Pennacook

Pennacook flag

Somewhat problematic map of apparently German construction, showing an estimate of Pennacook territory in the mid-17th century. The map, however, blends the Pennacook with the Sokoki, who were major political and economic rivals from the pre-colonial period and were a western as opposed to central Abenakian group. The inclusion of central Abenakian groups with the western Abenaki in revised histories is often due to a lack of linguistic data from the original Pennacook, who settled in St. Francis in Canada. The dialect of St Francis, however, was later heavily influenced by Sokoki from Vermont, leading to misconecptions as to the place of the Pennacook in the region, as this map demonstrates. See the work of Gordon Day and especially David Stewart-Smith on this important issue.^[1]

The Pennacook, also known by the names Penacook and Pennacock, are an Algonquian-speaking, central Abenakian North American people. They are closely related to but not a part of the original Wabanaki Confederacy, which was a French colonial construction that encompassed the eastern Abenakian groups the Miꞌkmaq, Maliseet (Wolastoqey), Passamaquoddy (Peskotomahkati) and Penobscot. The Pennacook and their immediate allies, with whom they married regularly, were the Pawtucket, Piscataqua, Pigwaket (or Pequawket), and other peoples of the Saco River. This alliance was culturally, politically, and linguistically distinct from western Abenakian peoples of Vermont like the Sokoki, Cowasuck, Missiquoi, and Arsigantegok, among others.They were also distinct in dialect and territory from the Massachusett and Wampanoag to the south.^[2]

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 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.^[3][4] While the children of Pennacook sachem Passaconaway intermarried with the children of Pawtucket bashaba Nanepashemet in the 17th century, the Pawtucket and Pennacook were distinct if closely related and allied confederations of bands. Because decisions to ally and become a part of such alliances were largely in the hands of the sagamores of individual bands, the membership of these confederations and alliances fluctuated regularly. Major bands of the Pennacook were the Souhegan, Namoskeag, Pennacook (the band, with its own sagamore), and the Suncook, although the Nashua, Pemigewasset, Winnipesauke, and others are often included among the Pennacook, which was all dependent upon the times and circumstances.^[5]

Lifeways[]

The name Pennacook roughly translates (based on Abenaki cognates) as "at the bottom of the hill."

Pennacook lifeways were complicated and best described as semi-sedentary and not as nomadic, as was often asserted by colonial observers.^[6] Families and bands had permanent claims to territory, and their hierarchical political structure from locally representative sagamores to more regionally representative sachems 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).^[7] Before the major epidemics of the 16th and 17th century would kill 90% of the Pennacook population, 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 8-25,000 people before the epidemics, with a median of around 16,500 for the central area around Pennacook.^[8]

The major and permanent Pennacook towns and villages were built along 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 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 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 was an important hunting and nut harvesting season (butternuts, hickory nuts, black walnuts, and beach 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 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 the work of David Stewart-Smith.^{[9] [10]}

History[]

One of the first 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 a military advantage over the New England colonists, 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 in western Massachusetts did not.

The Pennacook fled north with their former enemies, or west with other tribes, where the English colonists hunted them down and killed them.^{[citation needed]} Those that survived joined other scattered tribespeople at Schaghticoke, in present-day New York state. North-bound refugees eventually merged with other member tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Gordon Day concluded that a substantial number joined relations in Odanak and are today citizens of the Abenaki First Nation, which is recognized by so-called Canada.^[11]

Several groups in present-day New Hampshire and Vermont claim to be Pennacook bands. The Odanak Abenaki Band Council has denounced them.^[12][13] Contemporary scholarship indicates that most members of such groups have a single Indigenous ancestor many generations removed or no Indigenous ancestry at all.^[14][15] Indigenous activists and their allies strongly critique this phenomenon, sometimes called race-shifting, as an existential threat to the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and part of a larger pattern of settler self-indigenization.

Influence[]

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 name "Pennacook" has been adopted by the Boy Scouts of America's Spirit of Adventure Council for their Order of Arrow lodge.^[16]

Maps[]

Maps showing the approximate locations of areas occupied by members of the Wabanaki Confederacy (from north to south):

• 

  Mi'kmaq

• 

  Maliseet, Passamaquoddy

• 

  Eastern Abenaki (Penobscot, Kennebec, Arosaguntacook, Pigwacket/Pequawket)

• 

  Western Abenaki (Arsigantegok, Missisquoi, Cowasuck, Sokoki, Pennacook

See also[]

• Penacook, New Hampshire
• Plausawa
• New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 238: The Pennacook

Sources[]

• Johnson, M. and Hook, R. The Native Tribes of North America, Compendium Publishing, 1992. ISBN 1-872004-03-2
• Pennacook History
• Sidis, William. The Tribes and the States, 1935

See also[]

• Lake Winnipesaukee, named after a sub-tribe of the Pennacook

References[]

External links[]

Wikisource has the text of the 1905 New International Encyclopedia article "Pennacook".

• Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People
• Pennacook Lodge, Order of the Arrow