Cavendish Historical Society News: Vermont Native American Timeline

UPDATED OCTOBER 2019

Note that there are various videos listed at the end of this article, including the film made about the Paleoindian dig at Jackson Gore.

9,500 > Years ago Paleo-Indian Era (Stone Age culture) As the Laurentian ice sheet retreated north, the first peoples entered VT around 12,500 year ago. Champlain Sea. Warmer than in other locations. Mastodon and mammoth. They traveled as well as traded-stone, which was from New York, Quebec, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other places. Small groups, less than 10.

3,000-9,500 Years Ago: Archaic Period. Warmer temps helped to shape many kinds of wetland from lakes and ponds to swamps and bogs. Champlain Sea shrunk turning from salt water to fresh water. Lake Champlain was likely lower than its present day level. Hardwood forests appear-beech, oak, ash and maple. Rely on more local stone in VT. Groups began moving to different areas for season. The presence of a large variety of woodworking tools in Archaic assemblages suggest that water crafts were used for travel, fishing, and probably other animal procurement activities. In the latter part of the archaic period, fruit and nut bearing trees began to grow and native populations expanded with communities being forming. At the end, temperatures drop

Early Woodland 2,000-3,000: Preferred not to live in the higher elevations and spend most of their time in the warmer river valleys. Population decreases. Cemeteries from this period Pottery Bow and Arrow. Connected with people in Ohio and across the Northeast. These were spiritual people who were deeply connected to their ancestors and to the land

Middle Woodland 1,000-2,000 Temps began to rise and with it an increase in population. Once again using stone from far away places for stone tools. Dugout canoes have been found throughout the Champlain Valley. Native Americans in the region had developed a culture based on the selective borrowing of ideas and innovations from other people with whom they had come in contact over the past 9000 years. The people of the Woodland Period were becoming more sedentary in their living habits, and established substantial settlements on the floodplains of major rivers, such as the Winooski and Otter Creek. The subsistence patterns of prehistoric Champlain Valley residents gradually changed from mobile hunting and fishing parties to a dependence upon horticulture and the gathering of a greater diversity and quantity of wild plant foods.

Pre European Contact -1,000 Temps remained steady or slightly increased. Pottery expanded and see pipes for the first time-ceramics. Cultivation of crops-three sisters (corn, beans and squash). Agricultural tips were passed through trade networks. First existence of farming in New England occurs in VT in the 12^th Century.

1535: Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) is first European to sight Vermont. Attempts to develop trade relations with the St. Lawrence Iroquois and other tribes living along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The French attempt to establish a colony in the St. Lawrence Valley during the sixteenth century failed, although sporadic trade for furs in exchange for metal tools did occur between the French and the St. Lawrence tribes. By 1603, the diseases which the St. Lawrence Iroquois contracted from the French spread quickly throughout the Champlain Valley, decimating the native population. The struggle over French trade also caused great unrest in the Champlain Valley. The Mohawk Iroquois, who inhabited primarily the Mohawk Valley, became the dominant tribe from Quebec to Connecticut. By 1609 the Western Abenaki had retreated from the Champlain Valley in an effort to escape destruction at the hands of the Mohawk.

1688: 1688 - 1763 The French and Indian Wars between France and Great Britain for lands in North America consisting of King William's War (1688-1699), Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), King George's War (1744 - 1748) and the French and Indian War aka the Seven Years War (1754-1763)

1688: (1688-1699) King William's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between France and the Wabanaki Confederacy and England and the Iroquois Confederacy. Peace Treaty made at Pemaquid. August 11,1693. and was ratified on Jan. 7. 1699

1702: (1702-1713) Queen Anne's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between the French and Spanish colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy, Mohawk, Choctaw, Timucua, Apalachee and Natchez tribes against the British colonies allied with the Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw and Yamasee tribes.

1744: (1744–1748) King George's War (part of the French and Indian Wars) between the French colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy and the British colonies allied with Iroquois Confederacy

1754: 1754 - 1763: The French Indian War is won by Great Britain

1775: 1783 The American Revolution.

1776: July 4, 1776 - United States Declaration of Independence

1780: Last major Indian raid, led by the British, in Royalton

1812: 1812 - 1815: The War of 1812 between U.S. and Great Britain, ended in a stalemate but confirmed America's Independence

1830: Indian Removal Act

1832: Department of Indian Affairs established

1861: 1861 - 1865: The American Civil War.

1862: U.S. Congress passes Homestead Act opening the Great Plains to settlers

1887: Dawes General Allotment Act passed by Congress leads to the break up of the large Indian Reservations and the sale of Indian lands to white settlers

1931: Vermont approved its sterilization law. Eugenics. Poor and socially ostracized families were targeted for investigation of the three D’s (delinquency, dependency, and mental defect). These families usually lived “outside the accepted moral or social convention of middle class America” (Gallagher, p. 37). The three D’s were used to target the poor, the disabled, French-Canadians, and Native Americans. Women were targeted more than men. French-Canadians and Abenakis were seen as a foe and threat to the early colonial settlers of Vermont. They represented “an insidious and continuous invasion” of Vermont and were therefore targeted (Gallagher, p. 45). Studies done on degenerate family lines were often traced back to French Canadian or Native American ancestry and were used to target these groups (Gallagher, pp. 80-82). the last noted sterilization in Vermont occurred in 1957, between 1973 and 1976, approximately 3,400 Native American women, according to the General Accounting Office, were sterilized in the United States without properly obtaining consent (Dowbiggin, p. 181; see also Forbes 2011).

1969: All Indians declared citizens of U.S.

1979: American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed