USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Warren > The history of Warren; a mountain hamlet, located among the White hills of New Hampshire > Part 2
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Five sparkling ponds lie sleeping high up among Warren's mountains. Over on the east side of Mount Carr two bright gems gleam in the greenwood, which from their locality are called the Glen ponds. Near Mt. Mist is Kelley pond, furnishing a stream for an old mill, and under the face of precipitous Webster Slide mountain is the before-mentioned Wachipauka or Meader pond. West of Mt. Mist, and kissing its sloping base, a crystal sheen in an emerald setting, is Tarleton lake.
Within the town are numerous hills, some of which deserve mention. Red Oak, Picked, Clement, and Patch, each rise about a thousand feet high on the east side of the Asquamchumauke. Bald, and Knight, wood-crowned heights of about the same eleva- tion, are situated between the Asquamchumauke and Berry brook.
The Indians 'called Black brook Mikaseota, or with full spelling it was Mik- kasseotque. - Acteon.
20
HISTORY OF WARREN.
Pine hill is a long rolling ridge, terminating abruptly in Keyes ledge, or Mt. Helen, and stands between Black and Berry brooks. Wyatt, Marston, and Beech hills are on the western border.
Warren is rich in minerals. On Sentinel mountain is a large and productive vein of ore. Gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, zinc, plumbago, molybdenum, calc-spar, rutil, epidote, beryl, garnets, quartz crystals, tourmalines, and many others are found. Near the Summit are large quantities of limestone. Gneiss and mica slate abound, and the underlying granite which crops out on Webster Slide mountain and Mount Carr affords excellent build- ing material.
The first road through Warren was the old Indian. trail enter- ing the town where the Asquamchumauke leaves it, and following the Mikaseota to its source in Wachipauka pond, it descended the slope of Webster Slide to the valley of the Oliverian. The second was built by the first white proprietors, and wound over the Height o'land and round the east shore of Tarleton lake. The third was the turnpike. Then the road over Pine hill and through the Oliverian notch was constructed, and last of all the railroad, which follows the old Indian trail with little variation and leaves the town by the above-mentioned notch. Numerous other roads have been made, for the accommodation of the later inhabitants, among which is the bridle-path over Moosilauke mountain.
The climate is very healthy. Residents of the town have seen the snows of a hundred winters. Owing to the elevation of the valley, and to the mountains which surround it, good sleigh- ing often lasts from December to April. The snow then suddenly disappears, frequently causing destructive freshets. Summer treads quickly in the footsteps of winter, the crops spring forth as if by magic, and autumn never fails of returning an abundant harvest to cheer the heart of the husbandman.
The physical formation of a country has much to do with moulding the character of its people. The Indians of New Hampshire, to whom we shall devote the first book of this history, especially those who inhabited the central part of the State, must have been a race of mountaineers. As such, a love of freedom, the spirit of adventure, and a granite hardihood must have char- acterized them. Their wars with the early English pioneers will
21
INHABITANTS.
form the material of book the second of this very sedate and truthful history.
The acts of the sixty-five distinguished men, otherwise known as the provincial proprietors of Warren, will be accurately nar- rated in book the third.
The present inhabitants of Warren are mostly farmers. They are tenacious of their rights and political privileges, and are just such a hardy race as one might expect to find dwelling among granite boulders, leaping torrents, and high hills. In the Revolu- tion about one-fourth of those capable of bearing arms served in the army. In the 1812 war they furnished their quota of troops cheerfully, all who went going as volunteers. The adventures of the early settlers of Warren and those of their descendants will form the subject of the remaining books of this, we trust, most entertaining history.
f
HISTORY OF WARREN.
BOOK I.
CONTAINING A HISTORY OF A TRIBE OF INDIANS NEVER BEFORE WRITTEN BY ANY OTHER HISTORIAN.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE NAME OF THIS TRIBE, OR HOW THEY CALLED THEMSELVES BY ONE NAME WHILE FOREIGNERS CALLED THEM BY ANOTHER, TOGETHER WITH WHERE THEY RESIDED IN THE MOST PER- MANENT MANNER, AND WHAT GREAT TRIBES LIVED AROUND THEM.
THE first sunlight of history begins to dawn upon that little territory now called Warren, of which we have just given such a full description, about the last years of the seventeenth century. It reveals a pleasant valley surrounded by lofty moun- tains, watered by a rapid river and a hundred tumbling trout brooks sparkling down from the hills, and inhabited by a por- tion of a small tribe of Indians known in after years as the Pemigewassetts.
This people belonged to the Algonquin race, which occupied the whole Atlantic coast from the gulf of the St. Lawrence to Cape Fear. *
* Bancroft's Hist. of U. S. Vol. iii. Chap. 22. Whiton's Hist. of N. H. 9.
24
HISTORY OF WARREN.
They called themselves NIPMUCKS,* a word derived from " nipe," meaning fresh water, and "auke," a place, an "m" being thrown in by skillful manufacturers of Indian words for the sake of euphony,-the whole meaning fresh-water Indians, a name used to distinguish them from those who resided on the immediate sea coast. t
These Nipmuck Indians were divided into numerous tribes or . families, each having a head or chief, and we are told that as neighbors of the Pemigewassetts "a great and powerful tribe " lived on the Nashua stream and were called NASHUAS. ; That another lived on the Souhegan river, and of course were called SOUHEGANS. A third lived at Amoskeag falls, and were called AMOSKEAGS. A fourth inhabited the beautiful interval at Con- cord, called by the Indians Pennacook, and they were PENNA- COOKS. A fifth dwelt on Squamscott river, now Exeter, and for the same reason were called SQUAMSCOTTS. A sixth stopped at Newichannock, and they were NEWICHANNOCKS. A seventh stayed at Piscataqua river, and they were PASCATAQUAUKES. An eighth built a wigwam city at Ossipee lake, and they were the cultivated OSSIPEES, with mounds and forts like more civilized nations. A ninth built flourishing villages in the fertile valley of the Pequaw- ket river, and were known as the pious PEQUAWKEES, who worshipped the great Manitou of the cloud-capped Agiochook. A tenth had their home by the clear Lake Winnepisseogee, and were esteemed "the beautiful WINNEPISSAUKIES." An eleventh set up their lodges of spruce bark by the banks of the wild and turbulent Androscoggin river, and were known as " the death-dealing AMARISCOGGINS." A twelfth cultivated the Coos intervals on the
* Drake's Biog. of Indians, 13, 281. Hist. of New England, 636. . t The Indians from the interior were known and called among the tribes upon the seashore by the general name of Nipmucks, or Fresh-water Indians, and, true to their name, the Nipmucks usually had their residences upon places of still water, the ponds, lakes, and rivers of the interior. But the Indians in the Merrimack valley, although properly Nipmucks and living in distinct bands or tribes, were usually called by the English, Pennacooks, etc.
t Nashua means the river with a pebbly bottom. Souhegan is a contraction of Souheganash, meaning worn-out lands. Amoskeag is derived from Namaos ( a fish ) and Auke ( a place). Pennacook is derived from Pennaqui ( crooked ) and Auke. Squamscott, from Asquam ( water ) and Auke. Newichannock, from Nee (my ), Week ( a contraction for Wigwam ), and Owannock ( come). Pascataquauke, from Pos ( great ), Attnck ( a deer ), and Auke. Ossipee, from Cooash ( pines ) and Sipe ( a river). Pequawkees, from Pequakis ( crooked ) and Auke. Winnepissaukies, from Winne ( beautiful), Nipe ( water), Kees ( high), and Auke. Amariscoggins, from Namaos ( fish), Kees (high), and Auke. Coosucks, from Cooash, pines .- Potter's Hist. of Manchester.
25
THE NIPMUCKS.
Connecticut, and were called " the swift deer-hunting Coosucks." Besidesį these twelve tribes, just equal in number to the tribes of the children of Israel, the Pemigewassetts also had as neighbors in New Hampshire, and along its present borders, the WINNE- COWETTS,* inhabiting a beautiful pine-tree-place in the southeast corner of the State, the Wachusetts living about the mountain of that name in Massachusetts, the Agawams residing at the mouth of the Merrimack, the Pawtuckets, who fished at Pawtucket falls, and several small tribes upon the banks of the Connecticut river whose names are unknown.
All these various tribes derived their pretty names from some prominent object in the territory which they inhabited. Thus the Pemigewassetts are so called from the principal river that flowed through their hunting grounds. That the places inhabited by the Indians, neighboring to the Pemigewassetts, did not derive their names from the name of the tribe, can be seen by examining the derivation of the names themselves. For instance, we are told that Pascataqua means "great deer place." Now we have too much respect for the memory of the noble Pascataquaukes to believe they would like to be called great deer, or rather great cowards. Again, Nashua means the river with a pebbly bottom; and we cannot think those red men intended to call themselves the pebbly-bottomed Indians. The literal significance of the word Pemigewassett is "the crooked mountain pine place "-a name that will answer well enough for a river, but would not at all describe the hardy race of Indian mountaineers that hunted in the pleasant territory of Warren. They were not crooked children but straight as arrows; they were not mountains, except in firm- ness and strength; nor were they pines, for that is a soft, brittle wood, and they were tough as oaks. We conclude that the Pem- igewassetts, and all those numerous tribes who called themselves Nipmucks, received their name from foreigners in pretty much the' same manner that Boston men are called Bostonians and the highly moral men of Gotham, Gothamites.
The different families of these several tribes, neighbors of our Pemigewassetts, were not very careful to confine their residences
* Winnecowetts, from Winne ( beautiful), Cooash, and Auke .- Potter's Hist. of Manchester, 28.
26
HISTORY OF WARREN.
to any particular locality,* but generally changed them several times in a year, and changed their names as often as they changed their ' residences. Consequently when a few families went to Amoskeag falls to fish they were Amoskeags; if they went to the rich inter- vals of Pennacook to plant they were Pennacooks; if they went later in the season to Winnepissiogee lake, where they could fish through the ice and hunt on the hills, to spend the winter, they were Winnepissaukies,-and, furthermore, any tribe had but to say presto and travel, and they immediately changed into some other great tribe.
Where in Warren, "the beautiful bowl of the mountains," did the Pemigewassetts live? They had numerous camping-grounds, but several places are particularly shown, where it is said they built their wigwams.
On the right bank of the Asquamchumauke, and a few rods below the large railroad bridge that spans its waters, was a fertile meadow. Here was a planting place. Arrow-heads have been found there, and the ridges where the corn grew were seen by the first settlers. But the Indians who sometimes lived here left a monument more enduring than the little mounds where they hilled their corn. Twenty rods back from the river, and fifty feet higher than the running water, a trap dyke cuts across a high ledge, known as
INDIAN ROCK.
On its top are formed four smoothly cut bowls. Lines connecting them would point east and west, north and south. Such regularity shows that they cannot be "pot-holes," and they were without doubt formed by the Indians. This settlement was on the Indian trail.
* From thick warm valleys where they winter they remove a little nearer to their summer fields. When it is warm spring they remove to their fields, where they plant corn. In middle summer, because of the abundance of fleas which the dust of the house breeds, they will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place. And sometimes having fields a mile or two or many miles assunder, when the work of one field is over they remove hence to the other. If death call in amongst them, they presently remove to a fresh place. If an enemy approach they remove to a thicket or swamp, unless they have some fort to remove into. Sometimes they remove to a hunting house in the end of the year and forsake it not until the snow lies thick; and then will travel home, men women and children, through the snow thirty, yea fifty or sixty miles. But their great remove is from their summer fields to warm and thick woody bottoms, where they winter. They are quick in half a day, yea sometimes in a few hours warning to be gone, and the honse is up elsewhere, especially if they have a few stakes ready pitched for their mats. I once in my travels lodged at a house at which in my return I hoped to have lodged again the next night, but the house was gone in that interim and I was glad to lodge under a tree .- Roger Williams' Key, 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. 213.
27
THE PEMIGEWASSETTS.
Then there were indications of another settlement near Beach- hill bridge over Black brook, or, as they called it, the Mikaseota. This was a favorite place, and old Indians came back and camped there even after white settlers had moved into the valley.
A high embankment known as the Blue ridge connects the base of Keyes ledge with the foot of Sentinel mountain. This is the southern shore to what is now called Runaway pond. Where the water burst through is plain to be seen, and on the rocks of the former beach are yet the marks scored by the tumbling waves and dashing ice. The broad acres, once the bed of the pond, are now fertile meadows. They were never fully overgrown by forest trees. Mounds, where the Indians stored their corn; ashes, where burned the wigwam fires; pieces of rude pottery, axes of stone, arrow-heads turned up by the ploughshare, and graves under the shadow of Marston hill, tell that here once was an Indian village. By it ran the trail * leading to the land of the Coosucks. In front wound their Mikaseota, silent and dark, and near by the bright water of Ore hill brook flashed in the rocky glen. Here the steep hills, that once sloped down to the curling waves, protected from the chill winds the Indian's maize, his pumpkins, squashes, and beans, which grew in these most fertile meadows.
Then by the mouth of Berry brook,-the stream that comes down through the dark ravine from Moosilauke,- was a planting place. Debris from the wigwams, rude implements of husbandry, of hunting and fishing, have been found here.
High up on a plateau of Moosilauke mountain lies one of the most fertile farms of Warren. On its eastern side is a dark ravine a hundred fathoms deep. Through this rushes a foaming torrent, the head-waters of the Asquamchumauke. On the north the lofty Moosilauke shoots up five thousand feet ; Mts. Waternomee, Cushman, and Kineo are on the left, a woody mountain ridge runs to the valley on the right, in front are Mount Carr and Mt. Sentinel, and through the passes and over hills may be seen the distant mountains of the southwest. Near the eastern edge of the plateau bubbles up a clear, cold spring. A little stream flowing therefrom winds for a considerable distance nearly parallel to the
* It is admirable to see what paths their naked hardened feet have made in the wilderness, in most stoney and rocky places .- Roger Williams' Key.
28
HISTORY OF WARREN.
brink of the ravine and then, flashing among the boulders, leaps down through a deep gully to the torrent. Between the spring and the brink, in a grove of tall hemlocks, Indian implements * discovered show that here also was once an Indian village.
But the Pemigewassetts, as we have gently intimated before, were not confined to the woody territory of Warren. They had ample hunting grounds, larger than any of the other great tribes we have mentioned. The Height o' land was their northern boun- dary and the Connecticut river was on the west. The great White mountains were on the east, while on the south was the land of the. Pennacooks and the Winnepissaukies.
Their's was a beautiful country. No clearer and more spark- ling rivers could be found in the world than the Asquamchumauke and Pemigewassett; no brighter and more smiling lakes than the Newfound and the Squam, and no more glorious mountains than Moosilauke and the Haystacks. By Sawheganet and Livermore falls were the best of fishing places, and at the confluence of the Asquamchumauke and Pemigewassett were the broad and beau- tiful intervals of the tribe. No place more fertile can be found in New England. Luxuriant grasses and wild flowers growing with tropical exuberance, clusters of noble elms with waving branches, a dense forest, hills and wood-crowned summits on the border, and lofty mountains in the distance, often snow-capped at midsummer, made this spot a wild paradise. Ridges where the corn was planted, ashes where the wigwam was built, mattocks made from the bone of a moose's thigh, rude pestles and knives of stone, gouges, and arrow and spear-heads here found, show that this was the chief planting place of the tribe .; Here also was frequently the royal residence, and without doubt the Indians had encamped here for centuries.
There was really but one tribe of Indians in New Hampshire, the Nipmucks, as they called themselves. The division of this tribe into ten or fifteen small but distin- guished tribes is but a pleasant fancy of great Indian Historians, and we have been pleased to humor that fancy. The Nipmucks belonged as much to one section of the State as to another, and inhabited all sections, setting up their wigwams wherever they could find good hunting grounds, fishing waters, and planting places. Potter says the New Hampshire Indians were all Nipmucks, and Drake says the same thing- and they have given the matter more research than all others who have written upon the subject. Every town in New Hampshire has had a portion of a tribe of Indians at some time residing within its borders, and that was the Nipmuck.
* Nathaniel Merrill, 2d, found a beautiful Indian freestone bowl at this place.
t At the mouth of Baker river, in the town of Plymouth, N. H., the Indians had a settlement, where have been found Indian graves, bones, gun-barrels, stone mor- tars, pestles, and other utensils in use among them .- I. Farmer & Moore's Col. 128.
CHAPTER II.
CONTAINING THE ORIGIN OF THE PEMIGEWASSETTS, WITH A FEW PROFOUND THEORIES VERY INTERESTING TO KNOW.
WHENCE came the Pemigewassetts ? Whence all the red men? These are not easily answered.
Naturally one would turn to the Indians and seek the informa- tion from them. The medicine man, priest, or panisee, when asked the question would reply, as he often has, as follows:
" The first pair of mortals crept from a hole in the earth, climbing up by a grape-vine," to inhabit a world that, as some say, had " grown out of a tortoise's back," or as others, "the globe reconstructed from the earth clutched in a muskrat's paw."
Or the great legend man of another tribe would say that man was brought to earth on the back of the white-winged bird of heaven.
The traditions of another would have it that the land was peopled by "a few wanderers from the seven caves ( if any one can tell where they are ), veiling their god-like powers of terror with hissing rattlesnakes fearful only to others."
Then it was often told round the wigwam fire how a mam- moth bull jumped over the great lakes with the first Indians on his back, and how a grape-vine carried a whole tribe across the Mississippi.
Now these, and very many more like them, were all satisfac- tory answers to the Indians themselves, but did not at all clear up the mystery of the origin of the Indians to the minds of the pious missionaries who first came among them, or the host of Indian historians who have sprung up in later years. Conse- quently theories without number have been started, a few of
30
HISTORY OF WARREN.
which the most important we will mention briefly, as they will aid the enquiring reader greatly in solving the momentous question.
Christopher Colon-otherwise the great Columbus-immedi- ately upon his discovering the red men in the West Indies began to theorise upon their origin, and concluded they were the people of the ancient Ophir, from whence Solomon procured the gold to embellish the temple at Jerusalem, and "imagined that he saw the remains of furnaces of veritable Hebraic construction em- ployed in refining the precious ore."
Numerous writers, following the great discoverer, asserted without the least hesitation that the Jews were the early settlers of America, and many pious authors rejoiced that they had found at last the abode of the ten lost tribes of the children of Israel.
Then learned authors arose who said North America was peopled by a colony of Norwegians, and a generation of later writers were sure that the newly discovered land was peopled in remote ages by the Chinese.
As time passed on, one distinguished historian ascribed the settlement of America to the Egyptians; another to the Scandi- navians; a third to the Gauls; a fourth to the Celts; a fifth to the Phoenicians, and a sixth to the Carthagenians, and numerous others to as many different peoples and nations,-each author bringing a cloud of witnesses and numerous tomes of written evidence to support his theory.
In later times distinguished antiquarians, bringing to bear the light of natural science and modern geographical discoveries, have come to the conclusion that America was not peopled by the Norwegians, Celts, or Gauls,-marching from Europe by a pleas- ant route across frozen rivers and arms of the sea through Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador; neither that they sailed direct from Egypt, Phœnicia, or Carthage, westward across the Atlantic, or from China eastward across the Pacific; but that they came in veritable birch canoes from the northeast corner of Asia, coasting with a pleasant breeze along the Aleutian isles, or sailing in the most daring manner directly across Behring's straits-forty-four miles wide-with three small islands intervening at equal dis- tances for convenient resting places.
Others are so kind that they have constructed in remote ages
.
31
THE ABORIGINES.
an exceedingly strong bridge of ice across the above-named strait, over which the red men could pass dry shod.
It is said, with how much truth we know not, that the Esqui- maux of Asia and those of America are of the same origin, as is proved by the affinity of their language, and the latter probably emigrated from the former country-coming over in canoes or on the convenient bridge of ice. Also that the Tungusians of Asia * are identical with the red men of America; only this cannot be proved by their language, but by similarity of features, hair, and complexion.
Certain it is there are many who do not believe the last men- tioned theorie's any more than the former, and assert that the Indians had an Adam and Eve of their own, who lived more than a hundred and fifty thousand years ago upon that strip of land seen to the northward from the top of our Pemigewassett's loved Moosilauke, and which was once the only land in the whole world, an island washed on every side by a boundless and un- known ocean.
From this we are to infer that Asia was peopled from Amer- ica, and not vice versa, as was gravely asserted in former times.
Others there are who, discarding all the former theories, assert that the human race had diverse origins, by the development pro- cess, as unfolded by the great Darwin, in which he makes man to have descended by natural selections and gradual development from the-oyster, or some other equally distinguished creation of animal life. Our noble tribe on the banks of the Pemigewassett must have felt honored had they but known from what noble ancestors they descended.
Dissenters, who do not believe in the unity of the human race, affirm that the five species of men each had a different origin - five different pairs of first parents .; But these are only an aristo- cratical sort of people, who do not like to acknowledge themselves
* Captain Ray, of the whaleship Superior, testifies that while he was fishing at Behring's straits he saw canoes going from one continent to the other. The origin of the native Americans is thus evidently explained. It has also been observed that North Americans have habits and manners similar to the Tchuktchians, Kamt- schatkans, Yakoutsks, and Koriaks of Asia. A similarity in the language has also been discovered .- History of the Abnakis, 13.
They say it would have been just as easy for the Creator to have made five or twenty-five different races of men as it was to have made one.
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