At the time of the first European contact in the sixteenth century, there were an estimated 30,000 Abenaki people living in northern New England and the Maritime Provinces. The Abenaki – a corruption of the Innu (a neighboring tribe) word which refers to "the people of the dawn land" – are a group of loosely related Algonquian-speaking people who have lived in the New England area for thousands of years. The Abenaki include the Sokoki on the middle and upper Connecticut River, the Cowasuck farther upriver, the Missisquoi on Lake Champlain, the Pennacook in New Hampshire’s Merrimack Valley, the Pigwacket in the White Mountains, the Androscoggin of western Maine, the Penobscot, Wawenock, and Kennebec of Maine.
This diary is going to explore Maine’s ancient American Indians.