Native American History

Abenaki Day at The Adirondack Museum

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Abenaki is a generic term for the Native American Indian peoples of northern New England, southeastern Canada, and the Maritimes. Members of the Abenaki Watso family will share the traditions, culture, and heritage of their ancestors at an upcoming event at the Adirondack Museum this Saturday, July 11, 2009. These Native Peoples are also known as Wabanaki (Eastern Abenaki &#8211 Maine and the Canadian Maritimes) or Wobanakiak (Western Abenaki &#8211 New Hampshire, Vermont, and southeastern Canada). In the Native language Wobanakiak translates roughly to mean &#8220People of the Dawn.&#8221

A majority of the Watso family who will demonstrate or present at the Adirondack Museum are from the Odanak reserve in the province of Quebec. The Abenaki Nation at Odanak, historically called the St. Francis, is now called the Odanak Band by the Canadian government.

&#8220Abenaki Day&#8221 will feature demonstrations of traditional skills from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. The demonstrations will include: sweet grass and black ash basket making by Barbara Ann Watso- bead work with Priscilla Watso- pounded black ash splint making with John Watso and Martin Gill- and traditional wood carving by Denise Watso.

Rejean Obomsawin will share traditional Abenaki legends that have been passed down by the elders at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Rejean is a singer, drummer, and guide at the Musee des Abenaki at Odanak.

Jacques T. Watso will offer traditional Abenaki singing and drumming at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Cultural anthropologist Christopher Roy will present a program entitled &#8220Abenaki History in the Adirondacks and in the Adirondack Museum&#8221 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Drawing on the museum’s Abenaki collections, Roy will share the findings of his research on the history and contemporary lives of Abenaki people in the Adirondacks and throughout the Northeast.

Christopher Roy is completing a PhD program at Princeton. Of particular interest to his research are the histories of residence off-reserve, questions of law and belonging, as well as the work of family historians in understanding Abenaki pasts, presents, and futures.

The Watso family has strong ties to the Adirondack region. Their ancestors include Sabael Benedict and his son Elijah, Abenaki men familiar to early settlers and explorers of the region, and Louis Watso an Abenaki man well known in the southern Adirondacks in the latter half of the 19th century.

Descendants Sabael Benedict and Louis Watso lived throughout the region, some as full-time residents and others moving back and forth between villages like Lake George and Saratoga Springs and Odanak, an Abenaki village on the lower St. Francis River in Quebec.

This branch of the Watso family also descends from John and Mary Ann Tahamont, basket makers who spent many summers at Saranac Lake around the turn of the last century.

Photo: Chief Richard O’Bomsawin and Councillor Jacques Watso

Jeff Siemers: New York Indian Removal History Series

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Jeff Siemers over at Algonkian Church History has finished his outstanding series of (nineteen!) posts on New York Indian Removal and written a summary post to put them all in perspective and to serve as an access to allow for reading the posts in the order they were written. Jeff is a Reference Librarian at Moraine Park Technical College (Fond du Lac Campus), he normally writes about nineteenth-century Wisconsin Native history so his series about New York is quite a treat and highly recommended reading.

Here is an excerpt from Jeff’s summary describing each of the parts:

Part I: The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana. A letter from Thomas Jefferson is not honored by officials of later administrations.

Part II: Eleazar Williams. A missionary among the Oneidas (see photo above), of mixed race (part Mohawk), is hungry for power, and envisions being the leader of a grand confederacy in the west.

Part III: Why did They Leave? (The answer, of course, has a lot more to do with the intentions of white Americans than with the Indians themselves.)

Part IV: Conspiracy of Interests. A book by Professor Laurence Hauptman describes the factors that led to the removal of New York Indians &#8211 he doesn’t, however, have a lot to say about the Algonkians.

Part V: Jedidiah Morse. A Congregational minster has some influence in Washington D.C.

Part VI: Negotiations and Arrivals. Good historians have gotten some of this wrong. If you need to know what-happened-when vis-a-vis the negitiations and arrivals of the New York Indians in Wisconsin, this is an important post.

Part VII: Metoxen Takes Center Stage. The New York Indians were set up against the Wisconsin Natives. This post includes a link to a remarkable speech John Metoxen made at the Council of 1830.

Part VIII: The Disaffected Party. Are the New York Indians going to be pushed further west? This question and other issues arouse tribal factionalism.

Part IX: Ellis Describes More Negotiations. If Andrew Jackson (pictured above riding a horse) wanted the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians to move to some swampy land, how did they wind up on the good farmland east of Lake Winnebago?

Part X: The Need for a Constitution. Seeing how the U.S. government handles other tribes appears to have motivated John W. Quinney to write a tribal constitution for the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Part XI: Munsee Removal and the Quinney’s Perspective. The arrival of roughly 200 Munsees prompt John W. and Austin E. Quinney to write a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War.

Part XII: The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church. The Disaffected Party beaks away from Calvinist missionary Cutting Marsh’s church. They hold their own Baptist services.

Part XIII: More About the Munsees. The &#8220partnership&#8221 between the Stockbridges and the Munsees is an on-again-off-again kind of thing.

Part XIV: The Treaty of 1839. Half the Stockbridge reservation in Calumet County is sold to the federal government. Members of the Disaffected party and the Munsees head to what is now Kansas.

Part XV: They Left on the Sabbath. Puritan author Electa Jones describes the emmigration to Kansas.

Part XVI: On to Minnesota? The treaty of 1848 was supposed to provide a new reservation to a faction of the Stockbridge Indians &#8211 but details were never agreed upon.

Part XVII: Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books. We find members of the Disaffected Party and Munsees continuing on in the Baptist faith west of the Missouri River.

Part XVIII: Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation. The treaty of 1856 established a new reservation &#8211 but the land is not good for farming.

Part XIX: The Munseees: According to an Indian Party Brief. Munsee Indians came and went. How many Munsees were with the Stockbridge Indians in the late 1800&#8242-s? (hint: count them on your fingers).

State Archaeologist Paul Huey on Crailo Historic Site

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State Archaeologist Paul Huey from the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation will speak at at East Greenbush Community Library, 10 Community Way, East Greenbush, NY, Sunday, April 19 at 2:00 pm. Huey will concentrate on Crailo in the 17th century, explaining what archaeological excavations and documents have revealed.


Important archaeological discoveries have been made at Crailo at various times recently. According to Huey, “In 1974 when the sewer line was installed under Riverside Avenue and in 2007 and 2008 when we excavated for a gas line from the street to the house. We have discovered that Indians lived on the site as early as the 1400s. Dutch pottery and other artifacts discovered in 1990 and in 2008 support the interpretation that this was the location of the home of Domine Megapolensis in 1642, which was a different, earlier structure from the present house.”

Call the State Library at 518-477-7476 to register for this free talk.

New Exhibit On Native American Performing Arts Opens

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The Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, NY has announced the opening of their 2009 exhibition: “Native Americans in the Performing Arts: From Ballet to Rock and Roll.” America’s first Prima Ballerina, Maria Tallchief- Grammy winning singer/songwriter, Joanne Shenandoah- founding member of the Village People, Felipe Rose- and legendary Rock musician, Robbie Robertson are a few of the Native American performers featured in this dynamic new exhibition.

According to the exhibit announcement: Native American performing artists are an integral part of the growth of popular music and dance in America. Many Native musicians and dancers rank with the most notable and recognizable of popular performers. In classical, country, opera, and rock music and in vaudeville, ballet and modern dance, Native American performing artists often have been the innovators and the inspiration to other performers. In addition to the numerous contemporary Native performers, the exhibition honors some of the groundbreaking artists who starred in the early Wild West Shows and traveled the world performing with orchestras, operas and vaudeville productions. We also explore the rich
history of traditional Iroquois song and dance.

The exhibition runs from April 1 to December 31. A free opening reception and party will be held on Saturday, April 4 from 3 to 6 pm. As part of the exhibition, the Museum will present “Saturday Matinees” on the first Saturday of every month, featuring films and documentaries on many of the featured performers. For more information contact the Museum at: Iroquois Indian Museum, P.O. Box 7, 324 Caverns Road, Howes Cave, NY 12092, 518-296-8949, [email protected] or visit our web site at www.iroquoismuseum.org

Mohican Seminar April 4th in Albany

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Native American Institute of The Hudson River Valley will host ten scholars who will present papers on all aspects of Mohican culture on April 4, 2009 at the New York State Museum in Albany.

The Native American Institute of the Hudson River Valley (NAIHRV) specializes in the study of the native Algonquian people, or Mohicans, who were long settled along the river. Described by Hudson’s crew as &#8220loving people,&#8221 they greeted the explorer in a friendly manner and later played an important role in the survival of the new colony.

The NAIHRV is a nonprofit organization of interested volunteers, educators, archaeologists, historians, and researchers devoted to promoting an awareness of Native Americans in general and the Mohican Nation in particular.

Contact Period Workshops For K-12 Teachers

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A National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant awarded to Dr. Thomas Chambers, history professor at Niagara University, will support a pair of week-long workshops to be held this summer for K-12 school teachers. The workshops, set to take place July 13 through July 17, 2009 and July 20 through July 24, 2009 at Old Fort Niagara in Niagara Falls, NY, will focus on American history and culture, specifically the history of European-Native American interaction. Classroom teachers and librarians in public, private, parochial, and charter schools, as well as home-schooling parents are eligible to participate.

The program was created by the NEH to encourage better understanding of American history and culture. Stipends cover most expenses for participants, see: http://neh.gov/projects/landmarks-school.html for eligibility requirements.

For more information visit www.niagara.edu/crossroads/

Native History Blog Featuring New York Indian Removal

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One of the blogs I’ve been following regularly (and you occasionally see posted in my New York History News Feature at right) is Jeff Siemers’ Algonkian Church History. Jeff is a Reference Librarian at Moraine Park Technical College (Fond du Lac Campus) and has recently written a series of outstanding posts on the New York Indian Removal that are highly recommended reading.

I asked Jeff to tell me how he came to Algonkian Church History and this is his reply:

If you include the Brothertowners, there are 12 American Indian communities in Wisconsin, but mostly they are relatively small and &#8211 except for the Oneidas &#8211 rural (or in forests). As a result, most white Wisconsinites don’t have a lot of awareness of Wisconsin Indians.

I was not much more aware than most other whites, until I took up the sport of whitewater kayaking (in 1995). I was part of a club that got together on Tuesday evenings&#8230-we paddled the Red River which i realized was close to the Menominee reservation, but I didn’t know that we were closer to another reservation, legally known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Anyway, the spring snowmelt (and/or rain) makes normally unrunnable stretches of water runnable, and in April, 2001 I was part of a group that paddled the seldom-run upper Red &#8211 we were stopped by an Stockbridge-Munsee tribal employee who explained we were trespassing on a federally recognized Indian Reservation. The employee told us something about the history of the Stockbridge Mohicans and let us complete our trip.

Anyway, it was on that trip that another (white) paddler that lived in the area told me about an old and rare bible given to the Indians by the British. It aroused my curiousity &#8211 months later I visited the museum where the bible is held, then forgot all about it. Until I went back to school to become a librarian&#8230-.There I found myself in a class called the history of books and printing &#8211 and was racking my brain to think of a topic for my term paper &#8211 that’s when I remembered the Stockbridge Bible (it was fall, 2003 by then). After many re-writes, the project that began as a term paper was published by The Book Collector (Spring, 2007 issue) http://www.thebookcollector.co.uk/ (the world’s foremost authority on old and rare books).

I’ve continued my research way beyond the Stockbridge Bible since then, of course&#8230- gone on a lot of tangents.

my New York History News Feature at right) is Jeff Siemers’ Algonkian Church History[/CATS]. Jeff is a Reference Librarian at Moraine Park Technical College (Fond du Lac Campus) and has recently written a series of outstanding posts on the New York Indian Removal[/CATS] that are highly recommended reading.

I asked Jeff to tell me how he came to Algonkian Church History and this is his reply:

If you include the Brothertowners, there are 12 American Indian communities in Wisconsin, but mostly they are relatively small and – except for the Oneidas – rural (or in forests). As a result, most white Wisconsinites don’t have a lot of awareness of Wisconsin Indians.

I was not much more aware than most other whites, until I took up the sport of whitewater kayaking (in 1995). I was part of a club that got together on Tuesday evenings…we paddled the Red River which i realized was close to the Menominee reservation, but I didn’t know that we were closer to another reservation, legally known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Anyway, the spring snowmelt (and/or rain) makes normally unrunnable stretches of water runnable, and in April, 2001 I was part of a group that paddled the seldom-run upper Red – we were stopped by an Stockbridge-Munsee tribal employee who explained we were trespassing on a federally recognized Indian Reservation. The employee told us something about the history of the Stockbridge Mohicans and let us complete our trip.

Anyway, it was on that trip that another (white) paddler that lived in the area told me about an old and rare bible given to the Indians by the British. It aroused my curiousity – months later I visited the museum where the bible is held, then forgot all about it. Until I went back to school to become a librarian….There I found myself in a class called the history of books and printing – and was racking my brain to think of a topic for my term paper – that’s when I remembered the Stockbridge Bible (it was fall, 2003 by then). After many re-writes, the project that began as a term paper was published by The Book Collector (Spring, 2007 issue) http://www.thebookcollector.co.uk/[/CATS] (the world’s foremost authority on old and rare books).

I’ve continued my research way beyond the Stockbridge Bible since then, of course… gone on a lot of tangents.

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