USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Incidents in White mountain history, fourth > Part 4
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In Fryburg there are many mounds and other indications of their ancient encampments. At one place there the mounds are five in number, and situated near together. The princi- pal one is sixty feet in circumference, and within this is a smaller, in which a tree of considerable size formerly stood. There are four others, extending out from the centre one, so as to form eight angles.
Here was one of the large villages of the Pequawkets. The side of the village is about one mile and a half west from Lovewell's pond, on the eastern bank of the Saco river, and nearly two miles west from Fryburg village and the acad- emy. The peculiarly favorable situation of this spot for an Indian encampment we have spoken of in another place.
The Sokokies were originally a large people, but became much reduced by their many wars. The principal residence of their sagamores was upon Indian island, just above the Lower Falls, where now stands Saco village. There were
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two branches of the tribe, and two lodgments; one at Fry- burg, which we have referred to, and the other at Ossipee pond. Here, before Philip's war, they employed English carpenters and built a strong fort of timbers, fourteen feet in height, with flankers, intending it as a fortification against the Mohawks.
Until their decided overthrow and almost annihilation by Lovewell, in the well-known battle of Saco pond, an account of which we have given in another place, the Sokokis were the most feared of all the northern Indians. The mere men- tion of the Pequawkets, more particularly, would have awakened fear in the heart of the boldest adventurer in the frontier settlements, and frozen the blood of the timid with horror. So sudden were their movements, so well sustained and so indescribably cruel their massacres, that the English never felt safe from their attacks; but the least sound heard through the still night was interpreted to be the stealthy footsteps of the Pequawkets ; and quick came the breath, and big drops of sweat oozed out, as the listener lay expecting each moment to hear their shrill war-whoop.
This tribe appears to have suffered, in common with all the eastern Indians, by the terrible sickness which desolated New England immediately preceding its settlement by the Eng- lish, so startlingly described by Morton, in his New English Canaan. "But contrary wise, in short time after, the hand of God fell heavily upon them, with such a mortall stroake, that they died in heaps, as they lay in their houses, and the living, that were to shift for themselves, would runne away- and let them dy, and let their carkases ly above the ground without buriall. For, in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest; the living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead.
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They were left for crowes, kites, and vermine, to prey upon. And the bones and skulls, upon the severall places of their habitations, in that forest nere the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new-found Golgotha."
Mr. Vines and his companions, who partially explored this region in the year 1616, describe the natives as suffer- ing greatly, not only from the ravages of the pestilence, but from the death of the Bashaba, or chief sachem, whom the Tarratines, a tribe living east of the Penobscot, had attacked by surprise, and destroyed with all his family. "Great dis- sensions had immediately followed among the different tribes, who were engaged in a destructive war with each other, when the pestilence made its appearance. In the midst of these evils, the Englishmen passed with safety among them, and slept in their cabins without suffering from the contagion."
Squando, the first chief of this tribe mentioned, was, in the language of Mather, "a strange, enthusiastical sag- amore." He was very tall, and large of person, dignified in his deportment, impressive in his address, and possessed nat- urally of great strength of mind. With the wild supersti- tions of the savage had become mingled, in his mind, the truths of Christianity, which he had learned in his intercourse with the whites. He aspired to the character of a prophet, and made his followers believe that he held communion with the invisible spirits. God, he said, in the form of a tall man in dark clothes, had appeared to him, and commanded him to worship him more faithfully, to forbear hunting and laboring · on the Sabbath, to abstain from drinking strong liquors, to pray, to attend the preaching of the gospel, and had made known to him the entire extinction of the English by the In- dians in a few years. These commands he is said to have observed strictly for a long time.
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But in 1675 came, as he said, the fulfilment of the latter part of his vision. And the solemn, earnest chief wrought up the eastern Indians, by revengeful eloquence, to the high- est pitch of excitement. Josselyn had reported that young Indian children could " swim naturally, striking their paws under their throat like a dog, and not spreading their arms as we do; " some sailors, to prove the truth of the assertion, had overset the canoe in which was Squando's wife and child. The child sank rapidly, and was only saved by the mother, who, diving, brought it up alive. Not long after, the child died, and its death was imputed, by its parents, to the ill treatment received. " So highly did this exasperate Squando, that he resolved to use all his arts and influence to arouse and inflame the Indians against the settlers." And how success- ful he was, the annals of 1675 and 1676 but too faithfully depict.
Drake thus closes his account of this chief : "He was a great powow, and acted in concert with Madokawando. These two chiefs are said to be, by them that knew them, a strange kind of moralized savages ; grave and serious in their speech and carriage, and not without some show of a kind of religion, which no doubt but they have learned from the prince of darkness. In another place, Mr. Hubbard calls him an ' enthusiastical or rather diabolical miscreant.' His abilities in war gained him this epithet."
Assacumbuit, of all the chiefs of the Sokokis, was the most famous. Unlike Squando, he possessed no good qualities. To brutal courage he added a turpitude and ferocity unpar- alleled. Mather tells the story of a beautiful little girl, Thomasin Rouse, this chief had kidnapped from her parents. The tears of the little captive provoked his wrath, and his daily practice was to whip the poor child till she could not
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stand. One day she had been beaten by him till he sup- posed her dead, when she was kicked into the water and left. The poor girl was rescued by a kinder Indian, and after- wards restored to her parents. Mather says, in conclusion : " This Assacumbuit hath killed and taken in this war (they tell me), one hundred and fifty men, women and children. A bloody devil."
He became, by his demoniac cruelties, not only the dread of the English, but incurred the intense hatred of the In- dians by his arrogance and pride. He always carried a huge club, on which were notches denoting the number of English he had killed. He was particularly attached to the French, And so and under some of their leaders won great renown.
highly did the French esteem their ally that in 1705 Vau- dreuil sent him to France. Here he was an object of great curiosity. At Versailles he was introduced to Louis XIV., surrounded by his splendid court. The king presented him with a beautiful sword, the undaunted chieftain remarking, as he held out his hand to receive it, "This hand has slain one hundred and forty of your majesty's enemies in New England." This so pleased the king that he knighted him, and commanded a pension of eight livres a day to be allowed him for life. On his return to America, he wore upon his breast the insignia of his knighthood displayed in large letters.
He was so "exalted that he treated his countrymen in the most haughty and arrogant manner, murdering one and stab- bing another, which so exasperated those of their relations, that they sought revenge, and would have instantly executed it, but that he fled" for protection to the French. Still faith- ful to his former masters, he accompanied Rouville in his attack upon Haverhill.
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" Quiet and calm, without a fear Of danger darkly lurking near, The weary laborer left his plough, The milk-maid carolled by her cow ; From cottage door and household hearth Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. At length the murmur died away, And silence on that village lay.
A yell, the dead might wake to hear, Swelled on the night air, far and clear ; Then smote the Indian tomahawk On crashing door and shattering lock ; Then rang the rifle-shot- and then The shrill death-scream of stricken men ; Sunk the red axe in woman's brain, And childhood's cry arose in vain. Bursting through roof and window came Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame ; And blended fire and moonlight glared Over dead corse and weapons bared."
Assacumbuit, in this attack, fought by the side of Rouville, and performed prodigies of valor with the sword that had been presented him by the King of France. In the retreat he was wounded in the foot.
Whittier has so beautifully described the burial of one of the chiefs of the Sokokis, that we can but give it here. Po- lan was a chief that lingered around the hunting-grounds of his fathers after the majority of his tribe had removed to Canada. He was an inveterate enemy of the settlers, shrewd, subtle, and brave. He was killed in a skirmish at Windham, on Sebago lake, in the spring of 1756. After the white men had retired, the surviving Indians " swayed" or bent down a young tree, until its roots were turned up, placed the body of their chief beneath them, and then released the tree to spring back to its former position.
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" Scarce have the death-shot echoes died Along Sebago's wooded side ;
And silent now the hunters stand, Grouped darkly, where a swell of land Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare, Save one lone beech, unclosing there Its light leaves in the April air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, They break the damp turf at its foot, And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside, The firm roots from the earth divide - The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid, In tasselled garb of skins arrayed, And girdled with his wampum braid.
The silver cross he loved is pressed Beneath the heavy arms, which rest Upon his scarred and naked breast.
'T is done ; the roots are backward sent, The beechen tree stands up unbent - The Indian's fitting monument !"
Chocorua, another of the chiefs who remained after his tribe had left the country, has given his name to one of the peaks on the extreme boundary of the White Mountains. It is a singularly-shaped mountain, its top rising up like a tower crowned by turrets at its corners. To the south the ascent of the summit is perpendicular, rising up smooth rock some hundred feet.
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To this, tradition says, Chocorua had retreated, pursued by a miserable white hunter. To the highest point he had climbed, and there he stood unarmed, while below, and within gunshot, stood his pursuer. Chocorua besought the hunter not to kill him. He plead his friendliness to the whites, and the harmless, scattered condition of his few followers. But the hardened hunter was unmoved; the price of his scalp was too tempting ; gold plead stronger than the poor Indian. See- ing that he should avail nothing, the noble chieftain, raising himself up, stretched forth his arms, and called upon the Gods of his fathers to curse the land. Then, casting a defiant glance at his pursuer, he leaped from the brink of the preci- pice on the south side to the rocks below. And to this day, say the inhabitants, a malignant disease has carried off the cattle that they have attempted rearing around this mountain.
The Anasagunticooks, originally a numerous and powerful tribe, claimed dominion of the waters and territories of the river Androscoggin, or, as it was formerly called, Amaris- coggan ; meaning "banks of a river abounding in dried meat."
They were a warlike people. No tribe was less inter- rupted in their privileges of fishing and fowling; and yet none were more uniformly and bitterly hostile towards the colonists. Tarumkin, Warumbee and Hagkins, their saga- mores, were brave men ; but the tribes wasted away during the wars, and, in 1747, they were unable to muster more than one hundred and sixty warriors fit to march. With the Pe- quawkets they early retired to St. Francois, in Canada. A few, however, remained lingering around their ancient encampments. Till within a few years, small encampments of three or four lodges would be found occasionally where game was plenty, or they could obtain easily the material to
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construct their baskets and other trinkets. They were very harmless and inoffensive, and always bore about them an air of dejection and sadness. But within a few years they have almost entirely disappeared, and an Indian is now seldom seen.
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The Hon. Enoch Lincoln took great interest in the few In- dians remaining around the White Mountains and the lakes, When governor of the State of Maine, he visited one Natal- luck, who had built a hut, and was residing with his daughter, on the shores of the Umbagog. The old chief had become blind, and depended almost entirely upon his young daughter for support. Warmly did he welcome the governor, however, and many were the excursions they made over the lake in the birch canoe of the Indian, paddled by the blind old chief. He remained a number of days, sharing with the chief all the rude accommodations of his wigwam.
In Governor Lincoln's younger days I well remember visiting with him an encampment of six or seven Indians, who were residing near Fryburg. Many were the myths and tales told us, one of which I distinctly recollect. An Indian had been drowned. The search for him had been long and close, but no traces of his body had yet been discovered. One bright starlight night, as they were setting out upon their last search, the moon rose, and said to them, " I will aid you. By my light you shall find your dead brother. My bright beams shall point out his hiding-place." Many other stories were related by the intelligent squaw.
After one of the bloody engagements, in which the Indians had taken part, an English officer was wandering over the field where the encounter had taken place. As he passed among the dead, he noticed, lying near the body of a stalwart savage, the dead body of a beautiful squaw. From appear-
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ance, the affectionate wife had sought her husband amid the heaps of slain, and had perished in his embrace. As he turned to leave the spot, he espied - what before had escaped his notice - two little black eyes, smilingly peeping at him from behind its mother. On examining, he found a little pappoose strapped to its mother's back. There it lay, a beautiful little infant, its sparkling eyes looking him directly in the face, all unconscious of its dreadful situation. As he stood watching the little creature, a brutal soldier rushed up, and, ere he could be prevented, struck the little Indian on the head with his gun, instantly killing it.
A curious marriage custom also prevailed among these In- dians. The claims of rivals to the hand of the beautiful squaws was decided, not by the more modern practice of pis- tols and powder, but by hard fist-fights ; the coveted beauty acting as umpire, and deciding on the merits of her lovers. At a time when some officers and soldiers were quartered in the region, it was noised abroad that a battle was to take place between two Indians, to see which of them should be entitled to the hand of a captivating young squaw, who had stolen the affections of both. As such a thing seldom took place, it was determined to make the most of it, and accord- ingly the officers persuaded the Indians to have their contest in the fort. The fort, by the way, was an inhabited log house.
The officers and soldiers arranged themselves around the room ; the children of the family occupying the house fled to the chamber, to look down through the cracks in the floor upon the combatants, and the middle of the room was left clear for the scuffle. Like some ancient Goddess, the dark- skinned beauty was hoisted on a table, and seated on a box, to watch the contention of her lovers. All being ready, the young Indians entered. An older Indian stripped them of
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all weapons, that they might not take life in the heat of their passions. Being thus prepared, on a given signal they rush upon each other with all their strength. In Indian fashion, they seize, with an iron grasp, each other by the hair, and, according to our narrator, " pulled, twitched, and jerked one another about the room with all their might, till, at last, one being a little stronger than the other, smashed him violently against the cellar-door, so that both went through and struck upon the bottom, holding their grasp till the fall." On the return of the poor fellows from the cellar, the squaw chose for her husband the strongest.
CHAPTER IV.
COÖS COUNTY.
COOS AS A FARMING COUNTY. - THE OPINION OF HON. ISAAC HILL. - DR. DWIGHT'S ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE. - THIE MANY AND PECULIAR SHAPES OF TOWNS. - KILKENNY. - PILOT AND WILLARD MOUNTAINS. - STORY OF WILLARD AND HIS DOG. - RANDOLPH. - EXTENSIVE VIEWS FROM RANDOLPH. - ASCENT OF MOUNT JEFFERSON. - GREAT DANGER IN A STORM. - VIEW FROM JEFFERSON. - JEFFERSON. - BEAUTIFUL SITU- ATION OF JEFFERSON. - BROTHERS GLINES. - COLONEL WHIPPLE. - HIS YEARLY VISIT TO PORTSMOUTII. - STORY LLUSTRATING HIS CARE OF IIIS TOWNSMEN. - IIIS CAPTURE BY TIIE INDIANS, AND ESCAPE. - MR. GO- THAM. - TIIE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE NOTCH. - NASH'S DISCOVERY OF THE PASS. - GOV. WENTWORTH. - GETTING A HORSE THROUGH THE DEFILE. - SAWYER. - "SAWYER'S ROCK." - MOUNTAIN CARRIAGES. -BARREL OF TOBACCO. - BARREL OF RUM. - CUTTING THE ROAD THROUGH THE NOTCH. - HART'S LOCATION.
Coos is a habitable county in the northern part of New Hampshire, meaning crooked; and Coos was the Indian name of the Connecticut river, near Lancaster. It is neither too mountainous to be cultivated, nor too sterile to be produc- tive. It is not covered with perpetual snow; and, though its climate is somewhat cold in winter, its inhabitants are healthy and long-lived. We know that this is not the opinion which has been formed in the minds of most in respect to it. A shudder will almost involuntarily creep over one as he thinks of the barren, inhospitable regions north of the White Moun- tains. Along its rivers are beautiful intervals, and on its
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uplands are the finest wheat-farms in New England. Said the late Hon. Isaac Hill: "Prompted by an ardent curiosity to learn locations, and duly estimate the value of that part of the north which has been passed by as scarcely fit for settle- ment, I made my way through the northernly part of Ver- mont, into the Canada townships, to the Indian stream country, and down through New Hampshire, during the past summer. I was surprised at the extent and value of this whole country for farming purposes. I believe the tract of country for one hundred miles south of the forty-fifth degree eastward of Lake Champlain, over Vermont and New Hampshire, through the whole extent of Maine to the Bay of Fundy and the sea, to be the most valuable tract of land in New England. The Canada townships, of ten miles further north, are splendid; Stanstead may be taken as a sample. The best township of Vermont is said to be Derby, lying side by side of it. The cattle and the productions of these two towns are all on a larger scale than we find down south. Both in the Canada townships, and within our own limits, there are thousands on thousands of acres of beautiful lands, covered with the heaviest and most valuable timber, yet to be taken up. The climate here, most conducive to health and long life, should be regarded as no obstacle to the settler. The railroads are destined to make every standing tree valuable. The splendid growth need not to be cut down, girdled or wasted, upon these lands. Upon this region the snow, falling in November, sometimes covers the ground till May. Con- trary to my previous expectations, I am led to consider this annual covering a benefit rather than an injury. It gives a time for active business to all who have a desire to stir about. There the winter is the gayest and most desirable season. Clothed with its white covering, the ground is generally
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preserved from deep frost, and the spring opens as a continued summer for the growth of vegetation."
Dr. Dwight, in his travels, has also remarked the beneficial effect of the snow upon the ground, preventing it from freezing deeply, and protecting it from much frost. The season of vegetation directly north of the mountains is con- sequently as long, and in some spots longer than in places much further south; and the climate of the towns lying under the mountains on the north, he says, is as mild and pleasant as many towns in the southern part of the state. The south-east winds are entirely checked, or so elevated by their passage over the mountains, as not to be felt by the towns skirting the northern side ; while the north-west winds, rebounding upon themselves, produce an entire calm. This corresponds well with the facts; the climate of Lancaster and Jefferson is mild and warm compared with many towns on the southern side.
" But nothing could surprise me again," writes an eminent English traveller, "after having been told one day in New Hampshire, when seated on a rock in the midst of the wild woods, far from any dwelling, that I was in the exact centre of the town.
" 'God made the country, and man made the town,' sang the poet Cowper; and I can well imagine how the village pupils must be puzzled until the meaning of this verse has been expounded to them by the schoolmaster." Most truly some very queer-shaped towns has man made among these mountains, and quite a learned schoolmaster we think it would take to find the centre of many of them. There is a Chinese puzzle, consisting of a box and seven or eight differ- ent-shaped pieces, triangles, squares, parallelograms, which can be put into hundreds of different and very odd shapes.
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We think the first surveyors must have studied deeply this puzzle, and, with the many queer figures still floating in their brain, laid out these towns. How else to account for their shape we know not. We do not think they could be ascribed to political purposes, as many queer-shaped towns and districts have been ; for Farmer, speaking of them even so lately as 1823, does not seem to think them worthy of much political anxiety. He says, speaking of the inhabitants, "They are poor, and, for aught that appears to the contrary, must always remain so, as they may be deemed actual trespassers on that part of creation, destined by its author for the residence of bears, wolves, moose, and other animals of the forest !" This description applies more particularly to Kilkenny, the most irregular of the many irregular townships. It is in the form of a triangle surmounted by a parallelogram many miles in length, but hardly a mile in width. Its northern boundary, the base of-the triangle, lies amid the rich interval land of which we have been speaking in the beginning of this chapter, while the opposite extremity of the town is located upon the mountains, many miles south in the locations. Pilot and Willard Mountains cover a large part of the town, affording some fine farms along their base, and higher up excellent grazing land. They were so named from a hunter and his dog. A bold, hardy class of adventurers, similar to the first pioneers of the Western States, seem to have hunted and lived around these mountains many years previous to their first permanent settlement. Their particular history, who or what they were, beyond their name, and one or two isolated facts, it is impossible to learn. Hardly a town but contains some stream or mountain bearing their name. Some- times we find two living together, but not often.
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" Alone, (how glorious to be free !) My good dog at my side, My rifle hanging on my arm, I range the forests wide.
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Now track the mountain stream, to find The beaver's lurking-place."
This Willard had pitched his tent on the eastern side of the most northerly mountains, and set his traps on the streams around. He was a stranger, entirely unacquainted with the region, and for a time must depend upon the game he already had in his camp for subsistence. In his explora- tions he one day became confused, and at last completely lost. He knew not whether to turn to the right or left. There was nothing to direct him, or give him any stand-point from which he might shape his course. If he climbed trees he could hardly see over the tops of the surrounding ones ; or if he scaled the " mountain-top,
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