USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Smallpox first infected humans who worked with farm animals. Since the Abenaki never raised farm animals, they had never had smallpox before. Smallpox killed the most indigenous people of any disease in the 1600s. In the 1700s, people started to invent vaccines to protect against smallpox.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Abenaki population continued to decline, but in 1676, they took in thousands of refugees from many southern New England tribes displaced by settlement and King Philip’s War. Because of this, descendants of nearly every southern New England Algonquian tribe can be found among the Abenaki people.

Detailed explanation-3: -Abenaki set up villages along rivers and lakes where they had access to water and could hunt, farm and fish using traps called weirs. Favorite fishing spots were near waterfalls along the Merrimack, Connecticut, Saco, and Androsoggin Rivers.

Detailed explanation-4: -During much of the 17th century, the Abenaki were hunters, fishers and gatherers. Favoured game was more often moose than deer. They travelled mainly by birchbark canoes on lakes and streams, and lived in villages near waterfalls on major rivers during the seasons when migratory fish could be harvested.