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