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Traditional Cultural Landscape | The Abenaki People
As settlers started to invade the land, they began to clear the forest for large-scale agriculture and created a turbulent time for the Abenaki people. In the words of Frederick Wiseman, “Our respect for conservation and game animals was challenged for the first time in scores of generations. To survive in a changing world, we could not refuse the new technology, no matter what the environmental consequences. For our neighbors, who looked upon our hunting territories with newly greedy eyes, were themselves acquiring new weapons’ technologies against which we would be helpless.” (Sopher, 2019) Most of the forests that exist today are young due to the clearing by European settlers of old-growth forests for agricultural lands that began in the 1600s. The landscape today is a reflection of the history that took place with the most dramatic changes occurring in the 250 years after the settlers arrived. It was not until 2011 that the state of Vermont started to officially recognize the tribes that are living in Vermont today. In 2011, the state recognized the Elnu Tribe of the Abenaki and Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, and in 2012 it recognized the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi and the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koos Abenaki Nation. The Elnu Tribe of the Abenaki people have their traditional territory in southern Vermont and are living there to this day (VPR).
Agriculture with a focus on skamon (corn), adbakwa (beans: red and kidney), wassawas (squashes: acorn, butternut, pumpkin, and summer squash), Jerusalem artichokes, and odamo (tobacco) became part of Abenaki society (Sopher, 2019). In Vermont, farm production peaked in 1870 with about 75% of the land cleared for agriculture and pasture. Vermont became the world’s largest exporter of wool, but without tree cover, land began to erode and the streams filled with silt (Thompson, 2000). By the early 1900s the agrarian way of life of the settlers had started to change, and trees like white pine, white and yellow birch, sugar maple and poplar began to reclaim the abandoned agricultural lands. Abenaki culture and customs persisted throughout the region, but these years were the last of total sovereignty for the Abenaki people (Sopher, 2019).
1,000-400 THE YEARS OF THE CORN [SKAMON]
1820-1970 THE YEARS OF THE FOX [WAUKWESES]
