Western Abenaki

The Western Abenaki are the Algonquian bands west of the Penobscot, spread across the Connecticut and Merrimack valleys: the Cowasuck, Missisquoi and Sokoki, together with the Pennacook confederacy whose chief villages stood at Amoskeag Falls and Pennacook.

Under the Pennacook sachem Passaconaway they made peace with the English of Massachusetts, but epidemics, Mohawk raids and King Philip's War broke their villages; some captives were enslaved, while refugees fled to the Hudson valley and then north. From about 1669 Abenaki families crossed into New France, where the governor granted them the seigneuries that became the Odanak and Wôlinak reserves.

From Quebec the Western Abenaki raided the New England frontier alongside the French in Queen Anne's War, striking Deerfield in 1704, and fought through Father Le Loutre's War and the French and Indian War. Pennacook descendants were absorbed into Odanak.