Swanton: The Abenaki Capital of Vermont

Swanton, Vermont, sits on the Missisquoi River just south of the Canadian border, and for the Western Abenaki people it has been home for thousands of years. The Missisquoi Abenaki say they never ceded their territory by treaty and never entirely left, even as colonial and state governments tried to legislate them out of existence. In the twentieth century Vermont's official position was that the Abenaki had vanished, a claim the Abenaki themselves disputed from their homes in Swanton.

Vermont formally recognized several Abenaki bands, including the Missisquoi, in the early twenty-tens, and the Missisquoi Abenaki tribal headquarters remains in Swanton today. The recognition came after decades of legal and political struggle, including court fights over hunting and fishing rights.

For non-Native settlers, Swanton was chartered in seventeen sixty-three and grew as a farming and railroad town. A marble quarrying industry operated nearby in the nineteenth century. The village green and a handful of nineteenth-century commercial blocks survive from that era.

But the deepest story here is older: this bend in the Missisquoi River was a gathering place, a fish camp, and a home long before it had a charter date.