Colonial New Hampshire

A History

Jere R. Daniell

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781611688788
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In his full-scale history of New Hampshire from the Algonkin people to the coming of the American Revolution, the historian Jere R. Daniell discusses the Indian population, the development of community life, the founding of New Hampshire as a royal colony, the political adjustments that existence as a separate colony necessitated, the nature of New Hampshire's social institutions, and many other subjects. His epilogue links colonial New Hampshire to subsequent developments in the state. This volume will interest historians of colonial New England and New Hampshire.

1

THE ALGONKIANS

Sometime in the mid-1680s a small group of Pennacooks left their homeland in the upper Merrimack valley to join with fellow Indians to the northeast. They were accustomed to travel and had left their village many times before, but this departure meant more than the others: they had little expectation of returning. Their troubles were almost too vast to comprehend. The oldest among the migrants could remember the days when their sagamore Passaconaway commanded respect from perhaps a dozen bands and tribes in the valley area. Over five hundred strong, they had been able to protect themselves against their traditional enemies to the west, the Mohawks, and to maintain peace with the “English” strangers who had first arrived during their childhood. Now everything had changed. Disease, warfare, and defection had reduced their numbers to fewer than one hundred. The fish and game on which they depended for much of their sustenance had become scarcer each year, and many fields, where they grew maize and other foods, had been ruined. Indeed, they were threatened with immediate death. Kancamagus, Passaconaway’s grandson and their present leader, had learned of negotiations between the English and Mohawks which might lead the latter to launch an eastward invasion. If such an attack came, the Pennacooks would be too weak for effective resistance. There seemed no possible course of action but to abandon the land and villages they knew so well.

The Pennacooks were not the only group of Native Americans resident in what is modern New Hampshire when European settlement began, but they were the largest, and their fate symbolized that of the entire pre-colonial population. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the area contained about three thousand Algonkian Indians, many of them settled in villages which had changed little in the past several generations. The arrival of the English, however, disrupted the Algonkians’ pattern of living and triggered a series of developments which quickly destroyed their society. Before the end of the century it was clear that the future lay with the white man.*

The Indians of New Hampshire were members of the complex but linguistically unified Algonkian culture which dominated New England and most of eastern Canada in the centuries before European settlement. The “tribe” provided the largest unit of communal organization among the Algonkians. These groups ranged in size from perhaps two hundred to a thousand, with the average size about five hundred. They practiced both hunting and agriculture, with the latter more important in the south, the former in the north. The pattern of living within each tribe reflected its economic needs. In most of New England there was a central village—located near a body of water—which tribal members occupied in the spring and fall for planting and harvesting. Each tribe had its summer fishing grounds, usually on a lake or the ocean where cooling winds offered relief from the ever present insect hordes. Surrounding the village were lands where in the fall and winter smaller family-oriented groups or “bands” hunted in a manner designed to conserve the available game. Each band worked an area of perhaps twenty square miles and sometimes maintained a small village of its own. The greater the dependence on hunting, the more independent the band was from tribal identification. Tribes themselves sometimes joined in loosely defined patterns of allegiance, most frequently for military purposes.

It is impossible to be precise about the identification of New Hampshire’s native inhabitants, but the general picture is clear enough. North of the White Mountains roamed bands of Sokokis (some anthropologists consider the Sokokis a subgroup of the Abenakis) whose domain stretched from Lake Memphramegog on the west to Lake Umbagog on the east. Predominantly hunters, their villages were small and easily moved. They had little contact with Englishmen until the late eighteenth century. Nearly as remote were western bands of Abenakis who maintained permanent villages near Bartlett, Conway, and Ossipee Lake in the Saco River watershed. Europeans knew them collectively as the Pequackets or Pigwackets, the name also used to identify a large village near Fryberg, Maine. The southwestern corner of New Hampshire served as hunting ground for a third tribe, the Pocumtucks who inhabited the Connecticut River valley in western Massachusetts. One band or cluster of bands, the Ashuelots, had semi-permanent residences along the river which bears their name. Undoubtedly some bands of the Nipmuc tribe of central Massachusetts also had hunting territory in the same general area.

By far the most numerous and potentially powerful group of Native Americans in New Hampshire were the Pennacooks. The term itself is confusing, for it was used by the English to identify both the tribe which maintained a thriving village near Concord as well as a larger entity, the tribe plus various semi-autonomous bands which at times accorded allegiance to the Pennacook sachem Passaconaway. Many place names used today reflect the attempts made by Englishmen to identify either the bands themselves or, sometimes, the rivers and lakes near their villages. The Pemigawassets lived to the north, occupying intervales along that river. The term Winnipesauke may have referred to a Pennacook band as well as to the huge lake in the center of the state. At its outlet was the village of Acquadoctan, where bands from both the Saco and Merrimack watershed gathered for the spring fishing. To the south were the Souhegans and Nashuas. Some historians suggest that Pennacook influence extended as far east as the Piscataquas and Squamscotts in the Great Bay area, and as far west as a band of Mascomas in the upper Connecticut River valley. The linkage of these groups to the Pennacooks, however, is doubtful.

The Algonkians of New Hampshire developed numerous skills in their struggle for survival. They knew how to construct bark canoes, to produce clay and stoneware pottery, to tan and dye leather as well as to manufacture clothing and snowshoes from the finished product, and to make rudimentary wooden and clamshell garden tools. All the tribes and bands south of the White Mountains farmed with success, using fish for fertilizer in their well cleared fields; beans, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and corn (or maize) were their main crops. Their hunting and fishing prowess was equally developed. Fields were seeded with grass to entice deer from the forest. The Algonkians employed bows and arrows, spears, and ground traps to capture and kill game. Bone hooks, pointed stocks, and perhaps simple circular weirs were used in fishing. The sufficiency of these methods to the life pattern of the Algonkians helps explain why they never learned to domesticate animals or to develop the weaving skills practiced by other North American natives.

Undoubtedly, social relationships among members of New Hampshire’s tribes and bands followed prescribed and detailed rules, but what those rules were remains a mystery. Observations by Englishmen, however, make some things certain. The political organization of social groups did not conform to the European pattern of hierarchy and centralized authority. Christopher Levett, a perceptive English visitor to New Hampshire’s first coastal settlement in the mid-1620s, wrote of the natives that “Their Sagamores are no Kings . . . for I can see no government or law amongst them but club law.” They called anyone who happened to be in charge “sagamore,” he added, and appeared to change leaders frequently. A century later the Portsmouth merchant Samuel Penhallow labeled Abenaki government “anarchical” and described their chiefs as having “little respect and honor shown them.” Even Passaconaway, whom the leaders of Massachusetts Bay thought the most powerful sachem in northern New England, had little influence outside his own immediate tribe before the English began arriving in numbers. What influence he did have stemmed not so much from firm control of a governmental apparatus, but from his reputation—the terms are Puritan—as an extraordinary “magician” or “sorcerer.”

Kinship patterns and sex roles also differed in significant ways from those familiar to Europeans. Extensive tabus limited marriage possibilities among Indians of seemingly equal social and economic status. Families, as in Europe, were dominated by men, but tradition dictated that women should be responsible for such fundamental activities as the production of agricultural goods. The Indians also practiced polygamy. The more wives a man had, the higher his social status; his economic status and that of his family also benefitted, for more wives meant larger crops and more hands to tan leather and make clothing. Christopher Levett recorded the response of one native who learned that King James’s only wife had died. The Indian “wondered, and asked me then who did all the king’s work. You may imagine,” Levett noted with more sensitivity than most Englishmen mustered when confronted with Algonkian culture, “he thought their fashion was universal and that no king had any work for them but their wives.”

The Algonkian “mind” appeared even stranger and more mysterious to Europeans than did their social organization. Native perceptions did not distinguish between “natural” and “supernatural” phenomena. Every object was possessed with qualities not only of shape, weight, and size, but also of spirit, and manipulation of the latter could alter the former. The Indians who reported that Passaconaway could make water burn, rocks move, trees dance, and could transform himself into a flaming man never questioned the truth of their statements; such powers were always potentially available to a highly skilled and gifted man. Furthermore, personal fate was a function of spirit. Levett wrote that the Indians ascribed all their good fortune to Squanto, their bad fortune to Tanto, and seemed baffled at the idea that an ordinary individual might have any control over these entities. Spirits appeared mainly in dreams, which foretold the future. Every sagamore, according to Levett, was accompanied by an interpreter of spiritual manifestations called a powwow, and paid close attention to his advice. Passaconaway, it can be assumed, gained influence from his dual role as sagamore and powwow. The Puritans thought of powwows as witches in consort with Satan and native belief in numerous spirits was to them dangerously heretical. To the Pennacooks and their neighbors both powwows and spirits played normal and essential roles in everyday existence.

New Hampshire’s Indians had been weakened by a series of disasters before the English began settling. In the late sixteenth century bands of Mohawks—a tribe belonging to the linguistically distinct Iroquois culture—moved eastward from the Hudson River valley. The migration triggered a massive redistribution of territory among western Algonkians. Some natives who had occupied land in Vermont moved both south and east. Mohawk warriors crossed the Connecticut River into lands long occupied by the Pennacooks and launched a successful attack on the tribal village near Concord. Although the invaders left soon, the Pennacooks, at least according to legends, never fully recovered from the attack. Even more serious was the epidemic which struck New England between 1615 and 1620. Neither the cause nor the nature of the disease is known for certain, but the results were unmistakable. Perhaps a third of all coastal Algonkians between Narraganset Bay and Penobscot Bay died, as did fewer but still large numbers in the interior. The Piscataquas and Squamscotts suffered irremediable losses; many of their surviving members moved inland and joined bands and tribes in the lower Merrimack valley.

Recent experience undoubtedly affected the Indian response to explorers, fishermen, and traders who appeared with increasing frequency during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. There was little reason to fear the newcomers—they were too few in number for that—but trade with Europeans offered enticing possibilities. A few guns, which clearly possessed more spirit and power than their own weapons, would enable them to resist further encroachment from the dreaded Mohawks and make hunting much easier. Metal hooks and woven nets would be useful for fishing. Iron kettles were superior to their own greenwood products, as were the knives and metallic garden tools possessed by the English. Blankets would reduce their dependence on animal hides for clothing. The strangers, thought some natives, might help them combat the evil spirits which in recent years had so decimated their communities. Even if that were not true, their strong water provided quicker and more certain access to spiritual experience than did native stimulants. Much could be gained, then, by providing Europeans with the furs and any other goods sought in exchange for their products.

The Piscataqua area served as the initial focal point for exchange. At various times trading posts existed at what are now Odiorne’s Point, Portsmouth, Dover Point, and the mouth of Salmon Falls River. It is not clear which tribal groups had direct contact with English vendors, but most likely the Pigwackets and remaining Piscataquas were deeply involved. They, in turn, probably served as middlemen, purchasing furs from Sokoki bands in the north country and various hunting parties from as far west as central Vermont. By mid-century, however, the center had shifted to the Merrimack valley as settlement by the English, new epidemics among coastal natives, the gradual destruction of fur bearing animals in the seaboard region, and development of trade routes down the Saco and Androscoggin Rivers undermined Piscataqua business. The Pennacooks played the dominant role in managing this new trade, much of which took place at a large “truck house” or trading station established near their village at Concord. As a result, Pennacook influence among tribal groups in central New Hampshire increased.

Trade with the English proved a mixed blessing. To be sure, metal cutting tools were sharper and more durable than wooden, bone, and clamshell instruments, but the anticipated overall improvement in standard of living and community stability did not materialize. It took many furs to purchase a gun and the few acquired did nothing to redress the military superiority of the Mohawks, who obtained many more. In fact, one abortive mid-century attack on that tribe cost the Pennacooks many more warriors than they could afford. Tribal members had to travel greater and greater distances to obtain furs which not only disrupted family life but produced more frequent encounters with competitors in the trade. Not infrequently hunting parties failed to return, thus further reducing an already declining male population. Dependence on the European goods that could be acquired also created problems. Ownership of guns, knives, and blankets, for example, gave an individual or family new status and disrupted the existing social order. Liquor caused serious trouble, mainly because Indians equated drunkenness with possession by an evil spirit, and felt that their behavior while drunk was something for which they were not personally responsible. Arrival of a keg often meant fights, destruction of property, and occasionally murder. One Pennacook sagamore noted in the 1670s that rum “would make the Indians all one Devil.”

As trade increased an even more serious threat to native American culture arose. In the 1630s the strangers began arriving in large enough numbers to establish permanent communities along the coast; by the end of the decade English population in all New England had surpassed that of the Algonkians. Settlement brought few advantages—more trading opportunity was the most significant—and many disadvantages. Domesticated animals left by the English to forage often ruined fields planted for fall harvest. Englishmen refused to acknowledge the traditional right of individuals and families to key fishing locations during the spring run, and hunted on lands long controlled by the Indians. Increased contact with the English, many natives soon learned, meant more and more sickness. Sometimes they blamed the epidemics on native gods angered by the weakening of traditional mores, sometimes on the superior power of the Europeans, but whatever the explanation, they saw their numbers dwindle.

Despite the seriousness of these developments, most Algonkians of southern New Hampshire gave little consideration to concerted military action against the English intruders. The Pennacooks considered the Mohawks their most dangerous enemy until late in the seventeenth century. Loss of the Piscataqua region to the English, they felt, still left them dominant in the interior, and Massachusetts Bay inhabitants seemed too far away to be a threat. In any case, they were not a people accustomed to fighting, especially against a superior enemy. The only evidence of aggressive intentions is a farewell speech given by Passaconaway to a gathering of tribal bands in 1660. Some of the men present apparently had blamed the tribe’s declining fortunes on Passaconaway’s friendliness toward the settlers. He defended himself, according to one witness, by claiming that he had been “as much an enemy to the English on their first coming into these parts as anyone whatsoever” and that he had tried “all ways and means possible to have destroyed them,” or “at least to have prevented their sitting down here.” But Passaconaway limited his aggressiveness to the “incantations” and “sorceries” on which his reputation had been built, and they proved ineffective. No other sagamore could possibly have organized an effective attack on the coastal area after the 1620s.

The policy, instead, was to seek survival through accommodation. Accommodation meant, in the first place, avoiding involvement in the warfare which periodically broke out between settlers and natives in southern New England. New Hampshire Indians took no part in the Pequot War during 1637 and may well have sympathized with the English. Passaconaway’s leadership in the middle part of the century guaranteed maintenance of the general peace. He believed, as he reminded his followers in the same farewell speech, that although natives might do “much mischief” to the English if the two races began fighting, the inevitable result of such conflict would be total tribal destruction; his people, therefore, never should “contend with the English, nor make war with them.” His successors followed the advice, at least for the next quarter century. When King Philip’s war broke out in 1675, Passaconaway’s son Wonalancet gathered remnants of the Merrimack valley tribes about him and moved north to the Coos region to avoid trouble. This group of about one hundred witnessed the destruction of wigwams and food stores at Pennacook, yet took no retaliatory measures. Soon after the war ended and native sagamores signed a formal peace treaty, an episode occurred which taxed their capacity for self-restraint even more. They had returned to Pennacook and been joined by bands of refugee Nipmuc Indians, some of whom had fought for King Philip. Invited in the summer of 1676 to visit Major Richard Waldron at Dover in what they interpreted as a peaceful gesture, the two tribes joined in games with the Englishmen present. One was to be a sham battle, but at a moment when the Indians were unprepared, the English surrounded them, separated out the Nipmuc, then quickly sent the males in tethers to Boston; the leaders of Massachusetts Bay hanged some and shipped the rest to the West Indies where they were sold into slavery. The Pennacooks must have been shocked and ashamed, for Waldron had violated what all Algonkians thought of as fundamental obligations to invited guests. Still, Wonalancet and his followers, mindful of the war just ended, made no immediate attempt to seek revenge.

In fact, some natives provided positive wartime assistance to the English. Wonalancet, according to at least one account, helped discourage the Nipmucs and Pocumtucks, who also were allied with King Philip, from attacking northern settlements under Massachusetts Bay jurisdiction. His actions may help explain why Chelmsford and the communities of Exeter, Hampton, and Dover in what soon became the separate jurisdiction of New Hampshire, never came under attack. Equally important was the middleman role the Pennacooks played in the return of settlers captured by the Indians. Mary Rowlandson,—the wife of the minister in Lancaster, Massachusetts—her son and her nephew all were taken by warriors to Pocumtuck villages in the Connecticut River valley, perhaps as far north as Charlestown. There they were separated, and although she eventually was redeemed by Massachusetts Indians, the two children turned up in a group of six captives delivered by Wonalancet to Major Waldron at Dover. The citizens of Portsmouth willingly paid the ransom and thanked the friendly sagamore for his role in the affair.

Accommodation also meant avoiding trouble with the settlers when the two races were not engaged in open conflict. Many native groups found removal or separation the most effective method of accomplishing this goal. Algonkians near the coast who survived the early seventeenth century epidemics moved into the interior, some to Acquadoctan, others to the Merrimack valley, still others to villages in Maine. Passaconaway seems to have pursued a conscious policy, at least initially, of keeping his people away from English population centers. Bands to the north and west, of course, had little direct contact with white men and undoubtedly considered themselves fortunately situated.

Inasmuch as contact proved unavoidable, Indian leaders did everything in their power to impress the English with their desire to remain on amiable terms. The task was not an easy one, for settlers assumed from the beginning that not one of their pagan neighbors could be trusted and the behavior of the Pequots and King Philip’s followers reinforced that assumption. Even peaceful gestures frequently led Englishmen to suspect a plot designed to lull them into a state of unpreparedness. For example, in 1642 rumors circulated in some Massachusetts tow...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• 1. The Algonkians
• 2. Adventurers, Planters, Émigrés
• 3. Community Development, 1640–1680
• 4. The Royal Colony of New Hampshire
• 5. Twelve Years of Turmoil
• 6. Testing Time: War and Politics in “Little New Hampshire”
• 7. Patterns of Growth, 1715–1765
• 8. Social Institutions: Family, Church, and Community in a Changing World
• 9. Provincial Politics: The Wentworth Oligarchy
• 10. The Coming of Revolution
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index