Justice Committee Investigation
By Dee Hodges
“We acknowledge the traditional, ancestral, and unceded land of the Abenaki people that is home to our Church building. We honor the Abenaki people who have been living and working on this land from time immemorial. We recognize that colonialism and the oppression of Native peoples is a current and ongoing process, and we commit to building our awareness of our present participation. We give thanks for those who have come before us, honoring the legacy of Vermont’s Indigenous people, the Abenaki People of the Dawn. We are grateful for the care and sharing of this land.” (Land Acknowledgement)
In the Fall of 2020, the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont passed a resolution asking all parishes to explore their history of race relations and specifically the history of how the land their churches own was acquired. St. Stephen's recently-formed Justice Committee responded by starting to research our own land history. St. Stephen's doesn't actually own the land it sits on. We learned from Glenn Andres and town records that the Town Green was deeded to the town in 1799 with the stipulation that it could be used for public and religious buildings. The Town of Middlebury gave the church permission to build on the Town Green in 1825. We know that the land had been acquired through royal land grants with no regard for who was already here. We found no record in Samuel Swift’s History of the Town of Middlebury, town records or church documents of interaction between the early settlers and the Abenaki people whose homeland this was before the first white settlers arrived.
In June of 2021, Meg Fitch contacted Chief Don Stevens, of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation whose headquarters and land are based here in Vermont. The Chief confirmed that the Abenaki historically did live along Otter Creek and throughout Middlebury and Addison County. Stevens explained that for a combination of reasons — archaeological mistakes as to identifying who was here, conflicting claims over whose homeland this had been, the desire on the part of those in power to deny the Abenaki any claims of national or tribal identity — it has been a struggle to legally establish that identity. This issue was put to rest with Nulhegan and Elnu being the first tribes recognized in Vermont and establishing Vermont as part of their homeland. So now, the only people who could legally claim Vermont as their actual homeland are the Vermont Recognized tribes.
The struggle for empire in North America led to the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and the Revolutionary War with dramatic effects on our state. Shifts from French to the British and finally to American control were carried out in a century of nearly continuous fighting among France, Britain, the US, and Native American nations. We asked Chief Stevens for a history of how the Abenaki people were driven out to make way for the early settlers. He responded by stating “first disease brought by settler’s killed many of our people, then Europeans taking over our land, and finally war and relocation/hiding. Later on, groups like the KKK, boarding schools, state and local sanctioned programs, or eugenics programs that targeted our people. Churches supported these efforts. Many Abenaki were sent to St. Joseph’s Orphanage or poor farms supported by churches”. He added, “over the years, when the state wanted to deny the existence of the Abenaki, they said that all Abenaki lived in Canada.”
The Abenaki maintain an oral culture and didn’t write anything down. We are grateful to Chief Don Stevens for sharing this history and answering our questions. It has helped to dispel the myth that America was “discovered”. There were people here!
John Chipman was the first settler in Middlebury. Henry Sheldon was a member of St. Stephen’s and kept meticulous records. We found his handwritten notes opposite John Chipman’s obituary describing Chipman’s trek to the Vermont wilderness in 1766:
“…he left Salisbury, CT with 15 other men…their locomotion was a pair of oxen…he stayed in Middlebury and cleared about 8 acres…There was not a house in all of Vermont north of Manchester. Having made his ‘sign manual’ upon his lot, thus securing it, he returned in the autumn to Salisbury (CT), then returned to Middlebury in 1773 with wife and family…and pitched upon his old clearing which was again overgrown…”
At the end of the Revolutionary War, John Chipman and Gamaliel Painter were the two most prominent men in Middlebury. Other early settlers include Dr. John Willard from Connecticut and Daniel Chipman, a lawyer. We learned from Eric Davis that the original grants of land in what is now Vermont would have been justified by theories of discovery or conquest*, rather than any recognition that Abenaki were settled on these lands for a very long time before the first Europeans arrived in New England.
Church documents provide a treasure trove of valuable information about the building of our church and what we’ve come to know about our past. Next we will visit Elizabeth Allison’s To Have a Bishop of Our Own: Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of VT 1790-1832 and Ceil Murdoch’s On The Village Green to better understand our relationship between the land and colonialism. And let us pray that understanding our history may help us all in this healing.
* The taking of native lands was justified by what is called The Doctrine of Discovery. This was used well into the 19th century as White Americans pushed west, taking lands and killing the indigenous people who resisted. Its first version was in papal bulls of 1095 and 1452 which gave crusaders permission to take land and slaughter non-Christians. On May 4, 1493 Pope Alexander VI gave sanction to Christian rulers to take any land not inhabited by Christians and to enslave or kill any people who resisted "conversion." In 2009, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery.
