Wabanaki

The forested hills south of the Saint Lawrence are part of Ndakina, the homeland of the Wabanaki, or Abenaki people. Their name evokes the land of the rising sun. Families travelled seasonally through the watersheds, hunting and fishing in the forests and gathering along the rivers. The Saint-François, called Alsigontekw in Abenaki, offered a route north to the Saint Lawrence and to exchange with other peoples.

Wars with the English colonies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries brought Abenaki families northward within their homeland. Communities on the Saint-François and Bécancour rivers became places of refuge and allies of the French. At Saint-François a fortified mission grew around an existing Abenaki settlement. In 1759 Robert Rogers and his rangers attacked and burned the village; its inhabitants rebuilt, and the community endured at Odanak.