The Problem of Using Family-Name Variations to Demonstrate Community

The petitioner identified the surnames of its claimed ancestral family lines based on variations of family names found mainly on 19th-century lists of St. Francis Indians at Odanak in Quebec. As best as can be determined, the group took the family names of present-day members and searched for variations of those surnames that appeared on these lists of the Saint Francis Indians at Odanak. The group next searched for further variations of those surnames in local church, town, land, school, and census records from the 19th century in the Franklin County area of Vermont, or from the "oral traditions" of current members. Once the petitioner perceived similarities between the surname of a current petitioner family line and surnames on these records, it designated the family line on the record part of an "Abenaki" community in the Franklin County area during the 19th century.

The use of such a methodology to demonstrate consistent interactions and significant social relationships for the group's claimed ancestral family lines under criterion 83.7(b) is unpersuasive. (33.) Using such a process means that these families were identified as part of a claimed ancestral community based mainly on the assumption that individuals with similar surnames had shared social interaction, and not because the record actually demonstrated consistent interactions and social relationships among them.

In addition, the petitioner has not submitted the primary documentation it used to create these lists of claimed ancestral family lines. While the petitioner described the contents of various town, church, and census records, and abstracted lists of unconnected surnames of claimed
FOOTNOTES:
33. The problem of using family-name or surname variations to demonstrate descent from the historical tribe is discussed in criterion 83.7(c).

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ancestral lines from there, it did not submit them. Nor did it provide most of the field notes, or genealogical materials referenced in its narratives. The petitioner is encouraged to submit copies of as many of these documents as possible for verification and analysis.

Finally, the petitioner has not provided evidence to demonstrate the claimed ancestral family lines which shared these surname variations were consistently interacting in a way that could be used to meet the requirements of criterion 83.7(b). For example, the petitioner has submitted little or no primary documentation from the 19th century to show these claimed ancestral faintly  had significant marriage rates within the group, significant social relationships, formal or informal, connecting individual ancestors, important cooperative labor or other economic activities among claimed ancestors, or noteworthy sacred or secular behavior involving most of the claimed group. These forms of evidence may be useful in satisfying criterion 83.7(b). It is also unclear if all the claimed ancestral family lines from the 19th century actually have descendants in the current group.

For the most part, the petitioner in both its 1982 and 1986 narratives relied on routine residency and biographical information to describe its claimed ancestors. This process involved using lists of family names abstracted from Federal censuses and local records to show that claimed ancestors belonged to a certain family line that lived in the Franklin County area, sometime between 1790 and 1910, or that they had a particular occupation, or attended a specific school (see, for example, SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 67-86). But the petitioner did not provide evidence of what the claimed ancestors were doing together as a group during specific time periods in the 19th century to give some chronological orientation to their possible activities. The petitioner is encouraged to review criterion 83.7(b)(1) and (2), and to submit additional evidence and analyses, perhaps arranged by decade, to demonstrate that its claimed ancestors meet the definition of community during the 19th century as defined in 83.1.

The Problems of Using the Four Categories of Evidence to Show Community

In its 1982 submission, the petitioner claimed four categories of evidence demonstrated the continued existence of an Indian community of its claimed ancestors in the Lake Champlain area after 1800 (SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 53). The available documentation, however, does not demonstrate that these four evidence groups, accounts by local historians, church and town records, Federal censuses, and genealogical research on "Abenaki" surnames, as described in the petition narratives, show evidence of consistent interactions and social relationships among a predominant portion of the group's claimed ancestors during the 19th century.

Accounts by Local Historians and Other External Observers

The difficulty with using the accounts of local historians, mostly described but not submitted by the petitioner, is that they were typically brief sketches of widely dispersed, unidentified Indians who are not connected to the group's claimed ancestors by any evidence submitted by the petitioner (see, for example, SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 53-56). In the main, they depicted one or two individual Indians or small groupings of migratory Indians, often portrayed as being from St Francis in Quebec or an unknown place of origin. Some of these sightings were actually

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recollections of events which happened long before, in one case, almost 60 years earlier. They do not demonstrate that these individuals were part of all Indian community in Vermont or, more importantly, part of a distinct community from which the current petitioning group descended. In addition, they do not show the types of consistent interactions and social relationships among members of a community that would be useful in establishing the requirements of criterion 83.7(b), even if these individuals could be connected to the petitioner's claimed ancestors in the 19th century. What follows is an analysis of these accounts by local historians or chroniclers referenced by the petitioner. Also included are descriptions by other external observers who were actively looking for Indian communities in New England during the 19th century, and who might have been expected to describe the petitioner's ancestors, given their claimed numbers in northwestern Vermont during the time. Almost all these documents were submitted by the State. None described the petitioning group's claimed ancestors or any consistent interactions or social relationships among them.

In 1809, Edward Augustus Kendall described in six-volumes his travels throughout the northern regions of the United States. In the third volume, he related some of his travels in New England. He stated the Indians of Saint Francis and Becancour in Quebec still occasionally passed "between the Saint Lawrence and the Penobscot [northeastern Maine] and Saint John's [New Brunswick, Canada]" (Kendall 1809, 67-68). He also discussed some brief encounters with these Indians, none of whom were described by name or origin. Elsewhere in the volume, he recounted his travels in Rutland, Burlington, St. Albans, and Swanton, Vermont (Kendall 1809, 276, 304). While he provided an explanation of the Indian name of the Missisquoi River in this portion, he did not describe a group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in the Franklin County area or any other Abenaki Indian entity that had remained in Vermont. For that time, the petitioner contends its claimed ancestors numbered 591 in the Franklin County area of northwestern Vermont, with 100 in Swanton and 81 in St. Albans." In 1810, the population of Franklin County was 16,427 (US Census Bureau 1872). The population of Swanton at the time, according to the website of the Swanton Historical Society, was 858. Assuming that the petitioner's figures and the Historical Society's figures are both correct, Kendall failed to mention that Swanton's population was 12% Indian. It is highly unlikely that the author would have overlooked or neglected to mention a concentrated population of Indians in Swanton.

In its 1982 submission, the petitioner quoted from but did not provide a copy of an 1820 account from the Burlington Free Press of a "strolling party of Indians consisting of nine persons," which had camped out near the town of Rutland in Rutland County, Vermont, about 80 miles south of Swanton. The newspaper described these unidentified Indians as "squatters" from an unspecified area who intended to "remain during the winter" (SSA 1982. 10.00 Petition, 56). While this account may show that some unidentified, migratory Indians were present in Rutland, Vermont, in 1820, it did not provide any specific tribal affiliation for these Indians, name any of the petitioner's claimed ancestors, or describe any social interaction among these Indians and the petitioner's claimed ancestors that would demonstrate community under criterion 83.7(b). In 1822, Jedidiah Morse compiled a report for the Secretary of War on Indian groups in the United States based on Ills 1820 travels, in which the listed the numbers of Indians cast of the Mississippi. Some of these Indian groups came from isolated areas similar to northwestern
FOOTNOTES:
34. For the petitioner's population estimates of its claimed ancestors please see SSA 1996.01.17, Appendix IA, 9-10.

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Vermont, and, in several cases their numbers were quite small (Morse 1822.00.00, 64-69, 361365, 375). He did not, however, list or describe the petitioner's claimed ancestors or any other Indian entity in Vermont. For that time, the petitioner claims its ancestors numbered 316 In the Franklin County area of Vermont. (35.)

Six years later, F. S. Eastman produced an early history of Vermont and its "original Indian inhabitants." Following a discussion of those original Indian he stated not "a vestige of them" remained as "the encroachments of the whites" pushed "them farther and farther on" (Eastman 1 828.00.00, 20). He also discussed the "application" of "some of unidentified Indian Chiefs from Canada, claiming a large tract of land in the northwest part of the state" (Eastman 1828.00.00, 78-79). These were representatives from the so-called "Seven Nations" (see criterion 83.7(c) for a full discussion of these land claims). There is no available evidence that the petitioner's claimed ancestors were involved with these land claims. Eastman did not describe the claimed ancestors of petitioning group, who, at the time, according to the petitioner's calculations, numbered about 700 in the Franklin County area. (36.)

In April 1835, the Green Mountain Democrat of Vermont published an article called "An Indian Encampment in Connecticut." The article described a party of 15 Indians encamped for the winter at Windsor, Vermont, on the Connecticut River, which is about 100 miles southeast of Swanton, Vermont. It portrayed the Indians as "part of the tribe of the Missisquoi," which lived "a wandering life on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain." The group was traveling to Hanover, New Hampshire, "for the purpose of entering a member of the family in Dartmouth College" (Green Mountain Democrat 1835.04.03). The 17-year old potential scholar ("Say-so-saph Saba-tese Al unum") was the only Indian identified by name. This description of these Indians provided here does not indicate that they were part of an Indian community composed of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in the Franklin County area, who, according to the group's statistics, numbered about 700 people in 11 towns at the time. The petitioner loosely translated the young boy's name as "St. Joseph St. John Baptiste Alanum," but admitted the Alanum family name had not been identified in either the present Odanak community in Quebec or the petitioning group. Nonetheless, the petitioner made tenuous connections to some members of the group who have claimed "St. John" ancestors, and then concluded this account was "a major confirmation of the continued Abenaki community in the Champlain Valley after 1800" (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 311-312). A close reading of the document does not warrant such a claim, since it is only a brief, first-time sighting of a small group of mostly unidentified Indians, sighted far away from Lake Champlain, who then disappeared from the record.

In its 1986 submission, the petitioner described a July 1835 letter by Amable Petithomme, a French missionary from Burlington, Vermont, in which it claimed he made the statement: "'I sleep in the poor cabins of the Indians' when traveling along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain" (SSA 1986.05.23 [Addendum B], 312-313). The petitioner did not provide a copy of the letter, and the State claimed the archives which housed the letter reported it "missing from their files" (VER 2002.12.00-2003.01.00 Response, 35). As the State correctly observed, the petitioner's quoted portion of the letter did not actually describe the location of these Indians
FOOTNOTES:
35. In 1820 the population of Franklin County was 17,182 (US Census Bureau 1872).

36. Two years later, in 1830, the population of Franklin County was 24,525 (US
Census Bureau 1872).

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cabins. In addition, the State provided a copy of R. P. Mouly's 1960 biography, written in French. The State claimed that the biography quoted from a portion of the 1835 letter, and argued the quoted portion actually read: "une vie difificile et qu'il loge habituellement dans des cabanes," (37.) or essentially that the missionary's life was a difficult one, and he often found lodging in cabins, without mentioning any Indians or an exact location (Vermont 2002.12.00-2003.01.00 Response, 35; Mouly 1960.00.00, 44). Even if the missionary's letter had indicated he slept in the cabins of some unidentified Indians, such a vague statement would not be a description of the petitioning group's claimed ancestors in the Franklin County area of Vermont. Nor does it provide evidence of social interaction among a predominant portion of those claimed ancestors.

In 1845 Samuel G. Drake's Book of the Indians was published, in which he provided a history of the Indians of North America since first discovery. In it, Drake supplied an alphabetical listing of Indian groups in the United States. Under "Abenakies, he stated they were "over Maine [sic] until 1754, then went to Canada; 200 in 1689; 150 in 1750" (Drake 1845.00.00,v). He listed several Eastern Abenaki groups in Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, but it is unclear at times if he believed all these were still extant or not. He stated that there were a small number of Passamaquoddies in Maine. Other small groups from New England described were the Wampanoag of Herring Pond, Mashpee, and Gay Head (Drake 1845.00.00, vi-xii). He did not describe the petitioning group's claimed ancestors or any Indian entity in Vermont. At the time, the petitioner's claimed ancestors, according to the group's estimates, numbered 912 people in 37 neighborhoods from 10 towns around the Franklin County area. (38.)

From 1848 to 1857, several works by Henry Schoolcraft were published. Schoolcraft wrote extensively on and traveled among numerous Indian groups during his life (1793-1864), starting as early as 1806. In his writings, he described and gave population estimates for many New England Indian groups, large and small. In none of these accounts did he describe the petitioning group's claimed ancestors in the Franklin County area, who by 1860, according to the group's statistics, numbered about 1,282 people in 32 neighborhoods from 8 towns. (39.)
FOOTNOTES:
37. The claimed quote in Mouly read "Ainsi va le missionaire, Le Pere reconnait lui-meme qu'il une vie difficile et qu'il loge habituellement dans des cabanes" (Mouly 1960.00.00, 44).

38. In 1840, the population of Franklin County was 24,531 (US Census Bureau 1872).

39. See The Indian in His Wigwam or Characteristics of the Red Race of America (New York, 1848). This book contained only one reference to "Abenakee" on page 234 in a section entitled "Ethnology." It referred to the group as "Eastlanders, a distinct people, consisting of a plurality of tribes, who formerly occupied the extreme north eastern part of the United States." See Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: with Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to 1842 (Philadelphia, 1851). In this work there was no mention of any contemporary Abenaki group in his journeys from 1812 to 1842. See American Indians, Their History, Condition and Prospects, Original Notes and Manuscripts (Buffalo, 1851; reprint New York, 1977). This was an expanded version of the 1848 book. It included the same reference to the Abenaki cited above. See Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States; Collected and Prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847, Volumes 1-6 (Philadelphia, 1851-1857). Volume 1 of this work on page 524 gave an 1847 census of Indians. No Vermont or New Hampshire Indians were listed. Volume 3 on page 583 also provided a census of Indians groups in 1825. Schoolcraft listed 200 St. John's Indians in New Brunswick, Canada; 379 Passamaquoddies and 277 Penobscots in Maine; 320 Mashpee, 40 Herring Pond Indians,

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In 1853, Edwin H. Burlingame, an instructor at Barre Academy in Barre, Vermont, just outside of Montpelier, 50 miles southeast of Swanton, described in his journal an encounter with some Indians. On October 22, during a walk with a friend, he came across "an encampment" of Indians "about a mile above the village," who were "stopping ... for a few days." The Indians had pitched their tents "near the river." The author claimed they were from "a couple of distinct tribes, one from St. Francis in Canada, and the other from Maine," and their tents were filled "with basket stuff and material for bows and arrows" (Burlingame 1853). He did not describe any of the petitioner's claimed ancestors from the Franklin County area in this account.

Seven years later, Samuel Sumner produced a local history of the Missisquoi Valley, which detailed the Franklin County area in northwestern Vermont. On pages 26 to 27, Sumner described an encounter in the winter of 1799-1800 between sonic of the early settlers near Troy, Vermont, about 30 miles east of Swanton, and a "small party" of nomadic Indians led by a Captain Susap (Sumner 1860.00.00. 26). One of the Indians was a medicine woman named Molly Orcutt. They were selling baskets and trinkets, and, according to the author, left in the spring and never returned (Sumner 1860.00.00. 26-27). Other evidence demonstrates that these Indians were probably originally from Maine. (40.) Sumner did not describe the petitioning group's claimed ancestors, who, at the time, according to the group's statistics, numbered about 1,282 in the Franklin County area, or any social interaction among them. (41.)

In 1863, John Perry wrote a history of Swanton, Vermont, which was published in 1882 in the Vermont Historical Gazetteer. In it, Perry described the origins of the St. Francis Indians of Quebec and the Missisquoi village near Swanton. According to Perry, the Missisquoi began moving to Canada after the American Revolution, as their sympathies lay with the British, and

340 Gay Head Indians, and 50 Troy Indians in Massachusetts; 420 Narragansett in Rhode Island; 300 Mohegan, 50 Stonington [Pequot], and 50 Groton [Pequot] in Connecticut. No Indians were listed for Vermont or New Hampshire. It also included a Table G on page 590, which indicated in 1829 there were 6,273 Indians in states from South Carolina to Maine. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were all listed as having Indians. Vermont and New Hampshire were not. Volume 5 provided the totals of Indians in 1825 for Maine (956), Massachusetts (750), Rhode Island (420), and Connecticut (400). No Indians were noted for Vermont or New Hampshire. Volume 6 on pages 686-689 contained a census for 1857. It listed 420 Narragansett in Rhode Island, 379 Passamaquoddles and 297 Penobscots in Maine. No Indians were included for Vermont or New Hampshire. The State quoted from Volume 4 (1851-1854, page 542), claiming Schoolcraft asserted the Abenaki were now "seated at the St. Francis Village" [Quebec] and inhabited territory "situated on the south of the St. Lawrence, between the St. John's of New Brunswick and the river Richelieu, Canada."
FOOTNOTES:
40. See the Autobiography of a Criminal, A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels and Sufferings of Henry Tufts. This 1807 book chronicled Tufts sojourns among the Abenaki of Maine from 1772 to 1775. On page 60, he claimed to be in Sudbury, Canada, which Gordon Day in his article, "Henry Tufts as a Source on Eighteenth Century Abenakis," identified as actually being Bethel, Maine (Day 1974, 191-192). Tufts apparently traveled around visiting various Abenaki camps, and contended the "entire tribe" was "in number about seven hundred of both sexes, and extended their settlements, in a scattering, desultory manner, from Lake Memphremagog [southeast Quebec just north of Newport, Vermont] to Lake Umbagog [Maine near the far northern New Hampshire border], covering an extent of sonic eighty miles" (Tufts 1807, 60, 64). Day believed these were Western Abenaki from (Day 1974, 192). During his visits, Tufts encountered the Molly Orcutt mentioned in the Sumner book. The petitioner's current members claim no descent from Molly Orcutt.

41. In 1860 the population of Franklin County was 27,103. No Indians were listed (US Census Bureau 1872).

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Day also recounted his visit to an "Indian village" on Lake George, New York, on July 31, 1957 (Day 1948.07.00-1962.11.13, 14). He remarked that "no Abenakis" were present, only "Comanche and one Navaho," a statement demonstrating he was actively seeking out possible Abenaki villages in the United States (Day 1948.07.00-1962.11.13, 14). The petitioner has not claimed descent from any Western Abenakis that might have lived at this Lake George "Indian village," and the names of any individuals living there during that time are not in the available evidence. Day also wrote that one informant had stated there were "20-25 Indians" living in Waterbury, Connecticut, but he did not specify their names, Indian ancestry, or if they constituted a community. Another Day informant, John Watso, mentioned a "village of Abenaki" in New Hampshire, without offering details to their names, location, origin, or numbers. Watso also confirmed these Indians had not returned to the Odanak reserve in 50 years, indicating they were originally from the reservation in Canada (Day 1948.07.001962.11.13, 18-19).

Elsewhere Day stated the following: "[Irving] Hallowell told A. [Ambrose Obomsawin of Odanak] that some 250 Indians were living in the Victoriaville-Sherbrooke, Vermont, area as individuals separate from the reserve" (Day 1948.07.00-1962.11.13, 20). As best as can be determined, Ambrose Obomsawin most likely received this information between 1918 and 1932 when Hallowell conducted field work among the St. Francis Indians of Canada. It is unclear why Obomsawin was unaware of the existence of these individuals himself. It does not appear that these alleged 250 Indians were originally from Vermont, but, as the statement indicates, from the St. Francis reservation in Quebec. The statement also seems to indicate they were living as individuals, not as a group, dispersed across a large area of land mainly in Canada well east of Swanton, Vermont, the petitioner's claimed historical center at that time.

The journal also indicated Day spent a week in July 1961 on vacation in Swanton. He acknowledged "the site of the monument established on the old village site in 1909," but this was a reference to the historical Missisquoi village of the 18th century. He did not identify a Western Abenaki group containing the petitioner's claimed ancestors in the town (Day 1948.07.001962.11.13, 61). Indeed, during the 14-year period of the journal, Day never visited a group of the petitioner's ancestors in the Swanton area, nor did his St. Francis informants in Vermont or Canada connected to the Odanak reservation ever tell him of the existence of such a community. While these journal notes of Gordon Day identified some St. Francis Indians associated with the reservation in Quebec, and provided some vague, second-hand information about possible Indian groups in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Canada, they did not identify a group of the petitioner's ancestors in any location.

The State of Vermont also submitted a December 1952 letter that Day sent to Charles Adams, head of a special commission to investigate Iroquois land claims in northern Vermont. There is no available evidence that a group of the petitioner's ancestors in northwestern Vermont challenged the Iroquois claim. Day advised Adams, "[w]hatever the status of Vermont in prehistory, the only Indians whom white settlers found actually living in Vermont were Abenakis, whose descendants now live at Odanak [St. Francis] near Pierreville, Quebec. More aggressive claims by Iroquoian groups should not be allowed to prejudice any claim which the St. Francis Abenaki [of Canada] may have" (Day 1952.12.28). Day did not identify a predecessor group of

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the petitioner's claimed ancestors or another contemporary Abenaki entity in Vermont that might have had claims to lands in the area.

In 1952 the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology published John R. Swanton's Indian Tribes of North America, five pages of which the State supplied. Swanton gave an overview of the Abenaki tribes in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire during the aboriginal period. He also provided some population figures for the 1920's for the contemporary St. Francis Indians in Quebec and the Passamaquoddles in Maine. Swanton identified the four historical Indian groups in Vermont as he defined them—the "Abnaki [sic]," the "Mahican," the "Pennacook, and the Pocumtuc, as having once occupied certain parts of western Maine, eastern New Hampshire, and northwestern Vermont (Swanton 1952, 13, 18-19). Because John R. Swanton identified only historical rather than contemporary groups in Vermont, and since the petitioner is not a successor to the St. Francis Indians in Quebec or the Passamaquoddies of Maine, he did not identify a group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors as part of an Indian entity in 1952.

The State supplied several 1950's articles by John Huden, a professor of education at the University of Vermont, which appeared in Vermont History. In January 1955, the journal published Huden's "Vermont Sketchbook: Indians in Vermont—Past and Present," in which lie declared that "very few Indians" made "their homes in Vermont" at the time. Huden revealed that on Thompson's Point in Vermont "some twenty-odd Abenakis lived up to about 1939," but as of 1955, "only William and Marian Obumsawin, an aging brother-sister team," still lived "there in the little cottage their father [Simon] built when he migrated from Canada back in Teddy Roosevelt's administration." According to Huden, these two were "probably the last Indian-speaking Indians in the Champlain valley" (Huden 1955.01.00, 25). He did not identify by name the 20 or so "Abenakis" from 1939 as an Indian entity, indicate their place of origin other than in the case of William and Marian, or describe what happened to them, so there is no way to connect them to the petitioner. Moreover, Huden's claim that some "twenty-odd Abenakis" liven [sic] at Thompson's Point "up to about 1939" is not supported by Federal census data for the location. Federal census population schedules for Thompson's Point in Charlotte, Vermont, Chittenden County, for 1910, 1920, and 1930 recorded the small Obomsawin family as the only Indians in the area. In 1910, 1920 and 1930 there were three family members listed (1910, 1920, and 1930 Census, Charlotte, Vermont). The Federal decennial census reports for the entire county listed 9 Indians in 1910, 4 in 1920, and 6 in 1930. In 1950, there were only six reported (US Census Bureau 1932; US Census Bureau 1952).

Huden advised that a "hasty survey of Lake Champlain and Connecticut River townships" had shown "no Indian residents other than the Charlotte basket weavers [the Obomsawins]" (Huden 1955.01.00, 25). He concluded that "since the late 1600's no large permanent Indian settlements have thrived in Vermont" (Huden 1955.01.00, 27). Huden also provided some sporadic evidence of smaller Indian settlements that disappeared in the 18th century. In addition, some "early town histories" reported "occasional groups that trickled back from Canada after the French and Indian War." Despite these occasional sightings of small groups of unidentified Indians, Huden was "certain" the Algonquians had "left Vermont well before 1760," and had never returned "in any great numbers." Even modern visitors who moved "down from Canada to work on bridges

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and other steel structures" left their families behind "returning home only on weekends" (Huden 1955.01.00, 27-28).

Huden's 1956 article in Vermont History, a "Vermont Sketchbook: The Abenakis, the Iroquoians, and Vermont," was a five-page description of the Western Abenaki during early contact. He asserted the following: "The descendants of the survivors and other pitiful remnants of the New England Algonkians now dwell at St. Francis [in Quebec, Canada] and at Old Town, Maine" [the present-day location of the Penobscot Reservation just northeast of Bangor, Maine] (Huden 1955.0 1.00, see 1956 article, 23). He did not identify the petitioner's members living in the 1950's as part of these two groups. Nor did he identify any contemporary group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in Vermont.

Also in 1956, Vermont History published Huden's "The Problem—Indians and White Men in Vermont—When and Where (1550-?)." This article described the Indians in Vermont during the early contact period (Huden 1956a, 110-119). According to Huden, "within 150 years of Champlain's visit practically all of these tribes [in Vermont], and other New England Algonkians had either been killed off entirely or at least greatly reduced in numbers. Their pitiful remnants, almost without exception, sought refuge in Canada—particularly at Odanak, St. Francis" (Huden 1956a, 115-116). The author did not identify any contemporary group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors.

Finally, Huden's "Adventures in Abnakiland [sic]" appeared in Vermont History in July 1957. It was a transcription of a letter from Huden to a Dr. Wood regarding some previous articles on Indians Huden had penned for the journal. In the letter, Huden explained his research in 1955, and his interaction with Chief Laurent of the St. Francis Indians of Quebec, who was helping him translate some Abenaki documents. Part of his research included visits to Odanak to discuss the Abenaki dialect with Laurent and other St. Francis Indians who were living at the Quebec reservation or were members of the Canadian tribe (Huden 1957.07.00, 185-193). Huden did not identify any of these  as part of an Indian group linked to the petitioner. individuals Although the author did identify the St. Francis Indians of Quebec and a few members of that tribe, he did not identify a contemporary group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in Vermont.

In 1959, the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine published Gordon Day's "Dartmouth and St. Francis. (25.) It dealt with the relationship between Dartmouth College and the St. Francis Indians from Quebec who attended the college from the 1770's to 1840's. Day listed several of the family names on the Dartmouth rolls from that period which still constituted part of the contemporary St. Francis village in Quebec. According to Day, in 1959, the St. Francis tribe in Quebec had 130 resident Indians and 500 registered members. According to Day, a "sizeable" number of the Indians of St. Francis ancestry had "given up formal connection" with the St. Francis group in Quebec and lived elsewhere in the province, in Ontario, and the Northeastern United States (cited in Day 1998, 52-53). He did not, however, identify these migratory descendants as a group connected to the petitioner, nor did he identify a group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in Vermont in 1959.
FOOTNOTES:
25. Reprinted in In Search of New England's Native Past, ed. by Michael K. Foster and William Cowan, (Amherst, 1998), 49-53, a copy of which came from the OFA library.

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One year later, Contributions in Anthropology published Day's "Tree Nomenclature of the St. Francis Indians." (26.) This article focused mainly on identification of tree species with Abenaki names, but contained some ethnology. Day conducted research for it in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire, with ethnological and botanical data gathered from five informants at the St. Francis reserve in Quebec. He gave the resident population of reserve in 1960 as 150, with about 500 registered members. Day pointed out that migration to Canadian and American cities after World War I had reduced the population by about one-third. He asserted that "[d]escendants of Indians who left the village during the past 150 years and who do not maintain any formal connection with the band probably number several hundred" (cited in Day 1998, 7273). He did not, however, identify these migratory descendants as a group linked to the petitioner, nor did he identify a group of the petitioner's claimed ancestors in Vermont or anywhere else in 1960.

The State provided excerpts of a typed manuscript from the Vermont Historical Society by Elbridge Colby that described Indian names around Vermont. The catalog card from the historical society noted a "source" date of 1978 for this document, but a review of its contents suggests a date from the early 1960's. Colby worked as a journalist, professor at the University of Vermont, and government official. He spent his summers on Thompson's Point near Charlotte. These pages mainly classified Indian place names in Vermont, and did not identify any contemporary Indian entities in the state. In fact, while-describing Indian place names around Missisquoi Bay, the petitioner's claimed. ancestral center, Colby stated: "At its mouth, through most of the 1700's, there stood a very important Indian village called `Missisiasuk' now disappeared. There the 'people of the great grassy meadows' lived. But both the town and the people are gone" (Colby 1978.12.00).

The State also submitted excerpts from the 1963 work Vermont Indians, a self-published book by Thomas E. Daniels. The author was a member of the State Board of Historic Sites and an amateur archaeologist (Daniels 1963, 7-19, 58-63). Most of the excerpts dealt with pre-historical Indian cultures and archaeological sites. He discussed no post-1800 cultures in these excerpts, and identified no contemporary Indian entity in Vermont.

The State provided a copy of a 1968 article in the Indian Historian called "Indian Communities in the Eastern States," by William C. Sturtevant and Samuel Stanley, two experts on American Indian culture from the Smithsonian Institution. The two authors included population estimates for many Indian groups along the east coast. They presented the population tables as a summary of the "available data on Eastern Indian or possibly Indian communities" (Sturtevant and Stanley 1968, 15). Some groups were quite obscure. The authors went to great lengths to find as many Indian groups as possible. Indeed, they located "70 communities with population ranging from less than 10 to over 30,000 and totaling some 95 to 100,000," but none was in Vermont (Sturtevant and Stanley 1968, 16). For Maine, the authors provided totals for the Passamaquoddies, Penobscots, and Maliseets, none of which are Western Abenaki. They also reported 25 Abenakis in New York without giving an exact location (Sturtevant and Stanley 1968, 18). But the petitioner does not claim a genealogical or a historical connection to these unidentified Abenakis in New York, and the available evidence does not indicate any. The
FOOTNOTES:
26. See In Search of New England's Native Past, 72-73.

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authors did not identify the claimed ancestors of the petitioning group as an Indian entity in Vermont.

The State contributed a copy of W. E. Greening's 1966 article "Historic Odanak and the Abenaki Nation," which appeard in the Canadian Geographical Journal. It identified Odanak [Quebec, Canada], Old Town, Maine [Penobscots], and Becancour W8linak[Quebec, Canada] as the "only ... Abenaki settlements in North America today. . ." (Greening 1966,.96-97). The author did not identify the petitioning group as an Indian entity in Vermont.

In 1972, Theodore Taylor's The States and Their Indian Citizens was published. Taylor had served as Deputy Commissioner of the BIA from 1966 to 1970, and conducted research for the book from 1970 to 1971 while on a Federal Executive Fellowship with the Brookings Institution. The book supplied a comprehensive overview of state Indian groups and their relationships with local and state governments. Taylor identified a number of small and large Indian groups in New England not then recognized by the Federal Government, none of which was in Vermont. These groups included the Maliseet (517 members), Micmac (600), Passamaquoddy (563), Penobscot (400), Nipmuc (2 to 300), Gay Head Wampanoag (100), Mashpee Wampanoag (435), Narragansett (424), Eastern (11) and Western Pequot (2), Golden Hill (2), and Mohegan (150). Regarding Vermont, Taylor provided only the total number of individuals listed as Indian on the 1970 Federal census, which was 229 (Taylor 1972, 176, 206). He did not, however, identify the claimed ancestors of the petitioning group as an Indian entity in Vermont in 1972.

One year later, Man in the Northeast published Gordon Day's "Missisquoi: A New Look at an Old Village." (27.) Day first presented this article in 1973 as a paper at a meeting of the Northeastern Anthropological Association. Most of it dealt with the Missisquoi Indians of northwestern Vermont before 1800. Day explained that when the French abandoned North America following their defeat in the French and Indian War,

the Missisquoi Indians found themselves separated by the boundary line between New York and Lower Canada from their friends and relatives at St. Francis, their allies the French, and their closest trading center at Montreal. Their reaction was to lease their agricultural land on the Missisquoi River and move to St. Francis. This removal was neither simultaneous nor complete. They never relinquished their claim to the region and collected rent on it until at least 1800, many families returned to the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain until about 1922. With the departure of the bulk of the village about 1775, they practically disappear from New England history. . . . (cited in Day 1998, 146)

He further determined that shortly after 1800, "all the Western Abenaki were united at Saint Francis," in Quebec and the censuses at Odanak showed "the great majority of the family names were of Missisquoi origin." This development meant that in the 20th century," scholars were able to work "directly with the descendants of Missisquoi families, many of whom returned regularly to Missisquoi until the 1920's," making it "possible to recover a considerable amount of information about the culture and way of life of the Abenaki at Missisquoi" (Day 1998, 146-
FOOTNOTES:
27. See In Search of New England's Native Past, 141-147.

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147). In this article, Day did not identify the petitioning group's claimed ancestors as part of an Indian entity in Vermont in 1973, nor did he reveal the existence of any such group at any previous time in the 20th century.

Newspapers, Magazines, and Non-Scholarly Books

The State. contributed all the evidence in the record from newspapers, magazines, and non-scholarly books for 1900 to 1975.

One document contains excerpts from Lyman Haye's 1907 History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont. This book was a local history of a Vermont town, located over 100 miles southeast from the town of Swanton. In it, the author discussed the historical Abenaki Indians in Vermont, mainly during the colonial period. Hayes mentioned a small group of unidentified Abenaki who in the early 1800's visited the area around Rockingham during the summer months. These were migratory Indians who came down the Connecticut River to sell some of their handcrafted goods to summer tourists. According to the author, around 1856 these Indians stopped visiting the locale (Hayes 1907). He did not identify any contemporary Indian entity in Vermont in 1907.

On December 4, 1913, the Swanton Courier published several articles describing early contact Vermont Indians. The first, an article by L. B. Truax, dealt with Indians in Franklin and Grand Isle Counties from the aboriginal and colonial periods. It mainly recorded finding Indian relics in an area occupied before 1800 by the Missisquoi Abenaki. As the author related, most of these Indians relocated to St. Francis in Quebec after 1800, although they occasionally returned, according to "old inhabitants," in "bands of 8 to 10 families to favorite camping grounds to spend part of the year, as late as 1835 or 1840" (Truax 1913.12.04). The article did not identify any of these migratory Indians of the early 19th century from St. Francis in Quebec. The second article, by an anonymous author, noted the finding of Indian relics on the Frick farm near Swanton, Vermont (Swanton Courier 1913.12.04). It did not identify any contemporary Indian entity in northwestern Vermont. The last article, also by an unknown author, portrayed Swanton as a good place to find Indian relics (Swanton Courier 1913.12.04). It did not identify a contemporary Indian entity of any kind.

The record contains excerpts from Walter 1-1111 Crockett's Vermont, the Green Mountain State, published in 1921. These excerpts dealt with the Indian presence in Vermont during the colonial period. The author discussed the existence of an 18th century Indian village in Newbury and one in Swanton (Crockett 1921, 49). He did not identify any contemporary Indian entity in Vermont.

The petition contains the first four pages from Frederic Palmer Wells's History of Barnet, Vermont, published in 1923. This was a local history of a town located in northeastern Vermont on the Connecticut River near the New Hampshire border, about 70 miles from Swanton. According to the author, nomadic Indians hunted in the area before white settlement. He reported "there was never, as far as we know, any permanent habitation of Indians in Barnet" (Wells 1923, 3). Wells also pointed out: "As late as 1780 there were about twenty Indian families in

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summer during several years" to sell "baskets and other trinkets," and to hunt and fish. The last group of these unidentified Indians arrived in 1857 from unknown origins (Wells 1923, 4). The author, however, did not identify any contemporary Indian entities in Vermont which might have contained the petitioner's claimed ancestors.

From July 1942 to January 1943, The Swanton Courier published a series of essays by Walter Bradford Scott entitled "Growing Up in Vermont." Scott, a long time resident of Swanton, described his childhood in the town. He did not identify any Indian group in Swanton in existence during his childhood or in 1941, but did mention at least one of the petitioner's claimed ancestors by name. On October 23, 1941, he portrayed William Morits as a beggar. He also mentioned one man who may have been an ancestor when he described "Duck" Brow as a meat- market employee. Although identification of an individual as Indian in not the test for criterion 83.7(a), none of these claimed ancestors were identified as Indian. In fact, Scott recorded only one person, Louis Button, as "part Indian" in the January 1941 article, but did not indicate that he was part of any Indian entity (Scott 1941.07.03). No one in the current petitioning group has claimed descent from Button.

Several articles from the 1950's dealt with Canadian Iroquois land claims in Vermont. On April 19, 1951, the Burlington Free Press published an article describing two Iroquois Indian chiefs from a reservation in Quebec (Kahnawá:ke) who had come to Vermont to present land claims to the State legislature. (One of these two Mohawk "Speaker's" or "Chief's" was John McComber a.k.a. "Poking Fire" of the Bear Clan) The claims encompassed Franklin, Chittenden, Grand Isle, Addison, and part of Rutland Counties in northwestern Vermont (Burlington Free Press 1951.04.19). One year later, the newspaper published an article on the appointment of Charles Adam to investigate these land claims in Vermont. It detailed Iroquois claims to 22,500 acres mainly in northern Vermont. The article identified only two Iroquois chiefs from Quebec (Burlington Free Press 1952.04.19). In November 1952, an article in the Daily Messenger also discussed Iroquois land claims in northern Vermont (Daily Messenger 1952.11. 10). Six years later, the Daily Messenger again published an article about Canadian Iroquois, 200 of them, coming to the state to make further land claims in northern Vermont (Daily Messenger 1958.04.08). None of these articles identified the petitioner's claimed ancestors as part of an Indian entity in Vermont. Nor did they describe any Indian entity from Vermont as objecting to the Iroquois land claims.

The State provided four pages of a 1955 Vermont History article by Steve Laurent on the aboriginal Abenakis of Vermont Laurent was hereditary chief of the St. Francis Reservation in Quebec, Canada. He expounded on some of the aboriginal Abenaki groups in northern New England, such as the Sokoki, the Penobscots, the Cowasucks, and the Missisquoi during the colonial period (Laurent 1955, 286-289). But he did not discuss any contemporary Indian entities in Vermont that might have included the petitioner's ancestors.

The State also submitted an essay by Mrs. Ellsworth Royce on the "last" of the Vermont Abenakis from the collections of the Vermont Historical Society. Information included in the essay indicates that Mrs. Royce wrote this essay between 1959 and 1969, when she donated it to the society. The text briefly recounted her experiences with the Obomsawin family who lived on Thompson Point's on Lake Champlain near Charlotte, Vermont. Mrs. Ellsworth Royce was a non-Indian woman who married the nephew of Marion and William Obornsawin, and she described her family visits to the Obomsawin house at Thompson's Point. This document

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revealed that the family originally came from the St. Francis reservation in Quebec, Canada, in the early 20th century. Although the author discussed individual Indians from Trois Rivières in Quebec, Intervals in New Hampshire, and Albany in New York, she did not identify the claimed ancestors of the petitioning group as being part of a Western Abenaki or Indian entity in Vermont or anywhere else (Royce 1959.00.00).

The petition record also contains 16 pages of excerpts from Alfred Tamarin's We Have Not Vanished, Eastern Indians of the United States, published in 1974. This work covered Indian groups on the east coast of the United States, but the excerpts provided dealt only with the Indian groups of New England, New York, and New Jersey. For Vermont, he found "there were over 200 Indians living in the state probably from tribes throughout the east as well as the rest of the country." He stated there were "no official tribal groupings in the state and no state agency concerned with Indian affairs." He further claimed "Vermont's modern Indian citizens are not descended from the state's original inhabitants." Rather, he concluded they descended from Indians from other New England states: Abenaki from Maine, Mahican from New York, Pennacook from New Hampshire, and other Indian groups from Massachusetts (Tamarin 1974, 43-44). Tamarin also identified a "community" of "about 25 Abenaki" near Lake George, New York (Tamarin 1974, 84), but the available evidence does not show that the petitioner had a connection to this group. The author did not identify the claimed ancestors of the petitioning group as an Indian entity in northwestern Vermont, where at that time, according to the petitioner, they numbered about 1,500.

Summary Analysis of Evidence for Criterion 83.7(a), 1976 to the Present

As the following analysis shows, external observers have identified the petitioner on a substantially continuous basis since 1976.

Identification as an Indian Entity by Federal Authorities

The available evidence shows the first identification of the group by Federal authorities occurred on April 4, 1976, during a hearing on "Non-Federally Recognized and Terminated Indians" before the American Indian Policy Review Commission (AIPRC), Task Force #10. This document was an excerpt of the testimony of Ronnie Cannes, identified by the commissioners as being "with the Abenaki Tribal Council" (AIPRC 1976.04.09, 1:114). The commission members lacked information about the group and the council's activities and were relying on Cannes for details. Cannes claimed there were 1,500 Indians, unidentified by "tribal" entity, in 4 of the State's 14 counties based on information collected by the local Indian manpower office of the Boston Indian Council. He reported 600 Native Americans for Swanton alone, but did not specify a "tribal" entity (AIPRC 1976.04.09, 1:117-1:118). Later in his testimony, Cannes repeated the 1,500 number, claiming this many Indians for northern Vermont, without supplying a "tribal" entity (AIPRC 1976.04.09, 1:124). During this hearing, the commission referred several times to the petitioning group's leadership as the "Abenaki Tribal Council," which was a commonly known designation for the petitioner's governing body at the time (AIPRC 1976.04.09, 1:122, 1:137). Because of the commission's repeated references to the "Abenaki Tribal Council," there is a reasonable likelihood that this document was an identification of the petitioning group by an external observer.

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An October 22, 1992, ruling by the U.S. District Court in Vermont identified the petitioner. In the case, the petitioning group, identified as the "Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi" along with its governing body, the "Abenaki Tribal Council," sued the Army Corps of Engineers and the town of Swanton to prevent the raising of spillway elevation at a hydroelectric facility in Highgate, Vermont. It claimed the intended action violated Federal statutes, including several environmental laws and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPIZA). In its ruling, the United States District Court acknowledged the group was not a Federal tribe as "recognized by the Secretary of the Interior," but accepted it as an "Indian tribe" for purposes of NAGPRA because its members received some "funds and assistance from the United States" due to their "status as Indians" (US District Court 1992.10.22, 39).

State Documents that Identified an American Indian Entity

The petitioner and the State furnished a copy of Jane Stapleton Baker's October 1976 "Report to Governor Thomas P. Salmon of the State of Vermont Regarding the Claims Presented by the Abenaki Nation." In the report's introductory letter, Baker, a consultant hired by the State to verify the claims of the "Abenaki" group, announced she had spent three months studying the
petitioner. Baker claimed the "reformulation of the Abenaki Tribal Council" started in 1972 (Baker 1976.10.15, 8). The council "developed from a loose network of friends, relatives and fellow veterans living in and around the Swanton-Highgate Springs area." Baker reported the group had 400 members in 1976 (Baker 1976.10.15, 8). Because Baker referred to the group as the "Abenaki Nation of Vermont" and its governing body as the newly-formed "Abenaki Tribal Council," this document identified the petitioner as an Indian entity (Baker 1976.10.15, 8-14).

The petitioner submitted a copy of Governor Thomas Salmon's November 24, 1976, executive order establishing a State commission on Indian Affairs and identifying the petitioning group as the "Abenaki Tribe" and its governing body as the "Abenaki Tribal Council." The order stated that "in 1974, certain native American people living within the state of Vermont as members of the Abenaki Tribe reconstituted their governing body the Abenaki Tribal Council" (Salmon 1976.11.24). Although Salmon's successor rescinded this order two months later, it was an identification of the petitioner as an Indian entity for 1976.

In addition, the petitioner submitted a copy of Governor Richard Snelling's June 17, 1983, proclamation identifying the petitioner as the "St. Francis/ Sokoki Band," and as the "legitimate representative of individuals of Abenaki descent residing in the State of Vermont." He also accorded his "support" for the group's "seeking recognition" from the Federal Government (Snelling 1983.06.17). While it is somewhat unclear if the Governor was recognizing an actual group of Indians or simply an organization that functioned as legal representative for people claiming Abenaki descent, there is a reasonable likelihood that this document identified the petitioning group as an American Indian entity.

One State court document also identified the group. It was the State of Vermont v. Harold St. Francis, et al., Vermont District Court-Franklin County, August 11, 1989. This was a fishing rights case that involved some of the petitioning group's members, including its leader Harold St. Francis. While the district court (Judge Joseph Wolchik) dismissed the idea that "Indian country" existed in Vermont, it did rule the defendants' "aboriginal right to fish" still existed "because aboriginal title was

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never extinguished." At various places in the record, the court identified the petitioner as the "Missisquoi Abenaki" of Vermont, a name which external sources have occasionally used to identify the group since the 1970's. The court record also identified the petitioner's self-help organization—the Abenaki Self Help Association, created in the 1970's (Vermont District Court 1989.00.00, 32-34) (28.)

County, Parish, or Other Local Government Documents that Identified an American Indian Entity

In September 1995, the town of Burlington, Vermont, passed a resolution identifying the petitioner as the "Abenaki Nation" and the "Abenaki of Missisquoi," names which have sometimes been used to identify the group since the 1970's. The resolution stated that the group had "at least 2,000 members" residing "around Swanton and the Missisquoi Bay." It also pointed out the group had petitioned for Federal recognition (Burlington 1995.09.18). Since the group was (and is) the only petitioner for Federal acknowledgment from the State of Vermont, there is a reasonable likelihood that this resolution was an identification of the petitioner in 1995.

Scholarly Documents that Identified an American Indian Entity

There are two identifications of the group by William Haviland, chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University of Vermont. The petitioner submitted a December 20, 1976, letter to the editor from Haviland to the Burlington Free Press. In it, he depicted the opposition to the "state recognition of the Abnakis [sic]" as "disturbing" and based on "erroneous information." In this case, Haviland was referring to the Governor's executive order that had identified the petitioning group a few weeks earlier. He based his historical argument on Gordon Day's work on the Abenakis in Vermont during the colonial period. He argued Day had "pointed out that the Abnakis at St. Francis [Odanak] . . . essentially consist of descendants of families from Lake Champlain." Haviland proposed these were the "same Abnakis [the St. Francis Indians in Quebec identified by Day] who just formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the Vermont Abnakis." In this instance, Haviland was referring to an August 20, 1976, resolution from the St. Francis (or "Odanak") Indians of Quebec (Retrospectively, the 'late' Walter Watso and the Odanak Band Council of the time period). Based on these facts, Haviland believed "the governor's decision to recognize the Vermont group was "eminently reasonable and desirable" (Haviland 1976.12.20). This letter to the editor identified the petitioner, referred to as the "Vermont Abenakis," as an American Indian entity. (29.)
FOOTNOTES:
28. See FAIR Image File ID: ACR-PFD-V001-D001.

29. This letter conflicts with Haviland's letter to Gordon Day, dated April 22, 1976, in which he confessed surprise at the alleged number of Indians in Vermont (1,500 as originally claimed by the petitioning group) and admitted to his lack of knowledge of the petitioning group (Haviland 1976.04.22). In addition, nothing in Day's writings to that time confirmed the existence of a group of Western Abenaki in Vermont after 1800. Indeed, Day had argued, and would continue to do so, that almost all the Western Abenaki in Vermont had removed to St. Francis in Quebec by that time. While Day acknowledged that isolated St. Francis Indians from Odanak in Quebec continued returning to Vermont up to the mid-20th century, some temporarily and others permanently, he never identified any entity of Western Abenaki in Vermont for that period.

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The State submitted the preface and sixth chapter of the 1994 edition of Haviland's The Original Vermonters, and the Department library has a copy of the 1981 edition. Most of the book, except for the final chapter, covered the pre-1800 period. Regarding the current petitioner, identified here as the "St. Francis Sokoki Band," the 1981 edition gave some population estimates of "between 1,500 and 2,000 Abenakis living in Vermont." The largest number were in the Swanton-Highgate area of Franklin County, with fewer amounts in St. Johnsbury, Orleans, Waterville, Hyde Park-Eden, or dispersed around the state (Haviland 1994, 250-253). Haviland also described the events surrounding the formation of the group's council in the 1970's. This book identified the petitioner by name as an American Indian entity.

The State provided a copy of Gordon Day's 1981 Identity of the Saint Francis Indians. This was a survey, mainly up to 1800, of the composition and demographics of the St. Francis Indians at Odanak in Quebec, Canada. Regarding the historical Missisquoi Band of Western Abenaki in northwestern Vermont, from which the petitioning group claims to have descended, Day stated that a "small village still existed at Missisquoi in 1786 after the [Revolutionary] war. Only some twenty persons remained in 1788, and these may have stayed on to contribute to the present-day Indian group at Swanton, but most of the Missisquoi had left by 1800." He stressed, however that by "1800 all but a few scattered individuals seem to have left northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and western Maine for Odanak, although they continued to hunt south of the border for many years." According to Day, the tribal composition of the Odanak village was essentially completed by that time (Day 1981, 65). While Day did not identify the petitioner by name, his reference to "the present-day group at Swanton" presents a reasonable likelihood that he was referring to the current petitioner. This book identified the petitioning group as an American Indian entity in 1981.

Also included in the petition was a copy of Colin Calloway's 1990 Western Abenakis of Vermont. Most of the study analyzed the pre-1800 history of the Western Abenaki. Regarding the current petitioner, Calloway claimed the group "reconstituted" itself in the 1970's because its members were "no longer afraid or ashamed of admitting their Indian identity," and "were tired of resting at the bottom of the social and economic ladder." So they "took action to improve their community's well-being while preserving its cultural heritage" by forming a council and reconstituting the "St. Francis-Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation" of Swanton (Calloway 1990a, 248). Calloway identified the petitioner by name as an American Indian entity in 1990.

The State submitted a copy of Gary W. Hume's 1991 article on Joseph Laurents "Indian Camp" at Intervals, New Hampshire. (30.) It began with a brief analysis of the geography of the historical Western Abenaki (Hume 1991, 102-103). The rest of the article examined Joseph Laurent, a chief of the Saint Francis Indians at Odanak in Quebec, and a summer camp he established ill 1884 in the village of Intervals in the Town of Conway in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Laurent ran the camp until 1917, when his wife and family assumed operations and kept it going until 1960. His son maintained the site afterwards. The camp became and remains an important spot for the tourist trade, and for Indians to sell baskets and handicrafts (Hume 1991, 105-106).
FOOTNOTES:
30. It appeared in Alkongians of New England: Past and Present published by the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings.

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Hume mentioned that Frank Speck "spent many summers" from 1915 to 1944 at the Laurent camp. Irving Hallowell, a Speck student and his "successor" at the University of Pennsylvania, also spent many summers from 1918 to 1932 at Intervale and Odanak. Finally, Gordon Day from Dartmouth University made many trips from 1952 to 1965 to the camp (Hume 1991, 1091 1 1). Hume, however, did not indicate that Laurent or any of these anthropologists ever discussed the existence of the claimed ancestors of petitioning group as an Indian entity in Vermont. Nor did he claim individuals from any such entity ever visited Laurent's camp. There is also no evidence in the article to suggest the Laurents visited any Western Abenaki community from the Swanton area of Vermont, where the petitioner claimed the core of its membership lived.

Regarding the 1970's and 1980's, Hume noted: "Abenaki ethnic identity has been strengthened further by the political emergence of the Missisquoi Abenaki. For two decades now Missisquoi Abenaki have sought political recognition and redress for lands they claim were taken illegally without compensation following the American Revolution." "Missisquoi Abenaki" has been a term occasionally used since the early 1970's to identify the group. He also stated that the "group" had "been active in the identification and preservation of burial sites and sacred places" (Hume 1991, 113), as confirmed by other evidence in this petition. Given Hume's use of the term "Missisquoi Abenaki," the sources he referenced which also identified the petitioner, and the context of his discussion, there is a reasonable likelihood that this article identified the petitioner as an American Indian entity in 1991.

Newspapers, Magazines, and Non-Scholarly Books that Identified an Entity

Newspapers, magazines, and non-academic books have regularly identified the petitioner since 1976. Several items dealt with the group's formation in the middle 1970's and the controversy surrounding Governor Salmon's November 1976 recognition of the group. These newspapers articles and other works referred to the group as "Swanton's tribe of Abenaki Indians," the "Abenaki tribe of Vermont," or the "Vermont Abenakis" (Hall 1976.12.13; Anonymous 1977.02.00; Pierce 1977.00.00; Abbey 1979.07.22; Slayton 1981.09.00; Gram 2002.07.12).

Many newspaper and magazine articles discussed the frequent political fissures that have developed within the petitioning group over the last 30 years. They also identified leaders of the group like Homer St. Francis and other well-known members. These articles identified the group as the "Abenaki Nation," "Abenaki Tribe," "Abenaki Tribal Council," "Abenaki Tribal Nation," and similar names (Kreiger 1977.05.00; Hoague 1977.01.12; Reid 1977.10.21; Abbey 1979.00.00; Daley 1987.11.29, 1988.01.07, 1988.01.10, 1988.01.11; Cowperthwait 1995.10.29; Anonymous 1995.10.30; Walsh 1995.11.07).

Other items dealt with the group's land claims or court cases involving its members' attempts to fish or hunt without a State license. These documents also referred to the group's leader Homer St. Francis and other well-known members by name, discussed its petition for Federal recognition, and its self-help association. These documents usually described the group imprecisely with such broad terms as the "Abenakis," "Abenaki Indians," or "Abenakis of Vermont," but based on references to the group's leaders and the context of the topics discussed there is more than a reasonable likelihood that they identified the petitioning group (Daley

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1987.09.10; Grodinsky 1987.11.11; Daley 1988.01.10; Polumbaum 1988.03.16; New York Times 1989.08.15, 1992.06.18).

Several newspaper articles focused on the leadership of Homer St. Francis, the group's leader for most of the period since 1976. These materials identified the group he led as the "Abenaki Nation," "St. Francis-Sokoki Band of Abenakis of Vermont," "Abenaki Tribal Council," or "Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi" (New York Times 1987.09.13; 1988.10.02, 1991.04.02; Daley 1987.09.13; Cowperthwait 1988.03.10, 1988.10.10, 1989.09.12; Diamond 1989.01.01; Ballinger 1995.11.17; Indian Country Today 1995.11.23; Jones 2001.07.12.).

Documents from Indian Organizations that Identified an Indian Entity

The OFA administrative correspondence file contained a copy of a 1988 statement of support from the New England Indian Task Force for the "Saint Francis Sokoki Band of Abenaki Indians in their efforts to secure justice and prosperity for all members of their nation" (New England Indian Task Force 1988.00.00). This document identified the petitioning group by name as an American Indian entity.

Conclusion
The available evidence demonstrates that no external observers identified the petitioning group or a group of the petitioner's ancestors from 1900 to 1975. External sources have identified the petitioner on a regular basis only since 1976. Therefore, the petitioning group has not been identified on a substantially continuous basis since 1900 and does not meet criterion 83.7(a).

The petitioner is encouraged to submit documentation that they were identified as an Indian entity from 1900 to 1975 if it wishes to overcome the documentary deficiency in the current record, which suggests the group was recently formed in the middle 1970's.