Abenaki language  Abenaki, or Abnaki, is an endangered Algonquian language of Quebec and the northern states of New England. The language has Eastern and Western forms which differ in vocabulary and phonology and are sometimes considered distinct languages. Eastern Abenaki languages are spoken by several peoples, including the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot of coastal Maine. The last known natively fluent speaker of Penobscot, Madeline Shay, died in 1993. However, several Penobscot elders still speak Penobscot, and there is an ongoing effort to preserve it and teach it in the local schools. Other dialects of Eastern Abenaki such as "Caniba" and "Aroosagunticook" are documented in French-language materials from the colonial period. By 2006 five speakers of Western Abenaki were recorded. In "Reflections in Bullough's Pond", historian Diana Muir argues that Abenaki neighbors, the pre-contact Iroquois, were an imperialist, expansionist culture whose cultivation of the corn/beans/squash agricultural complex enabled them to support a large population. They made war primarily against neighboring Algonquian peoples, including the Abenaki. Muir uses archaeological data to argue that the Iroquois expansion onto Algonquian lands was checked by the Algonquian adoption of agriculture, which enabled them to support populations large enough to raise sufficient warriors to defend against the threat of Iroquois conquest. In 1614, six years before the "Mayflower", an English captain, Thomas Hunt, captured 24 young Abenaki people from what would later become Massachusetts and took them to Europe to sell as slaves. As a result, when the "Mayflower" landed and the English began to establish colonies in the southern end of Abenaki territory, relations between the English and natives remained guarded. The religious leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony discouraged social interaction with the natives. By contrast, the French had already planted the colonies of New France in the northern part of Abenaki territory, and maintained reasonably cordial relations with the natives. Intermarriage between the French and natives gave rise to the Métis people. Over the next hundred years, conflicts between the French and the English often included their colonies and their respective native allies. The French treated their Abenaki allies with some respect; in 1709, Louis XIV knighted Chief Assacumbuit for his service, thus elevating him as a member of the French nobility.