Abenakian

Abenakian is the speech of the Wabanaki peoples, a dialect chain including Eastern and Western Abenaki and Mi'kmaq. Its speakers call themselves Wôbanakiak, People of the Dawn Land, and the polysynthetic language packs whole sentences into single words.

Champlain met Abenaki farmers on the Kennebec river in 1604, and the English word skunk was borrowed from their speech in the 1630s. Epidemics and pressure from English settlements drove many Abenaki under French protection from 1669, when missions were founded at Odanak and Wôlinak, where Jesuits recorded dialects in grammars and word lists.

Allied with the French, they raided the English frontier through King Philip's War of 1675 and Queen Anne's War, until the Jesuit Sébastien Rale was killed at Norridgewock in 1724 and the Abenaki wars ended the following year.