State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 67 to 74:

TWENTIETH CENTURY

Twentieth Century Claims of Abenaki Continuity
There is very little to say about the Abenakis in Vermont in the twentieth century
until the 1970's. From 1900 to 1974 they were invisible, if they were here at all. Most of the twentieth century material will be addressed in response to the specific criteria, but a brief overview here will provide background.
There was no noticeable Abenaki community in Vermont, let alone Franklin County, from 1900 to 1970. It was only in 1970, with the increase in ethnic consciousness across the U.S., that Abenakis became detectable. In 1974 a group of individuals re-constituted the tribe and created a tribal Council. The petition credits the associations made through Veterans groups after WWII as the immediate precursor to the social and political reorganization of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Missisquoi in the 1970's (Petition Addendum: 123). The petitioner concedes this was re-creation, re-emergence, and re-organization of the community (Petition Addendum: 126). One of the first things the Tribal Council did was push for state recognition. Its efforts led to the Baker report to the Governor of Vermont in November, 1976. 45. This report prompted the outgoing Governor Thomas Salmon's to issue an Executive Order recognizing the Abenakis in Vermont. State recognition was short-lived. Two months later, in January, 1977, newly elected Governor Richard Snelling revoked the Executive Order.

The Eugenics Survey of Vermont
The Second Addendum to the Petition, filed with the BIA in 1995, lists one of its
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FOOTNOTE:
45. The reaction to the Balser report by scholars of Abenaki history and ethnology is discussed below in the section on Criterion (a): 1974 to 1981.

sources as the Vermont Eugenics Survey (Second Addendum:9). The Second Addendum describes the survey as an "insidious and discriminatory program" aimed at "the eradication of mental and moral 'defectives' within the community." It states that despite this, the archives of the survey are "extremely valuable in demonstrating the ancestry of the Native-Americans in Vermont who were especially targeted to be victims of this program" (Second Addendum:9). The notion that Indians were targeted by the Eugenics Survey is but a mere mention in the petition: however the idea has loomed large in the petitioner's public arguments for tribal acknowledgment. The ways in which the petitioner has exploited the Eugenics Survey are explained below and in the Affidavit of J. Kay Davis, which is attached to this Response.

For example, in a press packet entitled "The New Vermont Eugenics Survey,"
released in February 2002, Frederick Wiseman, an Abenaki spokesman, wrote:

Once long ago, in the 1920's, post WWI tide of xenophobia turned inward to haunt inter-ethnic relations in the "the whitest state in the union." Dr. Henry Perkins of the University of Vermont and a group of Anglo intellectual and civic leaders founded the Vermont Eugenics Survey. Its purpose was to study Eugenics Survey. study groups of Vermonters (called the "unfortunates"), who by their very existence needed more state assistance, social programs, institutionalization, legal fees, etc than the "old stock" Anglo Vermonters. In order to stem this "drain" of resources, the survey began a study of the family histories of "horse trading, basketmaking" Abenaki lineages. The Eugenics Surveys dream was realized in 1931, when Vermont passed the Act for Voluntary Sterilization. (Wiseman 200-2:1).

Wiseman's book, Voice of the Dawn, is filled with similar rhetoric geared to bolster public support for federal acknowledgment. There he sought to explain away the invisibility and lack of information about the Abenakis by blaming the Eugenics Survey:

Soon the lens of genocide was trained on the Gypsies, Pirates, and River Rats, 46. as well as other ethnic groups. Employing the latest genealogical research and statistical record keeping techniques, the survey added new technologies to the list of ancient genocidal procedures used by New English authorities against the Abenakis. In addition, they provided social and police organizations with lists of families to "watch." Unfortunately, the social gulf between elite Anglo culture and the village dwelling River Rats and Pirates was not so wide that they could entirely escape notice. Major Abenaki families at Missisqoui were especially at risk. The more "hidden" families and the Gypsies partially escaped unheeded—for a while. But then began ethnic conflict incidents as Gypsies and Pirates had their children taken from them. The theft of children and the hatred emanating from the burning cross and Ku Klux Klan rallies are still recalled by Abenaki and French Canadian elders in Barre, Vermont. Any family who still had thoughts about standing forth as Abenaki, due to the tourists' continued interest in our arts and culture quickly retired to obscurity as the tide of intolerance rose. We continually needed to be on our guard with the police, the tax man, and the school board, the eves and ears of the survey. (Wiseman 2001:147-48).

The notion that the Eugenics Survey caused the Abenakis to hide their Indian
identities became current in the late 1990's when it made its way into a history kit published history by the Vermont Historical Society in 1998:

History books have long claimed that the Abenaki "disappeared" from Vermont. While some Abenaki did leave Vermont for Canada, many others remained. As the Abenaki began to speak French or English and adopted European dress, historians of the nineteenth century assumed that the Abenaki had vanished. The Abenaki families who remained in Vermont survived in a variety of ways. Some lived a nomadic life and were called "gypsies." Others remained on the outskirts of their communities and lived off the land as they had for centuries hunting, fishing, and trapping.


From the 1920's through the 1940's the Eugenics Survey of Vermont... sought to "improve" Vermont by seeking out "genetically inferior peoples" such as Indians, illiterates, thieves, the insane, paupers, alcoholics, those with harelips, etc....As a result of this program, Abenaki had to hide their heritage even more. They were forced to deny their culture to their children and grandchildren. (Vermont Historical Society 1998:31).
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FOOTNOTE:
46. The first annual report of the Eugenics Survey used the terms, "Gypsy," and "Pirate" to describe Survey "Gypsy," some of the families it portrayed. The term "River Rat" is not found in the reports (Eugenics Survey of Vermont 1927:8).

The concept of the eugenics survey driving the Abenakis underground was trumpeted again at the time of Chief Homer St. Francis's death in 2001. One newspaper article reporting on St. Francis's passing said:

The tribe that St. Francis grew up in was one that had been devastated by European settlement and driven underground by racism. That racism found its purest expression in the "eugenics" campaign of the 1920s and '30s, which promoted the sterilization of Abenaki and other groups of Vermont's undesirables." (Burlington Free Press 7/9/2001).

However, the argument was never made by any scholars of Indian history in Vermont before 1991. Jean S. Baker's Report to Governor Salmon in 1976 does not mention it, nor does Ken Pierce's 1977 History of the Abenaki People. John Moody's manuscript on Missisquoi in 1979 does not insinuate any link between the Eugenics Survey and the invisibility of the Abenakis; he doesn't even mention the survey. This is very surprising since all three of these authors based their writings on extensive interviews with people claiming Abenaki heritage. All three of them earned the trust of their informants, yet they never disclosed the survey as a significant factor in Abenaki history.
Most importantly, neither the original petition for federal acknowledgment, filed in 1982, or the first Addendum to the Petition filed in 1986 contains any mention of the Survey. Only the Second Addendum, dated 1995, refers to it, but without any of the arguments of its effect on the invisibility of Abenaki families. To unpack the building of this myth, a more detailed examination of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont is required.
Established in 1925, the Eugenics Survey was one of many undertaken in the United States during the 1920's and 1930's. Vermont's was headed by Henry F. Perkins, Chairman during by of the University of Vermont's Zoology Department. The Survey issued five reports between 1927 and 1931. It conducted surveys of town and surveys of people. It created

genealogical pedigree charts of twenty-two families in depth, and began charts for dozens more (Dann 1991:6, Gallagher 1998). The survey led to the creation, by Henry Perkins, of the Vermont Commission on Country Life (Dann 1991:6, 17-19).

One focus of the Eugenics Survey was the physical and mental condition of the
Vermont population. The authors saw embarrassingly large numbers of Vermonters rejected from military service in World War I on physical and mental grounds. State officials wanted to know why so many were rejected (Ainsworth 1944:11 ). The State officials were also concerned about the population losses due to emigration out of the state, and the lack of industrial changes in Vermont compared with other New England states (Ainsworth 1944:10-11). Meanwhile, they saw rural towns becoming depopulated, causing a deterioration of the social structure (Gallagher 1999:45.)
The reports of the survey and its work led to further study of population trends by the Vermont Commission on Country Life. That Commission attempted to answer these questions: What are the motives of those who left the state? What are the motives and vocational choices of those who stayed in Vermont') What are the motives of those who have moved into the state and what contributions have they brought? (Perkins, H.:1930:2-3 ). Survey authors advocated reforms in family welfare, public health, economic aid to rehabilitation, and education, but also endorsed sterilization as a matter of social policy (Ainsworth: 17).
One method used by the Eugenics Survey to analyze population trends in Vermont was to classify towns by certain characteristics. In a section of the survey papers labeled "Towns Suggested for Study," is a map labeling towns as "declined in some way," "desirable or progressive," "outlanders," "summer people," or "original stock" (Eugenics Survey of

Vermont [1929]). In the northwestern part of the state, the area where the Abenaki claims are greatest, two towns were labeled for study because they had "declined in some way." These were Swanton and Fairfax. The narrative descriptions accompanying the map indicate the reasons for examining them—and they have nothing to do with possible Indian populations. Rather, Fairfax was suggested for study to determine "why the theological seminary left and what was the effect of its departure on the town" (Eugenics Survey of Vermont [1929]). The reasons Swanton was cited for study were succinct:

Swanton presents an interesting problem. During the war, there was a large shirt (?) factory there and the town was thriving. Now the factory stands empty, and in spite of the fact that there is apparently everything to do with water power. some marble, and available building the town is on the decline.
It would be interesting to see whether or not the town was pushed beyond its capacity during the war or whether it still has possibilities for a steady prosperity. (Eugenics Survey of Vermont [ 1929]).

There is nothing in these descriptions that would lead one to believe the targets of the Eugenics Survey were areas of Indian habitation. Furthermore, the nearby towns of Highgate, Franklin, and Sheldon, claimed to be havens for Abenaki families, were not suggested for study at all.
The only other northwestern Vermont towns suggested for study were on the Lake Champlain Islands: North Hero, Grand Isle, and Alburgh. All three were labeled as having summer people and outlanders. They are noted as having two distinct classes of people—old settlers and new French Canadian families. The survey notes that population was declining as most of the young people were leaving. Once again there is no mention of Indians (Eugenics Survey of Vermont [1929]).
There is nothing in the Eugenics Survey papers that indicates that Indians were targeted by the survey. If any group was targeted, it was the French Canadians (Davis

Affidavit, Attachment A:9). The Third Annual Report of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont published in 1929, included a list of "Some English Corruptions of French Names." The survey printed this list because "the spelling of a name is seen to change through successive generations. It is easy to see that such discrepancies might throw one off the track for a long time. The implication is that the surveyors were particularly interested in following the French Canadian "track" (Eugenics Survey of Vermont 1929:5). Perkins was enthusiastic about studying French Canadians. He sought grants to further the study of this group, and hoped to develop data correlating the degree of French-Canadian ancestry with "mental testing, educational attainment, and various cultural factors"  (Gallagher 1999:95). Vermont's focus on French Canadians continued into the 1930's. The Works Progress Administration guide, Vermont: A Guide to the Green Mountain State said that "[s]ince 1900 the largest single immigrant group has been the French-Canadian. As early as the 1930's this element began replacing the Yankee farmers in the northernmost tier of counties; today they constitute approximately one-quarter of the population there (including second generation) as compared with thirteen percent of the State's total" (Works Progress Administration 1937:51). This group was by far the largest of any immigrant group. 47. An impressive study of racial interaction in Vermont arose out of the midst of the Eugenics Survey. This was Elin Anderson's We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an Eugenics Survey American City (1937). While Anderson had worked under Perkins for the eugenics survey for seven years, she brought an entirely different interpretation to the material. Rather than years
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FOOTNOTE:
47. After the French-Canadians' thirteen percent portion. the next largest group was the non-French Canadians, which comprised three per cent of the state's population. No other group even reached one percent (Works Progress Administration 1937:52).

promote the pioneer-stock Yankees as the epitome of society, she exposed their narrow-mindedness toward other ethnic groups (Anderson 1937:155-56). Her study sought to understand the reasons for cleavages within communities, to determine the extent to which they were ethnically based, and to look for ways to move beyond those divisions. Anderson began by surveying a sample of residents from six of Burlington's ethnic groups: French-Canadian, Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews, and Yankee "Old Americans" (Anderson 1937:272). They were surveyed using a set of questions that inquired into the extent the immigrant groups interacted with each other, were assimilated into the mainline culture, or were intentionally kept separate.

The model Survey form was designed for French-Canadians, the others were
adaptations of it (Eugenics Survey of Vermont [1932-1936]). This main shows the prominence of the focus on French-Canadians as the dominant immigrant group. One question specifically listed fourteen other ethnic groups and asked for the respondent's perception of them. The fourteen groups listed included French Canadians, Irish, Americans/Yankees, English Canadians, Italians, Jews, Germans, Syrians, French, Scottish, Greeks, English, Scandinavians, Chinese, and Negroes (Eugenics Survey of Vermont [1932-1936]). There was no surveying of attitudes toward Abenaki Indians, or Native Americans of any kind. They were not enough of a recognizable entity in Burlington in the 1930's to be part of the study.
The first published source to draw a connection between the Eugenics Survey and the Abenakis was Kevin Dann's 1991 article in Vermont History, "From Degeneration to Regeneration: The Eugenics Survey of Vermont, 1925-1936." There Dann noted a connection between the survey and the Abenaki:

State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 57 to 64:

By the forays of their enemies, the warlike Iroquois, and the encroachment of the whites, the Zoquageers were gradually driven from Vermont, and their last village of consequence within its limits, was on Missisque Bay, in the present town of Alburgh. They had, for the most part, removed before the Revolution to the St. Francois River, in Canada, where the survivors of this once powerful tribe now live, commonly known as the St. Francois Indians, though, they style themselves as of old, Zoquageers and Abenakees, or as they pronounce it, Wau-ban-a-kees. (Robinson 1867:31).

This testimony is made all the more reliable by the confirmation of the Watso family name in records of Odanak/St. Francis in the 1870's. The Watsos were residents of the Quebec reserve, and some members of that family are listed on the reserve's 1875 census as absent in the United States (Canada, Indian Affairs 1875).
A further sign that these Indians were visitors comes from Robinson's accounts of the news these visitors brought him of friends who lived at Odanak/St. Francis (Robinson 1921b:135-37). For example, in May 1881, Robinson wrote in his journal that Louis Tahmont, an Abenaki from St. Francis, told him that his brother, Swasin Tahmont, has "gone by the strong water stream' to happier hunting grounds than these. I knew him well, and then, 25 years ago, he would not touch whiskey" (Robinson 1879-81). Obviously, Robinson had not seen his friend for 25 years, since Swasin did not live near Ferrisburgh; he lived in Canada. The connection of these individuals to Odanak/St. Francis is nowhere more evident than in a letter Robinson wrote in 1894 to Joseph Laurent, the Chief of the St. Francis Abenaki, in which he said:

Years ago I knew several of your people—John Wadso and his sons Thomas and Samuel—his father called him [Dodosen?]—also Swasin Tahmont and his family, and [   ] Louis Tahmont and Joseph Tucksoose. Please remember me to such of them as are living. (Robinson 11/1894).

Another mark that signifies these Indians are not living in Vermont is their
connection to New York State. In his journal entry of April 30, 1881, Robinson relates his

visit with Joe Tucksoose and Louis Tahmont (Robinson 1879-81). 41. He wrote that Tucksoose had served in a New York Regiment of the Union Army. There were members of both the Tahmont and Toxus families in New York State near Lake George in the federal census records for 1900, listing their parents' birthplace as Canada (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1900a).

Further corroboration that Robinson's Indian friends usually lived elsewhere and only occasionally came through Vermont is apparent in his search for the Indian names for rivers, mountains, and natural places in Vermont. His many inquiries and discoveries of native place names are recorded in his journal entries, his letter to Chief Laurent, and stories like "Sobapsqua" and "On a Glass Roof." He was enamored of the Indian language, as this passage reveals:

"Thompson's Point" is not a good name for a noble headland, but it is better
that it should have borne it for a hundred years than half a dozen that are no more significant.

The Waubanakees called it "Kozoapsqua," the "Long Rocky Point," and the noticeable cleft promontory opposite *'Sobapsqua," the "Pass through the Rock," names which might well have been retained, and perhaps would have been if our pioneer ancestors had not so bitterly hated the Indians and all that pertained to them. There was cause enough for this hatred, but one wishes it had not been carried so far when the poverty of our ancestors' nomenclature is considered and the few surviving names of Indian origin remind us how easily we might have been spared the iteration of commonplace and vulgar names that cling to mountain, river, and lake. (Robinson 1921a:89-90).

Robinson took every opportunity to learn Indian names; he also enlisted the aid of his nephew William Robinson in this word search, as Bill was living in Montreal. ________________
FOOTNOTES:
41. Although the cover of the journal states it spans 1879 to 1880, it actually contains entries through 1889.
42. There are two existing letters from William Robinson to Rowland E. Robinson in the Rokeby Museum's collection of Robinson letters housed at the Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont.

Montreal, Bill found four old Abenakis who had fought in the Battle of Plattsburgh in the War of 1812 and "have spent many of their days along old Pe-tow-boroke" (Lake Champlain). This is another indication that Indians who had previously lived in Vermont had retired to Canada (Robinson, W.:1/14/1880). It once again confirms that the sources of Indian knowledge of Vermont during the late nineteenth century were primarily located elsewhere.

All of this effort indicates that Robinson was unable to find any local Indians in Vermont to supply him with Indian place names. The fact that someone of his diligence could not find any informants on Indian words in western Vermont in the 1880's and 1890's implies they were not present. If they had been there, one would expect his traveling Indian friends to have told him about them. 43.
Petitioner explains the absence of a visible Indian community by arguing that the Vermont Abenakis settled down, adopted white man's ways, and joined the white man's economy (Petition:71). The problem with this explanation is that it doesn't square with other information in the petition. There is plenty of evidence that petitioner's ancestors held the same sort of jobs that whites held in Franklin County: grocer, stone cutter, farm laborer (Petition:74, 76). But this does not mean that Abenakis were acting like whites. It is equally
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FOOTNOTES:
42. (continued) One is dated Sept. 13, 1895, the other Jan. 14, 1880. See Rokeby's collection of Robinson family letters, Box 8, folder 27; Box 6, folder 16. They both appear to be part of ongoing communications regarding the Abenakis. In one Bill told Rowland what he learned in his visit with the Abenaki historian Father Maurault, and promised to help Rowland pronounce words that he learned from some old Abenakis in Montreal.
43. For example, Robinson wrote in "On a Glass Roof," that the Indian he met fishing "and a few of his people were wintering in a neighboring village" (Robinson 1921b:136). Although one might think he is referring to an Indian village, it is not clear. He does not specify it as Indian, and he does not tell its location with any sense of familiarity. If there were a permanent Indian village in the area, one would expect the historian of Ferrisburgh to know about it.

possible that the real heritage of petitioner's ancestors was French Canadian, and that is why they did not show signs of an Indian identity.

Moreover, the explanation that the Abenakis simply settled into a sedentary town life does not account for the unassimilated Indians who Leo St. Francis recalls seeing from a distance behind the Slamon Farm near the swamp (Petition 97). If his observation is correct (and we have no verification that those were Indians he saw), that means there were Indians in the area who continued to live a distinct lifestyle apart from the white community. But they are not part of the petitioner's group! The petitioner is comprised of people who were indistinguishable from the white population; it does not include the visible Indians known to Robinson and others.
It is significant that Rowland Robinson did not confuse white French Canadians with Abenaki Indians. In his era, he knew them as two separate groups. He made a clear distinction between them, unlike petitioner in its account of its ancestors blending in with the rest of society. In his stories about Danvis he portrayed Antoine Bassette as a garrulous French Canadian. When Sam Lovel, the main character, encountered Indians in Danvis, Antoine was as surprised as any of the others, and made fun of the eggshell canoe the Indians were building (Robinson 1937:232).
Likewise, in "On a Glass Roof," Robinson described meeting three men separately
ice-fishing—the first two French Canadian, the last one an Abenaki. He depicted their speech with two discretely different accents (Robinson 1921b:133, 138). And, while he dismissed the first one saying "these Canucks think all the fish and all the berries belong to them," he went on to speak admiringly of the Abenaki from St. Francis (Robinson 1921b:132, 135). He was attracted to him as he realized here was an "ideal angler," "plying

the gentle art here in the warpath of his ancestors" (Robinson 1921 b:135). In contrast to the talkative French Canadians, this fisherman was "as taciturn as his ancestors could have been" (Robinson 1921b:136).

The point of Robinson's observations is that they demonstrate the visibility of Indian visitors to Vermont and the nonexistence of any Indian residents. His writings illustrated the maintenance of an Indian culture that showed its presence in Vermont only through the through Abenakis from Odanak/St. Francis.

French-Canadian Migration to Vermont
The lifestyle and migration pattern described by the petition is not evidence that these families are Indian. The movements of these people are the same as the travel patterns of the French Canadians who were migrating into and through Vermont during the same time. There is nothing in the evidence of lifestyles that distinguishes the petitioner's relatives from the French Canadians. Moreover, the genealogical material below [in the subsequent pages] will show most of the petitioner's ancestors can be traced back to French Canada. See analysis in section on Criterion (e).
The Indians in the petition were described as having a seasonal migratory pattern, coming into Vermont after the Revolution, and concentrating their stays in the northwestern part of the state, around Lake Champlain (Petition:71). Similarly, the French Canadians began moving into border areas of Vermont shortly after the American Revolution. According to Ralph Vicero who extensively analyzed French Canadian immigration to Vermont, "The major concentrations, however, coincided with those areas bordering on Lake

Champlain, the historic corridor leading from the St. Lawrence settlements into New England" (Vicero 1968, 1971). This is the same area where petitioner's ancestors settled.

For many of the French Canadians, their residence in Vermont was seasonal, or short term:

immigration never was intended to be a permanent move; rather, an early return to Quebec was anticipated. Some returned after a winter's or summer's work in the mills, others after a stay of one or two years when they had saved enough money to pay off the mortgage on their farm or to purchase additional land. (Vicero 1971:290, see also 1968:194).

They did not only work in the mills. Their work as farm laborers in the Champlain Valley was colorfully described by a local resident this way:

In the Champlain Valley, a hundred years ago, more and less, before mowing machines were in general use, came bands of men from the north each armed with a scythe with which to attack the meadows of that rich farming country. With the aid of their trusty blades, meanwhile being refreshed from the inevitable jug in the shade, they accomplished the haying and returned to their "Canadaw."...The Canadians, with their scythes, were placed in a line across one end of a field and, incited by competition, moved forward in rhythmical motion, leaving the grass flat in broad expanse behind them and throwing jeers over their shoulders at the man who couldn't keep up. (Horsford 1925:11).

This seasonal migration, for farm or mill work, matched the seasonal visits of people described in the petition. And the occupations of these French Canadians were day laborers, wood choppers, quarry workers, and farm laborers—all positions held by the ancestors of the petitioner (Petition:71, 74, 84, Vicero 1971:293).
The timing of French Canadian immigration followed the economic cycles in Quebec and New England. The immigration dates of petitioner's ancestors coincided with the swells of French Canadian migration (see Table 2, below, for immigration dates). This correlation again adds to the implication that the petitioner's ancestors had closer ties to the French Canadian population than to any possible Indian population. The Morits family arrived in

the 1820's, a time marked by "a noticeable increase in the migration [due to] the steadily worsening state of Quebec agriculture" (Vicero 1971:290). Widespread failure of the wheat crop in Quebec in the 1830's along with abortive rebellions in Canada in 1837 and 1838 meant much immigration in those years (Vicero 1971:290). That is when the St. Laurent, Colombe and Medor families arrived.

The failure of the potato crops in the 1840's coupled with rural indebtedness caused many Quebec residents to seek an escape to the United States between 1840 and 1850 (Vicero 1968:389). During that decade, "it appears that more than three-fifths of the estimated net migration was directed toward Vermont" (Vicero 1968:396). It is during that time of the 1840's that the Hance, St. Francis, Phillips, and Desmarais families moved to Vermont.
Between 1865 and 1873, the economic boon in New England attracted a surge of migration from Canada (Vicero 1968:212). "The Bishop of Vermont was so impressed by the number of migrants he observed that he claimed that the French-Canadian population of his diocese had doubled between 1866 and 1868" (Vicero 1968:205). While this may have been an exaggeration, there is a report that more than 500 migrants had been added to during Burlington's population during 1868" (Vicero 1968:249, n.72). The French Canadian population of Vermont increased 75% between 1860 and 1870, from 16,580 to 29,000 (Vicero 1968:275). During the late 1860's and 1870's the Hoague, LaFrance, and Ouimette families came to Vermont.
After 1870, there was very little growth in that group's population in Vermont, as work in other New England states became more attractive (Vicero 1968:275-77). Correspondingly, among the peititioner's families, the ones that arrived in Vermont after 1870

(Hakey, Partlow, Gardner, Lapan, and Nepton) did not come from Quebec. Instead, they came there from Massachusetts or New York State.

The coincidence in the timing of the waves of immigration of petitioner's ancestors with the waves of French Canadians from Quebec is unmistakable.

Caughnawagha Claims Presented to Vermont Legislature
The petitioner mentions "one other event that coincided with the abandonment of the village at Missisquoi"—the 1798 petition by the Mohawks from Caughnawagha for compensation for the loss of fishing and hunting territories in Vermont. As the petitioner allows, this claim "undoubtedly helped at the time to reinforce the notion that the Indians had quit the area altogether" (Petition:51). Vermont Governor Tichnor investigated the claim and advised the Legislature that the Caughnawagha claims had no merit as they had been extinguished, and furthermore, that Vermont could not grant such a claim without the consent of the U.S. Congress (Calloway 1990b:235, State of Vermont 1880:319-20, (reprinted in Petition: 1 84-85)). Calloway said the Caughnawagha made this claim on behalf of the entire Seven Nations of Canada—that is, the six Iroquois nations of Canada and the Abenakis of Odanak/St. Francis (Calloway 1990b:235). He said the Abenakis had to sit by and watch the Mohawks make this claim. There are two problems with this interpretation. First, it is not clear that the Caughnawagha made the claim on behalf of the entire group of nations. In answer to a question posed by the Vermont Governor, they said that their neighbors "on the east" were the "Abenakees of St. Francois" (State of Vermont 1880:314 (reprinted in

Petition: 182)). This suggests they were speaking on their own behalf, and not for the larger group, which would have included the St. Francis Abenakis. Secondly, one must question the view that the Abenakis sat by and watched while the Caughnawaghas made a claim for land that was supposedly theirs. In 1766, at Isle la Motte, the Abenakis did not just sit by; they spoke up and voiced their own demands at the same time. So, why didn't they speak up now? One possible rejoinder is that they had secure lands of their own and did not feel threatened by this claim for compensation by the Caughnawaghas. However, this does not fit with the other evidence of their loss of land to white settlers, and of the many accounts of their migration to Canada at this time.

An alternative answer is that they had essentially given up all their land and left. If there were any Abenakis remaining in Vermont they were not part of an organized tribal community with any leaders capable of speaking up for land as they had in 1766. This second hypothesis is more plausible and is reinforced by subsequent events. The 1798 Caughnawagha claim for compensation was but the first of a series of such claims throughout the nineteenth century and halfway into the twentieth.
In 1800 the claim was renewed. This time it was brought by a new set of chiefs, including two representatives of the Abenaki nation 44. (State of Vermont 1880:321 (reprinted in Petition: 185)). The addition of the Abenaki suggests that they knew about the claim and wanted to participate in it this time. There is no indication in the sparse record that remains as to where these Abenaki representatives came from. If they were from within Vermont, they should have joined in the subsequent requests. However, the Abenaki never participated
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FOOTNOTE:
44. The exact identity of these representatives cannot be ascertained; apparently the original papers have been lost (State of Vermont 1880: 322 (reprinted in Petition, 186)).

in any of the ensuing claims for compensation brought by the Caughnawagha (State of Vermont 1880:321, n. 2 (reprinted in Petition: 185)).

The claim was brought again in 1812. While the first petition was made "by the
Chiefs and Councillors of the Seven Nations of Lower Canada Indians," this one was put forth by the "chiefs of the Iroquois or Congnahwagha nation" (Compare (State of Vermont 1880:313 with 322 (reprinted in Petition: 181, 186)). The subsequent 1826 claim was also made only on behalf of the "Iroquois tribe, residing in Cognawagah village" (State of Vermont 1880:325 (reprinted in Petition: 187)). The next two claims, in 1853 and 1874, were made by the Caughnawagha and the Iroquois at St. Regis and Lake of Two Mountains (State of Vermont 1880:328, 343 (reprinted in Petition: 189, 196)).
If there was any doubt in the first claim as to whether the Caughnawaghas spoke for the entire Seven Nations of Canada, including the Abenakis, it is dispelled in the later claims.
The language of the claims indicates that the Abenakis were not represented in those proceedings by the Caughnawaghas after 1800. While the St. Regis and Lake of Two Mountains Indians joined some of the later claims, the Abenakis never did. This reinforces the point that there was no group of Abenakis in Vermont in the nineteenth century with enough tribal identity and political cohesion to speak up and ask to be included in any of these Indian claims. The evidence surrounding the Caughnawaghas' 1951 claim reiterates that position with respect to the mid-twentieth century, as described in the section on Criterion (c) below.

Lo! The Poor Vermonters
Expropriated Iroquois appeal for part of a state
In the days when Gitche Manito, the Great Good Spirit, ran things on the American continent, the land between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River was the hunting preserve of the warlike Iroquois. The white man grabbed it to make five rich counties in Vermont. Three of the ousted Iroquois tribes, reduced to living in wretched reservations in Canada, insisted that somebody pay them for all that land. For 154 years they sent delegations to the Vermont legislature, which generally turned them back with sympathetic words, a pittance of $100 and a free meal.
But things are looking up for the Iroquois. The Vermont legislature appointed a commissioner to look into the claim, the first since 1855. A Vermont lawyer has taken on the case -- the first to represent the Iroquois -- and is sure he can prove the Iroquois never legally ceded their land to the white men. A recent award of $8 million to the Ute Indians for a similar claim encouraged the Iroquois to raise their demand from $89,000 to $1.2 million. Some tribesmen, however scorn the money and want to take physical possession of their Vermont claim, a solution which has found great favor in New Hampshire. Students at Dartmouth College are selling Give-Vermont-back-to-the-Indians buttons to finance the lawsuit. Said an unperturbed Vermont, "All of the U.S. once belonged to the Indians, but it's only Vermont they want back."

Illustration: Redman's Friend, Lawyer Roland Stevens, 80, looks through yellowed 18th Century documents in a bank vault to bolster the case of clients.
Illustration: Chief Poking-Fire (John McComber) of the Bear Clan of the Caughnawage rips tribal claims out of Vermont map. Indians claim whole northern fourth of State.
Illustration: Iroquois Allies meet at Dartmouth campus to launch fund-raising campaign for lawsuit.
Illustration: Poverty of the muddy villages wherethe Iroquois now live in Quebec forms a painful contrast with the neat prosperity of the Vermont shown on pp. 74-76.

Waiting hopefully, solemn sachems of the Caughnawaga tribe sit in conclave in their frosty Quebec meeting hall to listen to Lawyer Stevens and hold a powwow for future plans. Pending the inheritance of Vermont or parts thereof, these tribesmen have to earn their living as steelworkers, taxi drivers, farmers. SOURCE: LIFE Magazine December 29, 1952

Chief Poking-Fire, Caughnawaga

John McComber, of the Mohawk Bear Clan

Caughnawaga (Kahnawake), Quebec, Canada

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

The CD-ROM indexes for the 1870 and 1880 censuses disclose the names of the

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

(e)—Descent From Historic Tribe.
The 1890 census was the first of three federal censuses to specifically seek out
Indians and enumerate them on special forms. In Vermont, this census listed 34 Indians. Although the individual listings of the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire, a compilation summarizing the results of the Indian census survived. This compilation shows the counties
________________
FOOTNOTE:
35. The two members of the Obomsawin extended family shown on the 1880 census are William and Mary Obomsawin. They are not included in the petitioner's Family Descencdancy Charts. The only Obomsawin alive in 1880 who is included on those genealogical Charts is Simon Obomsawin. Simon reportedly came to Vermont in the early twentieth century (Huden 1955).

in which those 34 Indians lived; none lived in Franklin County. It disclosed thirteen Indians in Essex County, quite likely the Jackson family, which showed up there in the previous census. It also listed eight in Chittenden County, eight in Windsor County—in the far-southeastern corner of Vermont—and five others scattered around the state. However, no Indians were uncovered in Franklin County (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1894:602). These census materials are consistent with the observations of the local historians and surveyors who reported no Indian communities in Vermont after 1800. The lack of any significant numbers of Indians in the federal censuses confirms the views of those local reporters that the Indians they saw were travelers visiting the state.

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

1820's: a Mahican basket lined with pages from the Vermont newspaper the Rutland Herald (Ulrich 2001:352).

A few local reports of traveling families of Indians loaded with basketmaking

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

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

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

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

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

During all the first half of the last century small parties of more civilized and peaceable Abenaqui Indians used to visit Bellows Falls nearly every summer, coming from their homes in Canada and New York state. They came down
_________________

FOOTNOTE:

36. Newbury and Barnet are located on the Vermont-New Hampshire border along the Connecticut along River (see map above, p. vi).

the Connecticut in their canoes, usually bringing supplies of baskets and other trinkets which they had manufactured during the previous winters, which they sold to citizens of Bellows Falls and the then large number of summer visitors....The last remnant of this tribe came to Bellows Falls early in the summer, about 1856, in their birchbark canoes. (Hayes 1907:48-49).

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

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

area in the United States and stay there from the spring to fall. They sold baskets that they had made during the winter (Pelletier 1982:1, 5). This was a prosperous livelihood:

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

The resorts to which these families of Odanak/St. Francis traveled to set up shop included Highgate Springs, Vermont, on the border with Canada (Hume 1991:106). This Highgate resort area, along with others in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; Lake Placid, Lake George, Lake Mahopak, and Saratoga Lake, New York, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Michigan, was chosen for its high concentration of tourists--the basket-buying customers of the Victorian age. Odanak/St. Francis Abenaki chief Joseph Laurent made a conscious effort to develop the basket selling business at such resorts by establishing seasonal Abenaki camps in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (Hume 1991:103). After over thirty years of selling baskets from this Intervals, New Hampshire, camp, the area became known as a center for Indians from Odanak despite the fact that they had no previous historical tie to the area (Hume 1991:105, 111). Two members of the Obomsawin family interviewed by Gordon Day in 1957 stated that they did not believe that Abenaki families from Odanak/St. Francis returned to their historic place of origin to sell baskets. Rather, they believed sites for selling were chosen based on the ability to make sales (Day 1948-1973:14).
The fact that the Abenakis of Odanak/St. Francis developed these successful outlets for their baskets at resorts in the White Mountains, Adirondacks, and elsewhere, may explain why there were less frequent sightings of traveling basketmakers peddling baskets house to

house in Vermont in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Indians were focusing on more lucrative resort markets mostly outside of Vermont. This is a more sensible explanation for the lack of Indian sightings than the idea that they took their identities underground for protection.

The connection between Indians and basketmaking should not be extended so broadly that it obscures other facts. Just because someone is identified as a basketmaker does not necessarily mean he or she is Indian. There were Yankee baskets of oak splints produced by whites in the second half of the nineteenth century (McMullen 199 1:77). Whites also learned basketmaking from Indians in the nineteenth century and developed their own industries as a result (Brasses 1975:23). Moreover, not only the basketmakers sold baskets. There were also gypsies who bought up baskets front Penobscot Indians in Maine and sold them elsewhere in their travels (Lester, 1987:53, 57). One basket in a Vermont museum is reported to have been traded to a family in northeastern Vermont by gypsies in the late nineteenth century in exchange for hay for the travelers' horses (Vermont Historical Society 1983). 37.

37. 

Covered Basket

c. 1865 - 1890

Artist unknown, Abenaki

South Walden, Vermont

Brown ash

12" H x 11" W x 11" D

Loaned by Elizabeth White

"Gypsies" used to winder in South Walden every year near the railroad tracks. The local farmers used to raise a good crop of hay and the "Gypsies" would come up and trade baskets in exchange for hay for their horses.

The Vermont Historical Society Museum

Museum Collection And Loans

Museum Number: 1983.12.1 a-b

Date and Place Received: March 23, 1983, Mple

SOURCE: White, Elizabeth S.

Box 574 in West Yarmouth, Mass. 02673

TITLE: Abenaki covered basket

PLACE AND DATE: 186501890, South Walden, Vermont

MEDIUM: Brown Ash

Covered basket made in the Abenaki tradition in South Walden, Vt. about 1865-1890. Slightly flared sides and deep lid. A row of three dimensions weave "cowes" around the three dimensional weave. (Loops out, see diagram above for the weave). Solid ash handle, about 1/2" inch wide. Lid is 1 3/4" to 2" inches deep.

HISTORY: "Carroll White, born in South Walden, Vermont lived on the ancestral farm there. This basket was given to his parents by gypsies (Indians?) in payment for hay for their horses." donor. From Vermont Vital Records: Carroll H. White born on May 31, 1876 in Walden, Vermont, the son James Dodge White (James D. White was born c. 1833 and died on June 18, 1900 in Walden, Vt.) and Sarah E. (nee: Hill) who was born in Walden, Vt. James and Sarah married January 21, 1862 in Hardwick, Vermont. James Dodge White's parents were Robert and Mary (nee: Durant) White of Walden, Vt.

REMARKS: Basket is illustrated on Page 57 of Always in Season: Folk Art and Traditional Culture in Vermont. By Jane Beck, ed. Montpelier; Vermont Council on the Arts, 1982

[Back to Page 54 of the State Response....]

The association of horses and baskets with gypsies is not unusual. Indeed, Romnichel Gypsies from Britain brought horses to the United States from Canada during the decades after 1860 (Salo & Salo 1982:286). And there were gypsies known to live in eastern Canada during that time period (Salo & Salo 1977). Moreover, basketmaking was a common trade for gypsies in New England (Salo & Salo 1982:288-91).

______________

FOOTNOTE:
37. The VHS accession sheet notes that the donor made a parenthetical comment that the gypsies who traded the basket may have been Indians. This shows the confusion between gypsies and Indians that has developed in recent years.

In sum, from 1800 to 1860 the sightings of Indians in Vermont represented traveling families from Canada and Maine selling baskets and wares. Such sightings diminished and were unmentioned after 1860 as the Abenakis found better markets in resort towns outside of Vermont. The occasional mention of basketmakers in Vermont after 1860 can be attributed to whites and gypsies who took up the trade.

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

39. His papers are housed at the Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh, Vt., and the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont, Middlebury, Vt.

Gordon Day drew on Robinson's writing as a source of ethnological material (Day writing 1978a). In the following, summary, Day pointed out that the Indians with whom Robinson was familiar were visitors from St. Francis:

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

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

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

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

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

Travelers. Historians. and Surveyors of Indians
There were a number of travelers and contemporary historians who wrote about
Vermont during, the nineteenth Century. Some of these individuals took a specific interest in Indians,  whenever they encountered them. The fact that they never came across a community of Indians in northwestern Vermont along Lake Champlain is significant. One of the earliest of the journals is that of Edward Augustus Kendall relating his travels in northern New England during 1807, 1808, and 1809 (Kendall: 1809). He devoted six chapters of the book to Vermont. He appeared to have more than a passing familiarity with the northwestern part of Vermont and the lake. He wrote of the beauty of the landscape between Burlington and St. Albans, having "passed this road more than once, both in summer and in winter," and

indicated that he "had occasion to pass through this part of the country of Lake Champlain a second time, in the middle of the year 1808, and again in the beginning of that of 1809" (Kendall 1809:276, 293). Moreover, Kendall wrote that "[I]n June, 1808, I was two days upon the lake, making a circuitous voyage, between Saint-John's, or Fort de Saint-Jean, [Quebec,] and Burlington" (Kendall 1809:293; see map above, p.6). He even traveled to "Swanton Falls, a cataract on the Michiscoui...[which] empties itself in a large bay, to which it gives its name" (Kendall 1809:2)76). Kendall wrote of meeting Indians at St. Francis, Quebec, and Indians in Maine, but made no mention of any in Vermont (Kendall 1809:66-St. Francis—not from any 69). He learned the meaning of Michiscoui, 30. from the Indians at St. Francis Indians in Vermont, apparently having encountered no Indians in Vermont. 31.

In 1822, Jedediah Morse was given the task of ascertaining the number of the various tribes in the United States for a government report. He compiled an extensive list and enumeration of Indians throughout the Country entitled Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the Summer of 1820. He found "Abenaquies" In Maine, but listed no Indians of any sort in Vermont (Morse 1822:67). His statistical table identified Indians in New England in enclaves as small as 40 "souls" (Morse 1866:361-74). Any group of Indians functioning and holding itself out as a tribe should have received notice, so it is significant that there was no mention of any as a tribe Abenakis in Missisquoi, let alone elsewhere in Vermont.
FOOTNOTES:
30. " He writes, "The word Michiscoui is of the Indian tongue, but of French orthography. By the English, it is sometimes, but illiterately, spelt Missisque" (Kendall 1809:276).
31. He writes, "upon inquiry, of the Indians of Saint-Francis, both for the true name and signification, I found them agreed in calling the river Miskiscoo, Miskiski, for Missi kiscoo, which they interpret them calling the river abounding in waterfowl" (Kendall 1809:276).

Samuel Drake, an avid student of "Indian History" undertook to "locate the various bands of Aborigines, ancient and modern, and to convey the best information respecting their numbers our multifarious sources will warrant" in his comprehensive survey of Indians published in 1845 called The Book of the Indians: or, Biography and History of the Indians of North America, from its First Discovery to the year 1841. He was a sympathetic observer of Indians, taking pains in the Preface to his book to criticize the wrongs done to the Cherokees (Drake 1845:v). He identified the "Abenakies" as "over Maine until 1754, then went to Canada; 200 in 1689; 150 in 1780" (Drake 1845:v). In his detailed list of 465 Indian groups in the United States he included specific Abenaki groups such as the Penobscots, Marachites, 32. St. John's, 33. and Wawenoks (Drake 1845:v-xii). He did not detect any Missisquois or Vermont Abenakis.

One of the foremost authorities on the Indians of the nineteenth century was H.R. Schoolcraft. His six-volume tome, Historical and Statistical Information on the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851-54), was prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was an extensive study of the numbers, location, and status of Indians at the time. None of the tables in Schoolcraft's work indicates the presence of Missisquois or Abenakis in Vermont. None of the references to the Abenakis located them around Lake Champlain in the mid-nineteenth century when he was writing. Instead, he described them as "[a] tribe of Indians formerly inhabiting the territory which now comprises a part of the States of Maine and New Hampshire" (Schoolcraft 1851-54:vol. III, 512). He wrote that the
FOOTNOTES:
32. This may be the Malacites.
33. These Indians are described as living on the St. Johns River, which is in Maine. This is quite distant and should not be confused with the town and fort of St. Jean/St. John on the Richelieu River in Quebec.

Abenakis are now "seated at the village of St. Francis" in Quebec. He said the territory they inhabit is "situated on the south of the St. Lawrence, between the St. John's of New Brunswick and the river Richelieu, Canada" (Schoolcraft 1851-54:vol. IV, 542). The only explanation for his failure to detect any Abenakis in Vermont must be the lack of any identifiable Indian community there at the time. Schoolcraft was familiar with the region and had spent a considerable amount of time there. He was born not far from Vermont, in Albany County, New York, and he attended Middlebury College in western Vermont. He spent time at Trois Rivieres, Montreal, and Caughnawagha learning the Mohawk language in the 1790's. His interest in Indian Culture was strong and sympathetic, and he was married to a Chippewa woman (Nichols 1954:1521). If there was a large Abenaki community at Missisquoi at that time, as petitioner claims, then one would expect Schoolcraft to be aware of it, since he was very familiar with the surrounding areas.

In addition to these national surveys of Indians, there were histories of Vermont
written in the nineteenth century which could be expected to at least mention the Abenakis if they were still functioning as a community. For example, Francis Smith Eastman's A History of Vermont, From its First Settlement to the Present Time, published in 1828, stated that the original inhabitants of Vermont were the Coos Indians. He wrote about some of their cultural practices, but made no mention of the Missisquoi as a tribe indigenous to Vermont or continuing to live there (Eastman 1828:16-20). Eastman also recounted the claims made by the Caughnawagha Indians of Canada for land in Vermont 1798. Again he did not relate this to any Indians living in Vermont at the time of his writing (Eastman:78-79).

A few decades later, S. R. Hall wrote The Geography and History of Vermont (2nd ed. 1868) as a textbook for students. An entire lesson was devoted to the history of the Indians and their interactions with the white settlers from 1609 through 1761. In this section, Hall stated "the Iroquois owned the land in the west part of Vermont, and once had numerous habitations on the lake and on the rivers that flow into it. Indians from the Cossack and St. Francis tribes frequented other parts, rather as hunting ground than as a place of permanent residence" (Hall 1868:100).

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

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

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

neither this nor any other locality in the State seems to have been the Redman's home, at least not with historic times. Vermont was rather a territory to which all laid claim, and was used in common as a hunting, fishing, and battle-ground, by the St. Francis tribe on the north, their principal settlement being at Montreal, or Hockhelaga, as it was then called; the

Narraganset on the east, with their principal settlement on the Merrimac river; the Pepuquoits on the south, inhabiting the northwestern part of Connecticut; and the Iroquois, or Mohawks, as they were commonly called, on the southwest, their principal settlement being at Schenectady, N.Y., on the Mohawk river. (Child 1883:38).

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

Federal Census Enumerations
Besides the surveyors and historians who looked for Indians and wrote local histories, there were government officials examining the populace. Vermont has never conducted any censuses of its own, 34. but the federal census materials are broken down by state and county in compilations that analyze the data. The federal censuses from 1860 onward used the category "Indian" as a race in the enumerations. The census identified only 20 individuals as
FOOTNOTES:
34. The petition states that it drew on the state census for some material. but this is impossible (Second Addendum:6). There never has been any Vermont state census (Eichholz 1993:20-22).

Indian in Vermont that year, and none were in Franklin County (U.S. Bureau of Census 1864:493). The enumerations for the following three federal censuses were similar. There were fourteen, eleven, and thirty-four individuals identified as Indian in the respective censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1890 (U.S. Bureau of Census 1872:68, 1901:561, Table 19).

Table 1:

Summary of Indian Population in Vermont

as Shown in Federal Census Reports

COUNTIES

1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920

(See Document Image Page 48 for details)

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

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

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

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

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

State of VT's Response to Petition for Federal Acknowledgment of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont: Pages 33 to 40:

white relatives in the records cannot be used as justification for the existence of a continuous Indian community in Missisquoi.

The sixth piece of evidence relied upon by the petitioner in its argument that
Abenakis continued to live in Missisquoi is Lewis Cass Aldrich's History of Franklin and Grand Isle Counties, in which he reported that bands of eight to ten families drifted back "to favorite camping grounds to spend part of the year, up to as late as 1835 or 1840" Petition:71, quoting Aldrich 1891:28). By its very wording, this statement describes temporary visiting, not continued residence. These could have been hunting parties making seasonal forays from a home base in Quebec.
To understand why these visits stopped in the 1830's, some context is appropriate. The petition itself provides some of this. The petitioner reports that the Abenakis shifted their hunting trips northward in the 1830's (Petition:69, n. 17). This may explain why the hunting parties were no longer noticed in Vermont after the mid-1830's. This is consistent with other evidence that the influx of settlers to northern Vermont and southern Quebec interfered with traditional Indian hunting practices. The 1830's were a time of French-Canadian movement within Quebec and into the United States. It was all part of the pressure built up by surplus population, searching for land and work for the younger sons of large families (Hunter 1939:35-36).
The record of an 1814 marriage at Caughnawagha to a "Sauvage abenaquis d'un village d'amerique" is the seventh item cited by the petitioner for proof that an Abenaki village village continued to exist at Missisquoi (Petition Addendum:307). But, the proof falls short; the reference does not name the village. It could have been a village around Lake Memphremagog, on Lake George, New York. in New Hampshire, or in Maine. There is

evidence of Abenakis living in all those areas around that time. The petitioner's assumption that the reference is to Missisquoi is speculative.

The eighth piece of evidence cited by the petitioners is probably the strongest, but it too presents difficulties. The 1835 article in the Green Mountain Democrat is the only item cited by petitioner that identifies Indians as "Missisiques, who live a wandering life on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain" (Petition Addendum: 308-9, Green Mountain Democrat 4/3/1835). However, "the novelty of such a scene"—Indians in tents camping in Windsor, Vt., on the Connecticut River—is the reason it was reported in the newspaper (Green Mountain Democrat 4/3/1835). Even this citation includes some ambiguity, since the family is described as "wandering," rather than settled in a village of Indians at Missisquoi. Furthermore, the family subsists through the "manufacture of Indian articles" (Green Mountain Democrat 4/3/1835). Ulrich's assessment of this article led her to conclude that the family's success in selling "Indian articles" depended on their ability to "acknowledge their ability to and even flaunt, difference" (Ulrich 2001:347). This does not match the portrait of Indians put forth by petitioner--Indians hiding their identity in order to survive. This family did not blend in with the nineteenth century white residents; instead it retained a separate Culture. Thus, this one sighting cannot substantiate the presence of a large community of Abenakis, hiding their identity, living incognito, in Franklin County. This one family, traveling and selling Indian articles is insufficient to establish continuous habitation by a community of Abenaki Indians at Missisquoi throughout the nineteenth century.
The last piece of evidence offered by the petitioner in support of its argument is a letter from Father Amable Petithomme in 1835 (Petition Addendum:312-13). The petitioner describes the letter as follows:

In a letter to his superior in France dated 7/28/1835, Father Petithomme went on at some length about the habits of various clerics vis a vis the Catholics he served, and added for emphasis that "...I sleep in the poor cabins of the Indians" when traveling along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. (Petition Addendum:312). 27.

The only problem with this is that the wording of the letter is totally unverifiable. No copy of it has been provided to the BIA with the petitioner's papers, and contacts with the Archives of Sacred Hearts Congregation in Rome have ascertained that the letter is missing from their files. 28.
Additionally, the lack of specificity in the portion of the letter quoted by the petitioner introduces a strong element of doubt. The quoted portion does not say where the "poor cabins of the Indians" are located. If their location was not given in the letter and has been filled in by conjecture on the part of petitioner, then the evidence is ambiguous and weaker than might first appear. The biography of Petithomme by R. P. Moulty quotes a part of that July 28, 1835, letter, and then goes on to talk of his travels up and down Lake Champlain and the surrounding area (Mouly 1960:44). The portion of Petithomme's letter quoted by Mouly states that this is "une vie difficile et qu'il loge habituellement dans des cabanes;" that is, a difficult life and that he usually finds lodging in huts (Mouly 1960:44). The reference does not indicate the location of this lodging, and does not say these are Indian huts. If this is the
FOOTNOTES:
27. The petition cites the source of the letter as follows: From the Archives of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, the Vatican, Rome, Italy.
28. See email from Father Leopold de Reyes, General SS. CC. Archivist, at the Sacred Hearts Congregation in Rome, to Interlibrary Loan Librarian Meg Page at the Vermont Department of Congregation Libraries, March 8, 2001 (de Reyes 3/8/2001). Colin Calloway referred to the letter in The Western Abenakis of Vermont, but appears not to have seen it himself either, since he notes its source with the following qualification: "cited in Petition Addendum. pt. B, 313)- (Calloway 1990h: 241 & 298. n.7).

same passage cited by petitioner, then it is merely supposition that the huts belonged to Indians on Lake Champlain. 29.

From this critique, the weakness of the petitioner's evidence of continued Abenaki presence is apparent. The sightings of Indians in the state are rare, because they no longer lived here as a community in any real sense. Those that were here were purposely visible, making use of their differences for economic gains. Others who may have had some Indian ancestry, but chose to assimilate into the white culture, were no longer identified by outsiders as Indian because they no longer lived in an Indian community.

Comments on Recent Scholarship
With such feeble evidence of continued Abenaki presence in the Missisquoi region, it seems surprising that recent scholarly works have repeated the blanket statement that the Abenakis maintained their connections to the area throughout the nineteenth century.
However, closer examination of these works reveals that they all rely on the petition, or its primary author, John Moody, for support. He was hired by the Abenaki Tribal Council in February 1978 to Conduct research to find support for the petition, and worked with Abenaki assistants in 1978 and 1979 carrying out that research (Petition: 128, 153). Moody once described himself and his connection to petitioner thus:

I and student of Native American studies at Dartmouth and a Vermonter searching out my roots and ancestry. For the past two months I've been working on a narrative history of the Wabanaki peoples who lived and still live in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec. My intent is to fill an expressed gap in the Native American history of this area....There are presently some people working on reconstituting Abenaki identity in Northern Vermont who are interested in my work. (Moody 4/24/1976).
____________________
FOOTNOTE:
29. See additional discussion of Father Petithomme below in the section Swanton Church is French Canadian, not Indian.

He developed strong ties to the petitioner, even giving the eulogy at the funeral of Chief Homer Homer St. Francis (Burlington Free Press 7/12/2001). Since Moody has been working for the petitioner and relies heavily on family assumptions and declarations of Indian heritage in his work in the recurrent absence of documentary proof of Indian ancestry, then his work is merely self-identification. Such self-identification, without proof through external sources, is insufficient under the federal criteria for tribal acknowledgement (59 Fed. Reg. 9-280, 9286, BIA MaChris Lower Alabama Creek Indian Tribe 1987:5. 32-35).

Colin Calloway has made clear that many of his publications on the Abenakis were motivated by a desire to assist them in obtaining federal acknowledgment. In Green Mountain Diaspora: Indian Population Movements in Vermont, c. 1600-1800 In 1986, he wrote:

Dispersed in small groups, the Indians ceased to be visible as "tribes" in the eyes of Euro-Americans. The strategy of survival through anonymity worked too well. Generations of movement, withdrawal, and maintaining a low profile enabled Vermont's Abenakis to survive in calamitous times, but left their twentieth century descendants with considerable problems when they sought to convince a skeptical United States government of their true identity and continued historic presence. (Calloway 1986:222.)

This was Calloway's first article on the Western Abenakis. He reveals something of John Moody's influence when he gives credit to a fellowship award from the Vermont Historical Society that made the article possible, and then states, "The author is indebted to John Moody of Sharon, Vermont, for his help throughout the project and for his careful reading of the manuscript" (Calloway 986:197).
John Moody's influence is abundant in Calloway's article. While the article
discusses various Indian groups—Sokoki, Schaghticoke, and Cowasuck—almost the entire section on the Missisquoi comes from Moody. The idea that Missisquoi was a focal

community for Indians in the Lake Champlain Valley around 1770 is Moody's (Calloway 1986:219, n. 70). The notion that the white settlers "saw merely the tips of 'front persons' of a mobile Indian community" is Moody's (Calloway 1986:220, n. 74). And the entire story of "the continuing presence of Abenaki families around St. Albans, the Islands, Swanton, and Highgate," who "survived by going underground in marginal areas," is attributed to Moody (Calloway 1986:220).

Around the same time that Calloway completed his first article on the Western
Abenakis, he wrote to Gordon Day, commenting:

John Moody is keeping me well supplied with information, encouragement and suggestions for present and future research and writing. (Calloway 2/20/1985).

Four years after the publication of the "Green Mountain Diaspora," Calloway published Western Abenakis of Vermont 1600-1800. He dedicated the book to his wife and to John Moody, revealing the extent of Moody's influence upon him:

John Moody took an early interest in the project, selflessly shared knowledge and notions with me, and constantly encouraged my endeavors even as he reminded me that there were larger issues than the book at stake here. Without these two friends [Marcia Calloway and John Moody], this book would not have been written, so it is fitting that they share the dedication (Calloway 1990b:xx-xxi).

Those "larger issues" are undoubtedly federal tribal recognition. The references in Western Abenakis to Moody's unpublished manuscript throughout chapters 10, 12, and 13 are prevalent (Calloway 1990b:288-91, n. 16, 19, 20, 23, 33, 34: 295-97, 11. 3, 12, 13, 18, 27, 31: and 297-98, n. 12, 14). Most of chapter 13 of this work is based directly on the petition for federal acknowledgment submitted by the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont. (Calloway 1990b:297-98, n. 2, 5, 7, 22,. 24 giving citations to Petition). Moody himself claimed a large role in assisting Calloway when he wrote to Gordon Day,

Colin Calloway's new book is nearing completion and my re-writing/ editing same with him has generated a number of useful ideas to pursue! (Moody 7/17/1988).

Of course all historians weave stories built in part on historic fact and in part on
hypotheses to fill in the gaps. However, one must not confuse the facts with the speculative interstices. For example, the fact that Henry Tufts lived in the eighteenth-century with the Indians around Bethel, Maine, and traveled with them to meet members of their tribe as far west as Lake Memphremagog, does not substantiate the claim that there was a thriving village at Missisquoi at the same time, as Calloway suggests. (Calloway 1990b:201-02). See Map above, p.6. Indeed, the fact that Tufts never once mentions the Missisquoi or anything about Lake Champlain, Could mean that there was no significant entity there at that time (Tufts 1807).
In another section of his book, Calloway sets forth the thesis of the Petition as if it were historical fact, yet he does not cite any historical evidence to support it:

In the view of most of the white community, the western Abenakis seemed to have "disappeared" from Vermont by 1800. But large numbers stayed, living in family bands and off the land as they had for centuries by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Usually poor, often intermarried and French-speaking, these people came to live a nomadic existence, and they cropped up in local records as "gypsies," wandering vagrants who appeared on the edges of white communities. (Calloway 1990b:234-35).

There is no verification that the people described as "gypsies" were Indians, let alone the Abenakis of Missisquoi. Repeatedly saying it does not make it so. The fact that a group of people today has, as Calloway says, "reconstituted" [Reinvention of the Vermont "Abenakis"!] itself into the Sokoki-St. Francis Band of the Abenaki Nation does not mean that the historic Missisquoi really stayed here in large numbers and survived as an Indian entity for 200 years without notice. (See Calloway 1990b:xvi).

William Haviland and Marjory Power first wrote their book The Original Vermonters in 1981 in which they traced native peoples in Vermont from Paleoindians to the present through archeological and historical means. This was before the Abenaki submitted their petition for federal acknowledgment. When Haviland and Power revised the book in 1994, they included material from new archeological finds, as well as information provided to them by the Abenaki petitioners and John Moody:

Similarly, the continuing historic and ethnohistoric research of such scholars as Colin Calloway and John Moody has enriched our understanding of the last 400 years, especially the critical period after A.D. 1800. Finally, Vermont's contemporary Native American community has been active over the past thirteen years and more is known about them now than was the case before...not a single chapter of the book remains the same as in the earlier edition. (Haviland & Power 1994:xx).

Specifically they wrote in the endnotes to chapter 6 "European Takeover of Vermont," and chapter 7 "Survival and Renewal," that their "summary of post-1800 Abenaki history is drawn from Moody (1979:6-80), and the Addendum to the Abenaki petition for federal recognition" (Haviland & Power 1994:301). They also relied upon personal communications with John Moody, again showing his pervasive behind-the-scenes influence (Haviland & Power 1994:296-97).

It appears that the petitioner has made a concerted effort to encourage scholars to publish works in support of the petition.

It even outlined a "recognition strategy" which includes "publications" as part of "the game" of obtaining recognition (Petitioner 2000). Historians of Native Americans, faced with forceful and determined arguments from Vermont Abenaki leaders must have been hard pressed to resist these new theories that allowed them to assume their guilt over previous generations of Americans' mistreatment of Indians. But the BIA must sift through the rhetoric and discern the facts. It should not be