 Log Cabin Chronicles 
When we did a Kosovo ROYAL ORR
Does this sound familiar?
An expansionist warlike people has launched an assault on its neighbors in a region of the world where several ethnic groups live uneasily side by side.
The aggressors attack villages, killing men, women and children, driving survivors into the surrounding woods. They burn the houses and the crops in the fields. Refugees by the hundreds stream into neighboring territory, seeking safety and shelter.
The aggressors justify their actions by pointing to similar atrocities visited on them in the past. It's true. Guerrilla-type warfare and what's come to be called ethnic cleansing has been going on for nearly a century in this region.
The refugees receive some support from their neighbors. At least their tormentors cannot follow them where their allies' troops provide some protection. But it's a desperate struggle to survive.
"Kosovo," you're thinking. "The refugees huddled on the border of Macedonia."
Actually, I have Vermont in mind and the refugees that sought shelter in the Eastern Townships. It was the Wars, you may recall. The Abenaki Wars.
The first Abenaki war broke out in 1675. The aboriginal people of Northern New England and the Eastern Townships, the Abenaki, watched as the Puritans launched an all-out offensive on the Pequots, the Narragansetts, and other peoples in the area of Massachusetts.
Known to history as the Second War of Puritan Conquest or King Philip's War (after a native leader who led the aboriginal forces), the conflict rapidly spilled into Abenaki territory with a bloody attack by British colonists on a native fishing camp on the Connecticut River.
Most modern historians agree that on the Puritan side, King Philip's War was genocidal in intent. It was very successful. Refugees from the fighting fled into Abenaki lands to the north, moving as far as Odanak on the St. Lawrence River. New France was an ally of the Abenaki nation and provided some protection.
Abenaki fighters pushed back at British settlements that had sprung up along the Connecticut River and drove the colonists out. An uneasy truce was declared in 1678.
Their alliance with the French, however, dragged them into the second Abenaki war - King William's War it's often called - when Count Frontenac's forces came to blows with the Iroquois federation.
For a decade, starting in 1687, the Abenaki were caught up in a sort of proxy war between the British and the French. Ten more years of fighting, raiding, destruction and displaced people. As before, refugees on the French-Abenaki side moved north. They often gathered at a native town called Mississquoi (near present-day Swanton) and then dispersed into the territory around Lake Memphremagog and the St. Francis River to look for food and to build temporary shelter.
The third Abenaki war (Queen Anne's War to the British) broke out in 1702 and lasted until 1713. More ethnic cleansing. More refugees - including the great guerrilla leader Grey Lock, a member of the Woronoco tribe from Massachusetts who moved to Mississquoi in about 1712.
It was Grey Lock who led the raids that kicked off the fourth Abenaki war in 1723. The British continued to press into native lands and Grey Lock was intent on stopping them. Drummer's War went on for three years. Replay scenes of burning towns and fleeing people. A treaty was signed in 1726. Grey Lock never accepted it and was never captured by British forces. He lived to a very old age near Mississquoi. (Why don't they teach us this stuff in school?)
The treaty held for 18 years. During that time, in 1730, the Abenaki and the refugees still among them were hit by a disastrous smallpox epidemic. Global politics intruded again. King George's War, the fifth conflict where the Abenaki went up against the British with their French allies, ended in 1748 in a stalemate. But, yes, more refugees resulted.
And then in 1754, the Seven Years War began. It would be the deciding conflict between Britain and France in North America. We all know how it turned out. The Abenaki were on the losing side. This time, their refugees had nowhere to go.
As I listen to the reports from Kosovo and watch the pictures from Macedonia, I look out on the now peaceful hills of the Townships. I'm reminded that no one's hands are completely clean in this sad, bloody, old world - many of us simply choose to forget how we ourselves have benefited from the genocides, the ethnic cleansings and the refugee crises of the past. Royal Orr is a writer and broadcaster living in Hatley, Quebec.
Copyright © 1999 Royal Orr/Log Cabin Chronicles/r.99 |
