Traditional Cultural Landscape | The Abenaki people
13,000-10,000 THE YEARS OF THE MAMMOTH [ADEBASKEDON]
Living in dispersed groups, the ancestors of the Abenaki people known as “The Oldest Ones” hunted small and medium sized game and followed terrestrial and aquatic life throughout the landscape on a yearly cycle. Plants and tubers also supplemented their diet. At this point, the landscape was a tundra made up of grasses, lichens, sedges, and small shrubs such as sata blueberry and kanosasiz dwarf willow. Around 11,000 years ago, it began to transition to include maskwamozi (birch), kokokhoakw (fir), ossggakw (poplar), and mskak (spruce). Over time, streams were populated by wdopiak (alders) and kanosasak (willows), and the land transitioned to a woodland composed of conifers, mahlawks (ash), and senomozi (sugar maple) (Sopher, 2019).
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As the climate started to warm and become drier, the woodlands changed to include pagȏn (butternut) and watsilmezi (white oak). “The ancestors of the Abenaki lived in smaller, seasonal camps in order to easily hunt in the uplands and fish along rivers” (Sopher, 2019).
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Tools made of wood, bone, metal and stone allowed for further expansion through waterways and on land, and trading between tribes increased. Family and village life became larger and more complex. “Villages were centered around rich alluvial river valleys, such as Nonnigonikon Winooskik (the Winooski Site, near Burlington, Vermont)” (Sopher, 2019)
10,000-6,500 THE YEARS OF THE MOOSE [MOZ]
6,500-1,000 THE YEARS OF THE LOG SHIPS
