Found this about the St Francis "tribe." Ironically, posted on their own website is the State of Vermont's debunking of their claims of being a tribe. It's over 250 pages long, so I'm only posting the very self explanatory table of contents, followed by a very revealing investigation of the group's internal workings. Page numbers are left in.
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http://www.abenakination.org/STATE.pdfSTATE OF VERMONT’S RESPONSE
TO PETITION FOR FEDERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF THE ST. FRANCIS/SOKOKI BAND
OF THE ABENAKI NATION OF VERMONT
STATE OF VERMONT
WILLIAM H. SORRELL, ATTORNEY GENERAL
Eve Jacobs-Carnahan, Special Assistant Attorney General
December 2002
Second Printing, January 2003
CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS... v
MAP...vi
LIST OF TABLES...vii
INTRODUCTION...1
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND...............................................................................................1
Historic Tribe Elusive ...................................................................................................1
Major Scholars of the Western Abenakis .....................................................................3
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.......................................................................................5
Seventeenth-Century History is Sketchy ......................................................................5
Some Noteworthy Events of the Seventeenth-Century ................................................7
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ..........................................................................................8
Population Movements In and Out of Missisquoi During the Eighteenth
Century ...8
Grey Lock’s Dominance..................................................................................10
Epidemic and Slow Repopulation: 1730-1740 ...............................................11
Missisquoi Villagers Move to Odanak/St. Francis: 1744-1760 ......................12
Return to Missisquoi: 1763-1775.....................................................................16
Abandonment of Missisquoi During American Revolution............................22
NINETEENTH CENTURY.........................................................................................28
The Insubstantial Evidence of Continued Tribal Presence in the Nineteenth
Century ...28
Comments on Recent Scholarship ..............................................................................36
i
Countervailing Evidence that the Missisquoi Did Not Return to Vermont as a
Tribe After 1800..............................................................................................41
Travelers, Historians, and Surveyors of Indians..............................................41
Federal Census Enumerations..........................................................................46
Sightings of Indian Visitors and the Basket Trade..........................................50
Rowland Robinson’s Indian Friends................................................................55
French-Canadian Migration to Vermont .........................................................61
Caughnawagha Claims Presented to Vermont Legislature .........................................64
TWENTIETH CENTURY...........................................................................................67
Twentieth Century Claims of Abenaki Continuity .....................................................67
The Eugenics Survey of Vermont ...............................................................................67
ANALYSIS OF CRITERIA...78
CRITERION (A)—IDENTIFICATION BY OUTSIDERS....................................................78
1900 to 1929 ...82
Researchers Identify Vermont Abenakis as Tribe of the Past ........................82
Federal Government Records Identify Only a Tiny Number of Individual Indians ...........................................................................................87
Records of the Vermont Eugenics Survey Do Not Identify Any
Abenakis...89
Newspapers Fail to Identify Any Abenaki Tribe in Vermont ........................92
Swanton Birth Records ...................................................................................93
1930 to 1947 ...94
External Observers Silent on Existence of Any Contemporary
Abenaki Tribe .................................................................................................94
ii
1948 to 1973...96
Researchers Failed to Discover Any Contemporary Vermont
Abenaki Tribe .................................................................................................96
Other Material Attests to Absence of Abenaki Tribe From Vermont ..........108
1974 to 1981...110
External Observations ...................................................................................110
1982 to Present ...118
External Observations ...................................................................................118
Summary of Failure of Evidence to Satisfy Criterion (a) .........................................119
CRITERION (B)—COMMUNITY ......................................................................................121
Swanton Church is French Canadian, not Indian ......................................................123
No Indian Cemetery was Used by Petitioner’s Ancestors in Twentieth Century......126
No Indian School Existed in Franklin County ..........................................................128
Petitioner’s Ancestors Were Active Participants in White Business and
Social Groups ...128
There Has Not Been a Continuous Geographic Concentration of Indians in
Franklin County...131
The Petitioner Did Not Immigrate to Vermont as a Group at Any One Time...........132
The Abenaki Language Was Not Spoken by Petitioner ...........................................140
Cultural Practices Were Not Retained in Any Abenaki Community in
Vermont ...141
Membership in the St. Francis/Sokoki Abenaki is Loose and Fluid .........................142
There Were No Social Ties Between the Bulk of Petitioner’s Ancestors
and the Visible Abenakis in Vermont........................................................................144
Summary of Failure of Evidence to Satisfy Criterion (b)..........................................147
iii
CRITERION (C)—POLITICAL AUTHORITY ..................................................................148
Vermont Abenaki Silence in the Face of 1950’s Caughnawagha Land Claims........149
Creation of Abenaki Tribal Council in 1974.............................................................152
The Petitioner’s Political Organization was Dominated by One or Two
Families...154
Summary of Failure of Evidence to Satisfy Criterion (c)..........................................160
CRITERION (E)—DESCENT FROM HISTORIC TRIBE .................................................160
An Overview of the Progenitors ...............................................................................162
Moody’s Genealogical Work is Incomplete and Speculative ...................................166
Petitioner’s Family Charts Do Not Trace Back to Any Historic Lists of
Known Abenaki Indians ...........................................................................................169
Petitioner’s Family Charts Do Not Include Anyone Identified by Federal
Census as Indian From 1870 to 1910 ........................................................................172
Petitioner’s Other Lists From Censuses are Speculative ..........................................175
Petitioner’s Evidence of Indian Births is Contradicted by the Original
Records...177
Individual Family Genealogies Contain Unproven Assumptions of Abenaki
Heritage...183
Petitioner Self-Identified as White ............................................................................191
Summary of Failure of Evidence to Satisfy Criterion (e) .........................................194
CONCLUSION ...194
SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES........................................................................................196
ATTACHMENTS
Affidavit of John Alexander Dickinson
Affidavit of J. Kay Davis
iv
INTRODUCTION
This Response to the Petition for Federal Recognition of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont is submitted by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office on behalf of the State of Vermont. The response follows the format of recent proposed findings and final determinations issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”). After an examination of the historical background of Indians in Vermont, the response addresses four of the criteria for federal acknowledgment set forth in the federal regulations at 25 C.F.R. 87. Two affidavits of experts consulted by the State are attached to this Response to the Petition. Accompanying this filing is a collection of Exhibits comprised of articles, government records, newspapers, and manuscripts that are referred to in the response.1
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Historic Tribe Elusive
A natural starting point in the historical examination of an Indian tribe would be the identification of the historic tribe. In this case, that is not so easy. The petition itself illustrates the difficulty. The original petition was submitted in 1982 by the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Abenaki Nation of Vermont. See “Resolution of Abenaki Tribal Council” (Petition:ii). Later correspondence to the BIA is from the Sovereign Republic of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi. See, e.g., 1995 Certification of Records with re-submitted
1
petition. These two different names for the petitioner suggest three possible historic tribes: St. Francis Abenaki, Sokoki, and Missisquoi.
The St. Francis Abenaki is, and was, a Canadian tribe based in St. Francis, Quebec, also known as Odanak, Quebec. The Sokoki, a tribe within the Wabanaki confederacy, inhabited the Connecticut River Valley along the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they resettled at Odanak/St. Francis. In fact they may have been the earliest residents of Odanak/St. Francis (Day 1981b:12-15, Haviland & Power 1994:219-27). The Missisquois inhabited the upper Lake Champlain region on the western side of Vermont. They have often been thought to be an offshoot of the Abenaki tribe at Odanak/St. Francis.2
Even the petitioner admits that “the Missisquoi villagers were never a tribe,” but rather a changing group of families who hunted in the area (Petition:15). The confusion in nomenclature in the petitioner’s own submissions may indicate a more serious ambiguity as to identity and an uncertainty about community and descendancy. The word Abenaki (or Wabanaki) refers to a group of Algonquian speaking tribes in Northern New England. Abenaki means “people of the dawn.” They are divided into the Eastern Abenaki and the Western Abenaki. The Eastern Abenakis originally inhabited Maine and parts of New Hampshire. The name for these people stems from coastal view of the sun rise. Eastern Abenaki groups or tribes include the Penobscot and Maliseet. Western Abenaki include the Sokokis and Cowasucks of the upper and middle Connecticut River
2 Indeed,
the relationship between the St. Francis Abenaki and the Missisquoi groups is an intriguing puzzle embedded in this petition. If the Missisquoi was a separate tribal entity from the Abenaki at Odanak/St. Francis, then that historic tribe would have a claim for acknowledgment in the United States.
If the Abenakis at Missisquoi were only an outlying temporary settlement of the St. Francis Abenakis then their claim should be directed toward Canadian First Nation status and the reservation
2
Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, the Pennacooks and Winnepesaukees of the upper Merrimack River in New Hampshire, and the Missisquoi on Lake Champlain (Calloway 1986:198, Dickason 1990:87).
established in Quebec. As will become evident in this Response, the ultimate significance of this puzzle may not matter, given the post-1800 history of Indians, or the lack thereof, in Vermont.
The petitioner claims its historic origins lie in the northern Lake Champlain Valley, near Missisquoi Bay in Swanton, Vermont, the same area in which most of its members reside at present. This would suggest that petitioner’s members view themselves as descendants of the Missisquoi, not the Sokokis. The history of the Abenakis of Missisquoi and those of Odanak/St. Francis is extensively intertwined. The inclusion of the St. Francis tribal name in the petitioner’s original submission indicates a sense of affiliation with that Canadian tribe. One theme of this Response to the Petition is that the Missisquois drew closer and closer to the Abenakis of Odanak/St. Francis so that by 1800 they were indistinguishable.
3
........
35
….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 am a 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).
36
He developed strong ties to the petitioner, even giving the eulogy at the funeral of Chief 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 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 acknowledgment (59 Fed. Reg. 9280, 9286, BIA MaChris Lower Alabama Creek Indian Tribe 1987:5, 32-35).
