Last week I had a biography of Samuel Champlain on my table when I came across your article about Quebec Abenakis disputing the legitimacy of Vermont Abenakis. The biography is “Champlain’s Dream” by David Fischer. And I think Champlain would be saddened by the words of the Quebec Abenakis.
Champlain’s dream was that Indians and French settlers would live in peace in New France and become one people. French settlers built their homes beside and among the Indian homes. Separation was discouraged. The first settlers were mostly young men and Champlain urged them to go live with the Indians, learn their languages, and take Indian wives. The Catholic church encouraged this too, as did the governors after Champlain.
Over the decades, thousands and thousands of French and Indians married. French nobles too. In 1665, Baron de Saint-Castine married the daughter of an Abenaki chief. They had many children and grandchildren who married Indians and French.
The last chapter of the biography tells of the success of Champlain’s dream. Whole towns of Metis mixed-race people developed in the late 1700s and 1800s and they developed new languages and cultures that combined French and Indian. In 1970, a Canadian biologist reckoned that 40 percent of Canadian families had both Indians and Europeans in their family trees.
So the Quebec Abenakis aren’t as pure as they think they are. They are living in a glass house and throwing stones. Don’t they have better things to do? And what’s UVM doing egging them on?
Charles Calley
South Ryegate
