Missiquoi territory within the larger Western Abenaki territory
The Missiquoi, or the Missisquoi (Abenaki: mazipskoi sg., mazipskoiak pl.), were a historic band of AbenakiIndigenous peoples who resided in what is now southern Quebec and northern Vermont. This group lived along the northern and eastern shores of Lake Champlain at the time of the European incursion. After the US Revolution, they retreated to Odanak, driven away by the incursion of New England settlers. Today, they are part of the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak.
Missiquoi is also the name of a 17th-century Abenaki i village in northern Vermont, for which the sub-tribe was named.
Name
The name Missisquoi comes from mazipskoiak meaning "flint people," which comes from mazipskoik or "at the flint," meaning a chert quarry near what is now Swanton, Vermont. It's also spelled Missiassik or Masipskoik a word that means "where there are many big rocks or boulder" in Abenaki.
History
Prior to European contact, some Western Abenaki founded villages at the mouth of the Missisquoi River. By the 17th century, Western Abenaki from across Lake Champlain consolidated into the main village at Missisquoi in northern Vermont, so historians began to use the term "Missisquoi tribe" for all Champlain Valley Abenakis.
After enduring French and English colonists, the Missisquoi withdrew from areas of conflict during the American Revolutionary War. Linguist and historian Gordon M. Day wrote, "After this war, the Western Abenakis did not return to any of their former locations in force but rather united or reunited with their brethren at Saint Francis." Some held on to land claims in the United States and even collected rent. In 1805, the British Crown deeded lands near Durham, Quebec, to Abenaki people who fled the American Revolutionary War; these lands became the Durham Reserve.
By 1850, this group became part of the large St. Francis village (Odanak).
The group applied for but was denied U.S. federal recognition as a Native American tribe in 2007. The summary of the proposed finding (PF) stated that "The SSA petitioner claims to have descended as a group mainly from a Western Abenaki Indian tribe, most specifically, the Missisquoi Indians" and went on to state: "However, the available evidence does not demonstrate that the petitioner or its claimed ancestors descended from the St. Francis Indians of Quebec, a Missiquoi Abenaki entity in Vermont, any other Western Abenaki group, or an Indian entity from New England or Canada. Instead, the PF concluded that the petitioner is a collection of individuals of claimed but undemonstrated Indian ancestry 'with little or no social or historical connection with each other before the early 1970's'...."
