The Pennacook, also known by the names Penacook and Pennacock, were
Algonquian Indigenous people
There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
who lived in what is now
Massachusetts
Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
,
New Hampshire
New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
, and southern
Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
. They were not a united tribe but 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
The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Mi'kmaw'' or ''Mi'gmaw''; ; , and formerly Micmac) are an Indigenous group of people of the Northeastern Woodlands, native to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces, primarily Nova Scotia, New Bru ...
, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy
The Passamaquoddy (Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language, Passamaquoddy: ''Peskotomuhkati'', Plural: ''Peskotomuhkatiyik'') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American/First Nations in Canada, First Nations people who live in northea ...
, and Penobscot peoples.
Name
Pennacook is also written as Penacook and Pennacock. The name ''Pennacook'' roughly translates (based on Abenaki
The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pred ...
cognates) as "at the bottom of the hill."
Territory
Historian David Stewart-Smith suggests that the Penacook were Central Abenaki people. Their southern neighbors were the Massachusett and Wampanoag
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and forme ...
.
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.
Confederacy
The Pennacook were a loose and fluid confederacy of village communities.[Sherburn Friend Cook, ''The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century'', p. 13] 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 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.
]
Subsistence
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 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, 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 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 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 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.
History
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 a military advantage over English colonists from New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
, 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
King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1678 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodland ...
, 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, the colonists of New England enslaved some Pennacook captives. Some joined the Schaghticoke. Other Pennacooks fled to the Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District includi ...
and on to Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
.[ 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
The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pred ...
group. Gordon M. Day suggested that Pennacook moved north to Odanak Reserve in Quebec, and their descendants belong to the Odanak First Nation, an Abenaki government in Canada.
Cultural heritage groups
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 a threat to the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and part of a larger pattern of settler self-indigenization.
Legacy
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
Scouting America is the largest scouting organization and one of the largest List of youth organizations, youth organizations in the United States, with over 1 million youth, including nearly 200,000 female participants. Founded as the Boy Sco ...
's Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
-based Spirit of Adventure Council adopted the name "Pennacook" for its Order of the Arrow lodge.
Notable Pennacook
* George Tahanto, sachem, land proprietor, participant in Deerfield Raid
* Passaconaway, 17th-century sachem, or leader, of the Pennacook proper in New Hampshire
* Plausawa (–1754), a veteran of King George's War and last known Native American living in the town of Suncook, New Hampshire
* Wonalancet (–1697), 17th-century sachem and son of Passconaway
See also
* Lake Winnipesaukee, named after a subtribe of the Pennacook
* Native American tribes in Massachusetts
* Penacook, New Hampshire
* Plausawa
* New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 238: The Pennacook
Notes
References
*
* Johnson, M. and Hook, R. ''The Native Tribes of North America'', Compendium Publishing, 1992.
*
*
External links
Pennacook History
* Sidis, William
1935
{{authority control
Algonquian ethnonyms
Algonquian peoples
Extinct Native American tribes
Native American history of Massachusetts
Native American history of Maine
Native American history of New Hampshire
Native American tribes in Massachusetts
Native American tribes in Maine
Native American tribes in New Hampshire