The Abnaki lived mostly in what is now Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
Abnaki legend has it that they came from the Southwest, but the exact time is unsure.
The Abnaki resided in settled villages, often surrounded by palisades, and lived by growing corn, fishing, and hunting. They were early involved in the French fur trade. Their own name for their conical huts covered with bark or mats, wigwam , came to be generally used in English. After a series of bloody conflicts with British colonists in the late 17th and 18th cent. In 1990 there were some 1,500 Abnaki in the United States, mostly in N Vermont.