Friends of Missisquoi Calendar

Our exploration of the indigenous heritage of the Missisquoi NWR continues as we look at the Woodland Period up until first contact.

In the first years of the Common Era, several new influences swept north to transform the Abenaki world. Each brought new challenges and gifts that led to the complex society that Samuel Champlain found in 1609. Probably the most profoundly transformative change was the arrival of corn/bean/squash agriculture. This permitted larger, more sedentary populations living in denser villages and towns, often in multifamily longhouses such as the one found next to Route 78 in the Missisquoi Wildlife Refuge. Vastly improved food processing arrived through the introduction of pottery. Although there is no evidence for it in Vermont, Indigenous warfare had spread from the south in the last years of the Woodland Period to usher in large-scale alliances such as the Wabanaki Confederacy. We will end with the consideration of the “First Contact” situation in Vermont, when aliens from across the great sea arrived to change it all for good or ill.