NEW HAMPSHIRE “I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902 “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1600 By this point at least, Passaconaway (“Child of the Bear”) had become headman of the Penacook. He lived at the top of the Pawtucket Falls in what would become Lowell in what would become Massachusetts. At this point, upstream at what would become Concord in what would become New Hampshire, there were about 2,000 English settlers. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1614 Captain John Smith, sailing along the New England coast, wrote back to England that: Here should be no landlords to rack us with high rents, or extorted fines to consume us. Here every man may be a master of his own labor and land in a short time. The sea there is the strangest pond I ever saw. What sport doth yield a more pleasant content and less hurt or charge than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams of a calm sea? The Massachusett indigenes probably had experienced first contact with Europeans intrusives at an early date, perhaps as soon as John Cabot in 1497, but they are first mentioned specifically in surviving records by Captain Smith as he explored the coast of New England. At this point there may have been as many as 3,000 Massachuset tribalists living in 20 villages around Boston Bay, including along the Charles River (Quinobequin) and the Neponset River in eastern Massachusetts,1 but by the time the Pilgrims would arrive in 1620 fewer than 800 of these would be present. A series of three separate epidemics would strike between 1614 and 1617, destroying three out of every four in the original native population. Simultaneously, unidentified rival tribes from the north would be attacking the villages. 1. The name is from an Algonquian word meaning “at the range of hills.” HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE AN ACCOUNT OF TWO VOYAGES TO NEW-ENGLAND. The people that inhabited this Countrey are judged to be of the Tartars called Samonids that border upon Moscovia, and are divided into Tribes; those to the East and North-east are called to the year of Christ 1673. Churchers and Tarentines, and Monhegans. To the South are the Pequets and Narragansets. Westward Connecticuts and Mowhacks. To the Northward Aberginians which consist of Mattachusets, Wippanaps and Tarrentines. The Pocanakets live to the Westward of Plimouth. Not long before the English came into the Countrey, happened a great mortality amongst them, expecially where the English afterwards planted, the East and Northern parts were sore smitten with the Contagion; first by the plague, afterwards when the English came by the small pox, the three Kingdoms or Sagamorships of the Mattachusets were very populous, having under them seven Dukedoms or petti- Sagamorships, but by the plague were brought from 30000 to From the year of the World From the year 300. There are not many now to the Eastward, the Pequots were destroyed by the English: the Mowhacks are about five hundred: Their speech a dialect of the Tartars, (as also is the Turkish tongue). BY John Josselyn Gent. CONTAGION HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE There were six main bands of the Massachusett, under the following headmen: • Chickataubut (this band was divided into two groups, the Wampatuck and the Obatinnewat) • Nanepashemet (this band was divided into three groups, the Winnepurkit, the Wonohaquaham, and the Montowampate) • Manatahqua •Cato • Nahaton • Cutshamakin (or Cutshamequin, or Kutchamakin) These Massachusett were living in the following villages: • Agawam • Conohasset • Magaehnak • Massachuset • Mattapoist • Mishawum • Mystic • Nahapassumkeck • Nasnocomacack • Natick •Neponset • Nonantum • Patuxent • Pocapawmet • Sagoquas • Saugus • Secacasaw (Seccasaw) • Topeent • Totant • Totheet • Waranock • Wessagusset • Winnisimmet HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE Here is what their habitations most likely looked like. First, the bare frame of the weetu structure: HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE As constructed for summer use: HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE As constructed for winter use: LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1616 There was in the Algonquian villages of what are now southern and central New Hampshire, northeastern Massachusetts, and southern Maine an epidemic of what is likely to have been measles or scarlet fever. The American population between the Narragansett bay and the Saco River was reduced from an estimated 100,000 to 5,000. Since virtually every village of the Massachusett along this coast within 30 miles of the ocean, all the way from the region of Portland down to Cape Cod, quickly fell victim, there has been much speculation that the epidemic was the small pox and that it had been carried to the natives by their contact with the French sailors, either the ones who had died in the vicinity of the waters of Boston Harbor or the ones who had survived and been enslaved by the native Americans. “They died in heaps, as they lay in their houses; and the living that were able to shift for themselves would run away.” The First Comers, coming across these piles of bones later, would term the places “a new found Golgotha.” Even years after this epidemic, “Their skulls and bones were found in many places lying still above the ground, where their houses and dwelling had been.” Historians generally do not credit that the epidemic must have been carried by these crewmen, citing the possibility of rats from this or another ship, and yet the historical estimate is that something like 19 out of every 20 humans along this coast had died during this outbreak. Meanwhile, a native war in Maine was desolating that region as well, so as the Pilgrims would arrive, they HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE would discover that by means of a “wonderful plague” God had cleared a path for them. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1621 In the grant of land between the Naumkeag River and the Merrimack River in what is now New Hampshire to Captain John Mason (now known as the Masonian claim of 1621, awarded by a “Council of New England” established in Plymouth, County of Devon, in the name of King James I of England) there appeared a clause clearly having to do with Plum Island: “The great Isle, henceforth to be called, Isle of Mason, lying near or before the bay, harbour, or river of Agawam.” We are told that the plumbs, which are found on Plumb Island, were plenty, many years since, in various parts of the town. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1623 A signal event in the history of Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Strawberry Banke was founded. Under the authority of an English land-grant, Captain John Mason and others sent two groups of colonizers to establish fishing colonies at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. One of these expeditions, under the Scotchman David Thomson, erected salt-drying fish racks and a stone “factory” near the river’s mouth at a place they called Little Harbor or “Pannaway,” which has since become the town of Rye. The other expedition, under the fish-merchant brothers of London Edward Hilton and Thomas Hilton, set up on a neck of land eight miles to the north which they named Northam, afterwards to become Dover. Sir Ferdinando Gorges’s son Robert Gorges was made Governor-General of New England (until he would give up and return to England in 1624). HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE 1629 Captain John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had in 1622 received a patent from the Council for New England for all the territory lying between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers, at this point divided their grant along the Piscataqua River, with Captain Mason being assigned the southern portion. This territory would be recharted as the Province of New Hampshire — it would include most of the southeastern part of the current state of that name plus portions of present-day Massachusetts that lie to the HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW HAMPSHIRE north of the Merrimack River. They divided the Isles of Shoals between themselves. Captain Mason taking Londoner Island (Lunging Island), Star Island, and White Island, Sir Ferdinando taking Appledore Island, Cedar Island,2 Duck Island,3 2. Cedar Island, a small circular island in the Isles of Shoals about one-seventh of a mile in diameter, derived its name, apparently, from the few and scrappy cedar trees that had been noticed there by Captain John Smith in the early 17th Century. It is populated today by lobstermen’s families descended from early Shoaler fisherman. It is now connected by a government breakwater to Smuttynose Island and Star Island.