Misplaced Pages

#164835

52-642: The name for Lake Cochichewick reportedly comes from the Pennacook word for "dashing stream" or "place of the great cascade" and during the early years of Andover it was called "The Great Pond". For the past century, Lake Cochichewick has been North Andover's main supply of drinking water and public access to the lake was forbidden. In May 2002, however, the town began issuing boating permits: Certain watercraft are allowed and must be designed to be manually propelled, by oars or paddles. Rowing shells, johnboats, dinghies, rowboats, canoes and kayaks are acceptable as long as

104-491: A Christian, and as his policies often continued his father's, it seems likely that Passaconaway was at least open to some form of Christian influence. Passaconaway voluntarily abdicated in approximately 1660 and designated his second son Wonalancet as next sachem of the Pennacook (a position he actively held no later than 1664), which announcement was part of a larger speech he delivered urging his people to always keep peace with

156-466: A military advantage over English colonists from New England , but he decided to make peace with them rather than lose more of his people through warfare. They were caught up in King Philip's War , however, and lost more members. Although Wonalancet , the chief who succeeded Passaconaway, tried to maintain neutrality in the war, bands of Pennacook in western Massachusetts did not. After King Philip's War,

208-512: A network of politically and culturally allied communities. Penacook was also the name of a specific Native village in what is now Concord, New Hampshire . The Pennacook were related to but not a part of the original Wabanaki Confederacy , which includes the Miꞌkmaq , Maliseet , Passamaquoddy , and Penobscot peoples. Pennacook is also written as Penacook and Pennacock. The name Pennacook roughly translates (based on Abenaki cognates) as "at

260-635: A political leader by colonial English settlers. One of the key native figures in the colonial history of Massachusetts , New Hampshire , and Maine , he is believed to have been born between 1550 and 1570, and had died by 1669 (his birth and death dates are imprecise, and reckoning is skewed by the claim of one reporter, who says that he met Passaconaway when the latter was 120 years old). During his lifetime English colonial settlement in New England began in earnest, intersecting with an ongoing series of socio-political and demographic changes arising from warfare over

312-552: A scenic two-lane highway through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, bears the name of Passaconaway's grandson, Kancamagus . The Kancamagus Highway passes the former village of Passaconaway, much of which is now part of the White Mountain National Forest . The village of Passaconaway once contained a sawmill, hotel and post office, as well as several farms and homes. For a few years a logging railroad ran through

364-426: A significant drop in mercury levels in fish such as yellow perch and largemouth bass. A spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection said: [O]bviously the move to severely restrict mercury emissions from trash incinerators as well as closing down all state medical waste incinerators really has had a positive impact. ... It takes a long time for mercury to build up in the environment, and our thought

416-448: A threat to the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and part of a larger pattern of settler self-indigenization. William James Sidis hypothesized in his book The Tribes and the States (1935) that the Pennacook tribes greatly influenced the democratic ideals which European settlers instituted in New England. The Boy Scouts of America 's Boston -based Spirit of Adventure Council adopted

468-589: Is a drawing that first appeared in Potter's History of Manchester, and has a somewhat better connection to period-accurate clothing, but the conspicuously displayed bearskin was almost certainly included due to the folk etymology of his name (discussed above). Anglo-American legends about Passaconaway's death say that his body was buried in a cave in the sacred native mountain Agamenticus in southern Maine, and that at least one member of his people saw his spirit carried up to

520-452: Is of Narragansett words). In 19th century and subsequent publications he has sometimes been equated with the Catholic sachem called St. Aspenquid, but this is erroneous. Passaconaway was widely respected by contemporaneous Native Americans in the New England region, by English colonists (even those who said that his supernatural abilities were satanic in origin), and was taken seriously as

572-412: Is that it will take quite a bit of time to leave the environment. ... This is showing us that in a relatively short period of time we can have some dramatic reductions. Pennacook The Pennacook , also known by the names Penacook and Pennacock , were Algonquian indigenous people who lived in what is now Massachusetts , New Hampshire , and southern Maine . They were not a united tribe but

SECTION 10

#1732851393165

624-517: The Great Spirit , Passaconaway declared that the Great Spirit had commanded him to live the rest of his life in peace with the white-faced tribes. From this time on, Passaconaway would not allow his sons or his tribe to fight with any European settlers, and counseled peace to all his native associates. Local New Hampshire history says that in 1647 John Elliot attempted to speak with Passaconaway but

676-484: The Mohawks . The English were problematic allies at best, and for the rest of his life Passaconaway repeatedly dealt with English transgression, affronts, and challenges to his autonomy. In 1632, when a Native American murdered an English settler and fled, Passaconaway oversaw his capture and turned him over to colonial authorities. In 1642, when a rumor falsely claimed that there was an anti-English conspiracy developing among

728-564: The Odanak First Nation , an Abenaki government in Canada. Several groups in present-day Vermont claim to be Pennacook bands. The Odanak Abenaki Band Council has denounced them. Contemporary scholarship indicates that most members of such groups have a single Indigenous ancestor many generations removed or no Indigenous ancestry at all. Indigenous activists and their allies strongly critique this phenomenon, sometimes called race-shifting, as

780-611: The Pilgrims ' 1620 landing on the Massachusetts coast, a European ship's captain reported seeing a huge native standing atop a coastal cliff, surmising he was probably the native often referred to as Conway. Another legend indicates that Passaconaway was summoned to the Plymouth area of Massachusetts by the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit , asking Passaconaway to use his supernatural powers to rid

832-519: The 1629 Wheelwright Deed (the authenticity of which is debated, but which is generally accepted as legitimate) specifies that Passaconaway and other sachems were willing to sell territory to the English for the explicit purpose of making alliances against the Tarrantines (an exonym given to a confederation of Native groups in today's Maine which made a habit of attacking the groups in southeast New England) and

884-580: The English colonists. His larger family remained active in Native politics: his oldest son Nanamocomuck became sachem of the neighboring Wachusett. His daughter Wanunchus married Montowampate , a sagamore of the Naumkeag in Saugus , who lived north of what is now Boston (their marriage was the topic of John Greenleaf Whittier 's poem "The Bridal of Penacook"), and another daughter, known only as Bess, married Nobhow ,

936-455: The English missionary John Eliot reported that he had gone to Pawtucket Falls , met Passaconaway, and preached to him there. According to Eliot, Passaconaway was receptive to his preaching, and invited him to come live with the Pennacook, which Eliot did not do. Whether Passaconaway converted is uncertain - no records indicate it, but legends among English colonists and their descendants maintained that he did. His son Wonalancet eventually became

988-616: The Great Spirit's earthly abode of Agiocochook ( Mount Washington ) atop a sled pulled by wolves and covered with hundreds of animal skins given to him by his people and his fellow sachems. There he burst into flame and was carried up to the heavens to live with the Great Spirit. This legend is almost certainly due to Passaconaway being confused with St. Aspinquid , who was allegedly buried (without miracles) on Agamenticus. The details about wolf-drawn sleds and flaming translation are 18th and 19th century elaborations without any clear Native American antecedent. Shortly before his death, Passaconaway

1040-539: The Language of America , which includes papoòs "infant" and paukunnawaw "bear" and " Ursa Major "). The alleged "child of the bear" translation has become a staple in subsequent accounts about Passaconaway, but is linguistically problematic, despite looking plausible. Modern speculative reconstructions based on 17th century orthography point to the name most likely having been something (in modern orthography) like Papisseconneway. There are no extant contemporaneous accounts of

1092-523: The Merrimack Valley and its tributaries like the Souhegan, Piscataquog, and Suncook, would have been densely populated, the environment carefully maintained. David Stewart-Smith (1998:19) estimated that the Merrimack Valley had 8,000–25,000 people before the epidemics, with a median of around 16,500 for the central area around Pennacook. The major and permanent Pennacook towns and villages were built along

SECTION 20

#1732851393165

1144-613: The Merrimack. Many Pennacook villages were built just above natural waterfalls that trapped fish and made it easier to catch them in the late spring. Fiddlehead season would be followed by others still known today, like blueberry and raspberry seasons. During the summers, families would disperse to summer villages and hunting camps. Women did most of the work of building and maintaining homes as well as farming. Their main crops were varieties of maize/corn and squash, which they planted along rivers and in meadows. While they found it difficult to clear

1196-570: The Mohawk as a younger man. At some point prior to the Pilgrims' arrival he became sachem (chief) of the Pennacook, and eventually bashaba (chief of chiefs) of a multi-tribal confederation in parts of today's New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine, members of which originally drew together for mutual protection from attacks by other Native groups. Passaconaway was one of the first native chieftains to lease land to English settlers in New England, and

1248-549: The Pennacook territory called Augumtoocooke (present-day Dracut, Massachusetts ) to Captain John Evered, for the sum of four yards of " Duffill " and one pound of tobacco . Capt. Evered in turn sold tracts of the land to European families for a great deal of money. However, it is important to remember that by that time, the Pennacook and Pawtucket families had been arrested, harassed, enslaved, and shipped to Barbados in some cases. The details of his death, including date, cause, and

1300-616: The area. The short-lived Passaconaway Mountain Club was based there. The former settlement is located in the incorporated town of Albany, New Hampshire . Today the area is noted for its hiking and cross-country skiing trails. The U.S. Forest Service maintains the Passaconaway Campground and the Jigger Johnson Campground in this area, as well as the historic Russell-Colbath House and adjacent cemetery. Mount Passaconaway ,

1352-677: The bottom of the hill." Historian David Stewart-Smith suggests that the Penacook were Central Abenaki people. Their southern neighbors were the Massachusett and Wampanoag . Pennacook territory bordered the Connecticut River in the West, Lake Winnipesauke in the north, the Piscataqua to the east, and the villages of the closely allied Pawtucket confederation along the southern Merrimack River to

1404-491: The children of Pawtucket Bashaba Nanepashemet in the 17th century. Because decisions to ally and become a part of such alliances were largely in the hands of the leaders of individual bands, the membership of these confederations and alliances fluctuated regularly. Pennacook people were semi-sedentary. Families and bands had permanent claims to territory, and their hierarchical political structure from locally representative sagamores to more regionally representative sachems

1456-726: The colonists of New England enslaved some Pennacook captives. Some joined the Schaghticoke . Other Pennacooks fled to the Hudson Valley and on to Quebec . North-bound refugees eventually merged with other member tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy. In the north, some Pennacook merged into the Pigwacket people, an Abenaki group. Gordon M. Day suggested that Pennacook moved north to Odanak Reserve in Quebec, and their descendants belong to

1508-522: The early period of, colonial encroachment Passaconaway presumably followed traditional New England Native lifeways in the Pennacook territories around the Merrimack River, moving among established village sites like Amoskeag and Pawtucket seasonally, which accounts for his historical association with several places in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Colonial records specify that Passaconaway lived at

1560-501: The fur trade and the introduction of Eurasian diseases. In particular, an epidemic in 1616 ravaged the Native American populations in southeast New England, and that event's demographic consequences probably motivated sachems to allow the settlement of English colonists in their territories, usually under the framework of "land sales", to bolster their ability to engage in inter-group raids and warfare with other Native communities. He

1612-603: The ice, or in the water at any time. Swimming is not allowed on Lake Cochichewick, neither for humans nor dogs. The town has posted signs along the trails near the lake informing hikers that it is used for drinking water, and that swimming is punishable with a $ 50 fine. As the Merrimack Valley was once highly industrialized, there has been concern about the levels of contaminants such as mercury in Lake Cochichewick and other local waters. However, recent tests have shown

Lake Cochichewick - Misplaced Pages Continue

1664-406: The land of the Pilgrims who were building a village on the shore (this is tied to versions of his abdication speech where he allegedly said he did everything to get rid of the English that he could - which does not line up with his lifelong policy of appeasement). At Massasoit's village, says the folklore, Passaconaway was for the first time in his life unable to bring up a storm. After conversing with

1716-537: The late fall before families returned to the more permanent winter camps to wait out the long winter. In addition to being farmers, hunters, and foragers, it is important to remember that the Pennacook and the peoples of the Merrimack River Valley were also long-distance traders, and their major towns of Pennacook and Amoskeag drew people from around the region in the late spring and summers. For more, see Michael Caduto's 2004 book, A Time Before New Hampshire and

1768-510: The local Native Americans, a militia was sent to apprehend Passaconaway and seize his guns. When the militia's forward progress was stopped by a thunderstorm, they instead seized his son, Wonalancet, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchild. When the authorities in Boston sent him an apology and invited him to come to the town to discuss the matter, Passaconaway insisted that the captives be freed. After they were, Passaconaway turned over his guns. In 1648

1820-421: The location of his grave, are unknown. His son and successor, Wonalancet, kept to his father's policies regarding the English, including forbearing to take part in King Philip's War . His first son, Nanamocomuck, was the father of Kancamagus, who became Pennacook sachem after Wonalancet, and was far more inclined to fight back against the English than his grandfather and uncle had been. Kancamagus eventually removed

1872-441: The major rivers, and many were on the east side of the Merrimack, ostensibly for protection from the west. Life revolved around the seasons, and spring would begin with women collecting maple sap to make maple sugar. Men would return to hunting grounds and burn their grounds to turn over nutrients in the soils for later cultivation. In late spring the rivers and creeks would swell as the great fish like salmon and shad made their way up

1924-424: The massive old-growth trees, the Pennacook were experts at manipulating beavers to move their dams and ponds up and down creeks and brooks, thereby clearing and opening up land for farms that would be essential to the first Europeans who arrived and found cleared fields ready for cultivation. Many of these fields were scattered with the bones of the Pennacook who had recently died of smallpox or other diseases. The fall

1976-719: The name "Pennacook" for its Order of the Arrow lodge. Passaconaway Passaconaway was a 17th century sachem and later bashaba (chief of chiefs) of the Pennacook people in what is now southern New Hampshire in the United States, who was famous for his dealings with the Plimouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. 17th century records spell his name in a variety of ways, including Papisseconewa, Papisseconeway, Passeconneway, Papisseconneway, Passeconewa, Passaconaway, and Peasconaway. In New English Canaan (1637) Thomas Morton wrote

2028-539: The name as "Papasiquineo". At some point in the late 1830s American author Samuel G. Drake either theorized, or encountered someone else's theory, that these names are all derived from words for "child" and "bear" - he made the claim for the first time in the 1841 8th edition of his Indian Biographies . Chandler Potter 's 1856 History of Manchester derived the name from papoeis "a child" and kunnaway "a bear", but does not provide citations for this (the two terms he uses most likely came from Roger Williams ' A Key Into

2080-404: The name's literal meaning, nor about whether it was related to his lineage, his status as a powow , or other social significance, whether it was an autonym or heteronym, or even from which of the various Algonquian languages it came (the English colonists were much better acquainted with Wampanoag , Massachusett and Narragansett communities than with the Pennacook , and Williams' glossary

2132-407: The occupants are isolated from contact with the lake. Boats must not have any thru-holes (e.g. self-bailers) that would allow contact between the occupants and the lake water. Electric motors are acceptable as an alternate form of propulsion. The maximum length of a motorized craft is 15 feet. Inflatable boats, windsurfers and seaplanes are not allowed. No domestic animals are allowed to be in boats, on

Lake Cochichewick - Misplaced Pages Continue

2184-640: The remnants of the Pennacook northward to the settlements along the Saint Lawrence River. Passaconaway was later heroized by non-native New Englanders as a representative of a "good" Indian, largely due to his lifelong policy of nonaggression with the English colonists, the repeated positive comments on his character from English contemporaries such as John Eliot, and he has been commemorated in various places in New Hampshire and elsewhere. Legends in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine are mostly drawn from, and elaborate upon, colonial accounts. Even before

2236-629: The sachem of the Pawtucket . In his old age Passaconaway, having relinquished his position of authority and having seen most traditional subsistence practices abandoned or rendered impossible by English colonial practices and laws, became dependent on the goodwill of the Massachusetts General Court and colonial government, petitioning in 1664 for a land grant for territory over which he once exercised some form of sovereignty. In October 1665, Passaconaway's daughter, Bess (wife of Nobb How), sold

2288-719: The south. The Pennacook homeland was built around the upper Merrimack and the major towns at Amoskeag Falls (now Manchester) and Pennacook (now Concord ), which served as major population hubs and later fallback centers for people across the region during the colonial period. The Pennacook were a loose and fluid confederacy of village communities. Pennacook was a specific community within this confederacy that also included Accominta, Agawam , Amoskeag, Coosuc , Cowasack , Nashua , Naumkeag , Newickawanoc, Ossipee , Piscataway , Piscatequa, Souhegan, Squamscot, Wambesit, Washacum, Winnepesaukee, Wachusett, and other villages. The children of Pennacook Sachem Passaconaway intermarried with

2340-661: The top of the Pawtucket Falls (today's Lowell, Massachusetts ). Local New Hampshire history says that he lived and moved seasonally among various fishing and planting spots along the Merrimack River , including the Amoskeag Falls in present-day Manchester , several fertile islands, present-day Horseshoe Pond , and sites along the nearby coast. There are no records about the earlier part of his career beyond his reported abdication speech, which said that he had fought against

2392-476: The work of David Stewart-Smith. One of the first Indian tribes to encounter European colonists, the Pennacook were devastated by infectious diseases carried by the newcomers. Suffering high mortality, they were in a weakened state and subject to raids by Mohawk of the Iroquois Confederacy from the west, and Micmac (Mi'kmaq) tribes from the north, who also took a toll of lives. Chief Passaconaway had

2444-408: Was a powerful and widely respected powow (a ritual expert and mediator between humans and spirits similar to a shaman ); English accounts by figures like Thomas Morton and John [Eliot?] note that he was allegedly able to make water burn, produce ice in the summer, make trees dance, call up thunderstorms, make dried leaves turn green, and make living snakes out of dead snake skin. Prior to, and during

2496-407: Was an important hunting and nut harvesting season (butternuts, hickory nuts, black walnuts, and beech nuts were all tasty, and several southern, fire-resistant species were propagated farther north when possible). The presence of southern, fire-resistant species of nut trees like hickories and black walnuts in New Hampshire today is thanks to the Pennacook. The forests would generally be burned again in

2548-408: Was fundamentally democratic and designed to reduce conflict and provide social stability. Leaders and sachems like Passaconaway played important roles in organizing long-distance kin and trade networks with allied neighbors (his own children were all married to the children of allied political leaders). Before the major epidemics of the 16th and 17th century would kill 90% of the Pennacook population,

2600-458: Was granted extensive tracks of land on both sides of the Merrimack as far north as the Souhegan River (although others, like Potter, have claimed without evidence that he settled in present-day Concord). He most likely died and was buried near the island where he was last known to be living, in the Merrimack River not far north of the mouth of the Souhegan. The present-day Kancamagus Highway ,

2652-563: Was now sachem of the Pennacook. This account closely follows the events narrated in Eliot's letter and descriptions of Passaconaway's farewell speech, but presents the two as somehow causally related. The commemorative statue in Edson Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts is historically inaccurate - it depicts Plains Indian clothing and headdress. The other most frequently presented image of Passaconaway

SECTION 50

#1732851393165

2704-441: Was refused audience again and again before he was finally allowed to talk with the bashaba . Eventually the minister was invited to live with the Pennacook people and teach the elderly sachem about Christianity . Legend says that after the preacher died suddenly from an illness, Passaconaway decided to step down from his position of authority, announcing before an enormous crowd at the yearly native gathering that his son Wonalancet

#164835