Abenakian

The Abenakian peoples are Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. Abenaki comes from Wôbanakiak, ‘People of the Dawn Land’, the name of the country in what is now New England and the Maritimes. Eastern Abenaki was spoken mainly in Maine, Western Abenaki in Quebec, Vermont and New Hampshire, and the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Mi'kmaq are their neighbors in the Wabanaki Confederacy.

The Abenaki had no central government. After contact with Europeans in the 1600s, colonization, disease and war decimated the original tribes, and the survivors drew together as a single post-contact community.