Abenaki Customs and Beliefs

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Customs and belief:, According to the writers on early Maine, the Abnaki were more gentle in manners and more docile than their western congeners. Yet they were implacable enemies and, as Maurault states, watched for opportunities of revenge, as did other Indians. Not withstanding Vetromile's statement to the contrary, if Maurault's assertion (Hist. Abenakis, 25, 1866) applies to this tribe, as seems evident, they, like most other tribes, were guilty of torturing their prisoners, except in the case of females, who were kindly treated.

Although relying for subsistence to a large extent on hunting, and still more on fishing, maize wag an important article of diet, especially in winter. Sagard states that in his day they cultivated the Soil in the manner of the Huron. They used the rejected and superfluous fish to fertilize their fields, one or two fish being placed near the roots of the plant.

Their houses or wigwams were conical in form and covered with birch-bark or with mats, and families occupied a single dwelling.  Their villages were, in some cases at least, inclosed with palisades. Each village had its council house of considerable Size, oblong in form and roofed with bark; and similar structures were used by the males of the village who preferred to club together in social fellowship. Polygamy was practiced but little, and the marriage ceremony was of the simplest character; presents were offered, and on their acceptance marriage was consummated.

Each tribe had a war chief, and also a civil chief whose duty it was to preserve order, though this was accomplished through advice rather than by command. They had two councils, the grand and the general. The former, consisting consisting of the chiefs and two men from each family, determined smatters that were of great importance to the tribe, and pronounced sentence of death on those deserving that punishment. The general council, composed of all the tribe, including males and females, decided questions relating to war. The Abnaki believed in the immortality of the soul.

Their chief deities were Kechi Niwaskw and Machi Niwaskw, representing, respectively, the good and the evil; the former, they believed, resided on an island in the Atlantic; Machi Niwaskw was the more powerful. According to Maurault they believed that the first man and woman were created out of a stone, but that Kechi Niwaskw, not being satisfied with these, destroyed them and created two more out of wood, from whom the Indians are descended. They buried their dead in graves excavated in the soil.

• Additional Abenaki Indian Resources

  • Abenaki History

  • Abenaki Name

  • Abenaki Ethnic Relations

  • Abenaki Towns

  • Abenaki Tribal Divisions

  • Abenaki Chiefs

Index of Tribes or Nations

Source: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906

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