USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Derry > Willey's book of Nutfield; a history of that part of New Hampshire comprised within the limits of the old township of Londonberry, from its settlement in 1719 to the present time > Part 21
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Wallace was the first minister to hold regular preaching services on the east bank of the river at what was called the new village in the early days of Manchester, and his pastoratc was longer than that of any other Manchester clergyman. He was an ardent Republican and in 1867-68 was sent as a representative to the legislature from Ward 4. It was also during the latter year that he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Dartmouth College. He was strongly identified with the early history of the city and prominent in all measures for reform. During the civil war he was for a long time a prominent member of the Chris- tian commission. His industry was incessant, the only real vacation he ever took during his long ministry being a three months' trip to Europe in 1854. May 19, 1840, hc married Miss Susan A. Webster, who dicd May 15, 1873. Hc married for the second time on Sept. 30, 1874, Miss Elizabeth H. Allison. Mr. Wallace died Oct. 21, 1889, aged eighty-four years.
G ARRISON HOUSES, to which the people could fice when threatened by the Indians, were not as numerous in Nutfield as in most other colonics, for the reason that there was no great nced of them. Nevertheless there were a few, the house of Captain James Gregg, near the mill. being a garrison, and also the house of Samuel Barr, now Mr. Thwyng's. Rev. James McGregor's dwelling was surrounded by a flanker, which was built by the town, and in the West Parish a garri- son stood on the spot now oceupicd by the house of Charles A. Tenney. Tradition ascribes the preservation of the colony from the attacks of the Indians to the influence of Mr. McGregor with the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the French governor of Canada. It is said that they were classmates at college, that a correspondenee was maintained between them, and that at the request of his friend the governor caused means to be used for the protection of the settlement. He was said to have induced the Catholic priests to charge the Indians not to injurc any of the Nutfield settlers. as they were different from the English ; and to
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assure them that no bounty would be paid for their scalps, and that, if they killed any of them, their sins would not be forgiven. Another and perhaps more plausible reason for the immunity of the colony from Indian attacks was the fact that the settlers had secured through Colonel Wheelwright a fair and acknowledged Indian title to the lands.
R EUBEN WHITE, who built and for so many years conducted the famous White's Tavern on Mammoth road in Londonderry, camc of sturdy Scotch-Irish stock. He was born in Londonderry in 1795, and always lived there until his death, which occurred in 1856. At his tavern he and Mrs. White, the amiable landlady, entertained many of the dignitaries and noted people of their day, including Presidents Polk and Picrce and Daniel Webster. He was frequently honored by
REUBEN WHITE.
endeared himself to all who knew him by his frankness, sterling integrity, and fair dealing. IIc
1
MRS. REUBEN WHITE.
died honored and respected, not only by the whole community but by thousands throughout the state.
NE of the rough and ready characters of Man- chester was Richard Ayer, a capitalist who came from Suncook and took a strong hand in developing the young city. One day he was ar- raigned before a justice for fast driving on the street and fined ten dollars. He handed the court two ten-dollar bills, and was asked what the extra bill was for. " My dog ran, too," was the sarcastic reply.
T HE READY WIT of Rcv. Cyrus W. Wal- lace of Manchester was well known to several generations of his time. One day J. Bailey Moore, a newspaper reporter, stopped in front of the parson's yard, observing the divine heaping brush on a roaring fire. " I suppose you wish all the sinners were in that fire, parson ? " said the reporter. "No," was the reply, "I have been
his fellow citizens by election to public office, having been postmaster and having represented his town in the legislaturc. Reuben White was a man of strong individuality, who nevertheless prcaching all these years to keep them out of it."
INDIANS OF THE MERRIMACK.
IF there is any truth in the adage that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, then we may say that the people found upon this continent, when the white man landed upon these shores, have well earned the title of "Noble Rcd Man." Unfortunately for the American Indian, the first settlers were to a great extent religious bigots. Driven from their own country by persccutions, they in turn persecuted those who did not agrce with them. The Puritans could not endure the thought that any religious instruction should be imparted to the uncivilized red man, unless it was in accordance with the doctrines of the particular denomination to which they belonged ; and out of this bigotry came those crucl Indian wars, that have left only the name of a once powerful people.
The mistakes of historians, caused by lack of knowledge of their subject, have, in the light of recent investigations, left much that was formerly relied upon as truth of less valuc than tradition.
When the English began to colonize Ncw England, and the French Acadia, they found the whole country occupied by a race of people whom Columbus had called Indians, and by that name they have since been known, the red man taking the same name, to distinguish himself from the white man, for in the Indian language there was no race name. Of their origin nothing was known, not even by reliable tradition.
Daniel Gookin, who for many years was a co- laborer with Rev. John Eliot in his work of Christianizing the Indians of Massachusetts, and who was appointed magistrate in 1652, and four years later commissioncd superintendent of all the Indians of Massachusetts, says, in his historical collections of the Indians of New England :
"Concerning the original of the Savages or In- dians in New England, there is nothing of cer- tainty to bc concluded ; but yet it may rationally be made out that all the Indians of America, from the straits of Magellan and its islands on the south unto the most northerly part yet discovercd, are originally of the same nation or sort of people." The color of their skin, the shape of their bodies, their black hair, their dark, dull cyes led many to believe them to have been of Asiatic origin. More recent investigations and discoverics of ancient ruins in Mexico and Central America would indi- cate that this continent was the home of primitive man, and that Asia and all the East were peopled from what was supposed to be the new world.
Of that people who once inhabited the valley of the Merrimack, not one is left to tell the story of his conflicts with the whites. Naught is left to us but our mountains, lakes, and rivers, that still retain, in a disfigured form, the names given them by the red man ; and cven these have been so dis- tortcd that many of them cannot be interpreted by those who have made a careful study of their language. Fortunately, the early missionaries, who devoted their lives to the service of the Indians, have left us vocabularies from which we can, to a certain extent, learn the true meaning of their language, and admirc the beauty of their dialect. Rev. John Eliot, in his translation of the Bible, gives us much of the language of the In- dians with whom he labored. Roger Williams furnishcs us with the key to the Narragansett lan- guage. Several short vocabularies of other tribes have been prepared and printed.
Rev. Joseph Aubery, who for many years was a missionary among the Abenakis, left a valuable
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contribution. There are now in the possession of the Indian names by which so many of our moun- tains, lakes, and rivers are known today. No more valuable work could be undertaken by our histori- cal society, than the publication of these works of Joseph Aubery. Their existence has been so little known that no writer upon the subject of the American Indian has ever referred to them, except L'Abbe Maurault, in his French history of the Abenakis, published in 1866. one of the churches in Canada several old manuscript volumes of the Abenaki language. These volumes, numbering ten in all, are written on good paper, in a plain hand. The first volume is a dictionary of the language, in quarto form, containing 540 pages, commencing with the word "abandonne" and ending with " zone." It is a complete Indian and French dictionary. The second volume is also a quarto, and contains 927 pages in double The Indians inhabiting the valley of the Merrimack were known as the Pawtucket tribe. columns, many of which are left blank, for the pur- pose of adding other words as required. This They resided near the falls on the river, below the
AMOSKFAG FALLS, MANCHESTER.
volume gives the names of many localities and the present site of the city of Lowell. At the time of construction of the language. The second edition the settlement of Massachusetts, the chief sachem of the Pawtuckets was Passaconaway, who was said to have been a witch and a sorcerer. He held dominion over several small tribes, the Wamesit, Pascataqua, and Pennacook being the principal ones. The Wamesits were also known as the Namkekes. The seat of the Wamesits was at the junction of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, at what is now the town of Tewksbury, Mass. It was a great fishing place, and took the name Nam- keke from that fact, as did also the falls in Man- of these dictionaries was prepared in 1715. The other eight volumes contain mostly the church service translated into the Indian tongue. These unpublished volumes contain, without doubt, the most complete and accurate translation of the language of the aborigines of New England ever prepared. Father Aubery was perfectly familiar with the language. Had some of our historians of these tribes had access to these works, there would have been fewer errors in the etymology of
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chester, the Amoskeag. These two falls, bearing names so nearly alike, led Mr. Potter into many errors in his history of Manchester. He locates the Namkeke tribe at the falls in Manchester, when any one who will take the trouble to read either Eliot or Gookin will see that they were at the Namkeke or fishing place at Wamesit. Mr. Potter says the Indians of the Merrimack were a part of the Nipmuck Indians. The name Nip- muck was never applied to those Indians that resided on the larger rivers. Nipmuck (Nipnet) was a name given to the petty tribes, or clans, of inland Indians scattered over a large extent of country,- in Windham and Tolland counties in Connecticut, Worcester and Hampden counties in Massachusetts, and the northern part of Rhode Island. Their principal seat was at or near the great ponds in Oxford, Mass. From these ponds they derived their name of pond or fresh water Indians. They were members of several different tribes. Some were under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts, some under the Narragansetts, and some under the other larger tribes. They were called by this general name to distinguish them from the shore Indians and from the river Indians who lived on the Connecticut. The Indians residing on the Merrimack river did not properly come under the name of Nipmuck. They were at all times known as the Pawtucket tribe. Some- times the name Pennacook was applied to them, though the latter name belonged to the division of the tribe that resided on the river in the vicinity of Manchester and Concord. Their principal seat was at Pawtucket (Chelmsford), and they took their name from the falls in the Merrimack river at this place. Pawtucket was from the Indian word Pawtagit (who shakes himself, which shakes itself), in a figurative sense, applied sometimes to falls. The name is spelled a little differently by some. The Pennacook country extended from Concord, N. H., up and down the river without any definite bounds, and without doubt it included the whole length of the river from the Pawtucket falls to Concord, and as much above as this divi- sion of the tribe extended.
of Mr. Eliot's visit in 1647, or would have been there had he not run away for fear of the English. Mr. Morton, who saw him in 1628, says he was ninety years old. On the visit of Eliot, in 1648, Passaconaway promised to become a praying Indian, and said he would advise his sons to do the same, some of whom were with him at this time. If he was nincty years old when Morton saw him, he must have been one hundred and ten years old at the time he was converted, or rather promised to become a praying Indian. Gen. Gookin saw him in 1660, and at this time he was one hundred and twenty years of age. In that case Wonalan- cet was born after Passaconaway was eighty years old, and it seems there were other children born to him after the birth of Wonalancet. The date of Passaconaway's death is not known. Mr. Potter says : " He died prior to 1669. He was alive in 1663, and as Wonalancet was at the head of the tribe in 1669, it is evident that Passaconaway was dead at this time." The fact that Wonalancet was at the head of the tribe in 1669 is no evidence that Passaconaway was then dead. He relin- quished all authority over all the Indians subject to him to Wonalancet in 1660. It was at this time that he delivered the speech attributed to him called his dying speech. He had become very old and incapacitated to perform the duties incumbent upon one occupying so high a position ; so he called all his people together and informed them of his intention of surrendering the sachemship to his son, Wonalancet. The great speech which he is said to have delivered on this occasion has been handed down to us, and no less than three entirely different versions of it have been given. It is much more likely that all these pretended eloquent remarks originated in the fertile brain of some white man, or it may have been that instead of delivering the speech he obtained leave to have it printed, as is the custom in modern days.
After Wonalancct had become chief sachem of the tribe, it would be a fair presumption that he repaired to Pawtucket and surrendered the Pennacook tribe to the grandson of Passaconaway. Kancamagus, oldest son of Nanamocomuck, who had a sachemship formerly at Wachusett, later at Groton, Mass. After Wonalancet assumed full
Passaconaway was the chief sachem and must have been very old when the whites first came among them. He was at Pawtucket at the time control of the tribe, it is most likely he remained
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at Pawtucket and retained that place as the princi- A party of French Indians (of whom some were of kindred of pal seat of the tribe, as his father had before him, this sachem's wife) very lately fell upon this people, being but few and unarmed, and partly by persuasion, partly by force, carried them all away. One, with his wife, child and kinswoman, who were of our praying Indians, made their escape and came into the English and discovered what was done. These things keep some in a continual disgust and jealousy of all the Indians. for in 1663, in answer to the request of Nanaleucet, second son of Passaconaway, having many children and no land of his own to plant, he was granted one hundred acres of land lying upon a great hill, near a great pond, about twelve miles distant from the house of John Eucred, part of which land was Wonalancet seems to have been at Pawtucket, or Wamesit, whenever Eliot or Gookin visited this place. Mr. Gookin, in his report of a visit made May 5, 1674, says : formerly planted by Nanalaucet, and Euered, Webb, and Hinckman of Chelmsford were ap- pointed to lay out the same. Instead of leaving Pennacook and going down the river, in fear of
According to our custom, Mr. Eliot and myself took our
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6000
MERRIMACK RIVER, BELOW AMOSKEAG FALLS, MANCHESTER .- HIGH WATER SCENE.
the English, Wonalancet left Pawtucket and went to Pennacook, and being followed to this place he went further away. This would be inferred from the letter of Mr. Eliot, under date of Oct. 23, 1677, in which he says :
We had a sachem of the greatest blood in the country sub- mit to pray to God, a little before the war. His name is Wan- nalaunset. In the time of the wars he fled, by reason of the wicked actings of some English youth who causelessly and basely killed and wounded some of them. He was persuaded to come in again, but the English having ploughed and sown with rye all their lands, they had but little corn to subsist by.
journey to Wamesit, or Pawtucket, and arriving there that even- ing, Mr. Eliot preached to as many of them as could be got together out of Mat. xxii, the parable of the marriage of the king's son. We met at the wigwam of one called Wannalauncet, about two miles from the town, near Pawtucket falls, and bordering upon Merrimack river. This person, Wannalauncet, is the son of old Passaconaway, the chiefest sachem of Paw- tucket {Query .- Was Passaconaway alive at this time ?]. He is a sober and grave person, and of years between fifty and sixty. He hath been always loving and friendly to the English. Many endeavours have been made several years to gain this sachem to the Christian religion, but he hath stood off from time to time, and not yield up himself personally, though for four years past he has been willing to hear the word of God preached, and to
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keep the Sabbath. A great reason that hath kept him off, I conceave, hath been the indisposition and averseness of sundry of his chief men and relations to pray to God. But at this time it pleased God so to influence and overcome his heart, that it being proposed to him to give his answer concerning praying to God, after some deliberation and serious pause, he stood up, and made a speach to this effect : "Sirs, you have been pleased for four years last past, in your abundant love to apply yourselves particularly unto me and my people, to exhort, press, and per- suade us to pray to God. I am very thankful to you for your pains. I must acknowledge, I have all my days used to pass in an old canoe (alluding to his frequent custom to pass in a canoe upon the river), and now you exhort me to change and leave my old canoe and embark in a new canoe, to which I have hitherto been unwilling ; but now I yield up myself to your advise, and enter into a new canoe, and do engage to pray to God hereafter."
There is no room for doubt as to the authen- ticity of this specch, for Mr. Eliot made it a custom to copy down all the confessions made by con- verted Indians.
What was left of the Pawtucket Indians under Wonalancet forsook their ancient seat in 1677, and removed to the north. Wonalancet was at Penna- cook in the fall of 1675, as Capt. Mosley, on the 16th of August, was sent to Penny-cook with a company of soldiers to destroy the remainder of his people. When he arrived at Pennacook hc found no Indians. It seems that Wonalancet, either through cowardice or fear of the English, withdrew from the place, and while lying in ambush saw his wigwams and provisions destroyed. This would seem to settle the question in regard to what place Wonalancet went to escape the war. He evidently left Pawtucket, as stated by Eliot, and came to Pennacook, supposing, no doubt, that he would be safe from harm, it being so far remote from the scenes of the conflict. Finding no safety here, he removed further north, but messengers were sent after him from Wamesit and he was induced to return to Pawtucket, where he remained a short time, and then in September, 1677, went to Canada.
Did the apostle Eliot visit the Indians who came to the Namoskeag to fish? Mr. Potter, in his History of Manchester, assumes that he did, for the reason that Eliot had expressed a strong desire to do so, and employed a man to cut a road from Nashaway to Namaske. One would on first thought conclude, as did Potter, that the work
on this path began at the place now known as Nashua. But that was not the casc. The only Nashaway of Eliot's time was the Nashaway tribe of Indians located on or near Wesha- kum pond or lakc, about two miles from a white settlement, at Lancaster, Mass. A mission had been established at this place and Eliot went there often to preach, and was at times accompanied by Mr. Gookin. Eliot said it was a round-about way to get to the great fishing place, which he located some three score miles to the north. The man employed to cut the road passed through Souhegan, but through which part is not mentioned. If the path was cut on a direct line from Nashaway to Namoskeag, he would have passed through what is now Amherst. There does not seem to have been any tribe of Indians on the Souhegan, only as they came there on their hunting ex- cursions.
Mr. Potter further assumes that Eliot after- wards came here and established schools and preaching, and he bases this presumption on the statement of Gookin, who says " there were preach- ing and schools at Namkeke," and Potter says: " Who was there to preach and establish schools here except the Rev. John Eliot ?" The difficulty with this presumption is, that Gookin had no reference in any manner to Namoskcag, on the Merrimack, in New Hampshire. Wamesit was also called Namkeke, and Gookin says in the same communication, quoted by Potter, that there were preaching and schools at Namkeke or Wamesit. The Namkeke to which Gookin referred was at the junction of the Concord and Merrimack rivers, in the present town of Tewksbury, Mass. Mr. Potter says: "The Nashuas occupied the lands upon the Nashua, and the intervales upon the Merrimack, opposite and below the mouth of that river," and that Nashua means "the river with a pebbly bottom." The only Nashua Indians, how- ever, that had any existence were, as we have said, on Weshakum lake. They did not take their name from the river near which they resided, as many of the tribes did, but the river took its name from the Nashaway Indians. The name was given to them on account of their location ; they were inland or Nipmuck Indians. Nippe, water, was applied to the ponds, and Nipmuck to the tribe
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that resided upon or near these ponds. Their loca- letter in the first four is k, and in the other four tion was between the Massachusetts or shore it is 1. They had two kinds of substantives, viz: the names of animate and personified things, and the names of inanimate things; also animate and inanimate adjectives and verbs that are made to agree with the substantive accordingly. These substantives are distinguished by the terminations of the plurals, which are always k for the ani- mate, and 1 for the inanimate. The languages Indians and the tribes that resided upon the Con- nectient river. Nashaway is from the Indian, Nsawiwi (pronounced Nansawewe), and means " between," and was applied to this tribe for the reason that they were located between the shore and river Indians: The same word is used to denote the points of the compass, as northwest, northeast, cte .; Pabonki, the north ; Waji-nahilot, of the Massachusetts and Narragansett Indians
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POLICE STATION, MANCHESTER.
the east; Nsawiwi pebonkik ta waji-nahilot, north- have different suffixes to denote the plurals. east, "at, to, or from the northeast, literally, be- tween the north and the east.
One not eonversant with the various prefixes and suffixes used in the Indian language would likely fall into many errors, not only in the or- thography, but in the etymology, as has been the ease with writers on these subjeets. In the Abenaki language, there are eight terminations for the plurals of their nouns, namely : ak, ik, ok, k, al, ol, il, l. It will be noticed that the final difference between these is the suppression of the
The word au-ke is the one that has caused the most errors in the etymology of places that now bear the Indian name in New Hampshire. Au-ke was a word denoting ground, land, or place on the land. The French orthography of the word was a-ki, pronouneed au-ke. The terminations ke and ki are the same. Au-ke was never used in connection with a water location, for which ke and kek were used. It will be notieed that the
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first syllable au. Kck was used to denote thc locality. The final letter k had the force of the prepositions, at, to, or from. In the Massachusetts language et was the termination for the preposi- tion. Au-ke was used in a broader sensc for coun- try or region, as Winnepes-aukee, or lake region. Ki or ke was more limited in its application, apply- ing more particularly to a farm, a place, or a definite piece of land, as Wenos-ki, onion land.
Namoskek, and not namos-aukc, was the cor- rect way of spelling the great Amoskeag falls. It means "at the fishing place." The kek has a gutteral sound, and is so much like keag that that termination is generally used.
Penacook is from the Massachusetts word penayi (crooked) and tegw, a word used in compo- sition for river. Sepo, or sebo, was river when used independently, but when as a termination for a river, tegw was the word. This, being sounded with the gutteral tone, is so much like cook that it has been supplanted by the termination cook, viz: Penacook, Contoocook, Coaticook, etc. If Penacook means crooked river, than the true Indian orthography would be Penayitegw.
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