Passaconoway

His Ascent into Heaven

“It was about the middle of February, 1684. From comparative Indian accounts, it was well below zero, with a sky of azure blue and not a cloud to be seen anywhere. Passaconaway had been told to journey to what we now know as Dustin Island, where the wild rushing Contoocook divides that it may quietly enter the Merrimack. With whom he had journeyed hither he did not know and could not remember, for now he found himself erect and alone amidst a circle of glowing coals, whose rising heat gave him perfect protection from the elements.”

“Now well past the century mark, the heavy sinews and muscles of former years shrunken and face much wrinkled, he nevertheless was able to stand erect and with folded arms await the will of the Great Spirit. Presently the message came and in almost though not quite audible tones he was told, “Passaconaway, thy time has come. Watch the southern sky and do my bidding, for thou art speedily to be made ready for the journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds which the Great Spirit prepared for those who have done their best.”

“The message ceased and immediately his eyes, still keen and little dimmed by age, scanned the sky southward to what we now know as Concord. Here there appeared to be very small white clouds, which as he watched intently seemed to be coming northward, following the “River of Swift and Broken Waters.”

“Nearer and nearer they came to his lonely isle at the mouth of the “Silver Stream that Winds among the Hills.” As the clouds drew nearer they grew larger and began to swirl round and round, until to his great delight he saw they were filled with wolves,―wolves, the fastest thing in the forest, and better still, a sweeping count showed one hundred and twenty, the Indian’s idea of the largest wolf pack ever known.”

“In wonderment filled with trust he stood erect and strong, with arms folded as the fires burned low and his own clothing seemed to take on added winter strength. He noticed that the wolves in the clouds were stringing out in great circles, two by two, until with one grand sweep they sped past him before his very eyes.”

“Was this an apparition or was it real? He was to know almost instantly. It took only a few brief moments for the wolves to speed by and come to a sudden stop. Instantly he found before him a magnificent sledge, heavily laden with well curried and finely softened furs of all the animals of forest, lake and stream, he had been accustomed to hunt throughout his long life.”

“No heavenly message was needed now. The wolves were already tugging at their traces anxious to be up and away. ‘Passaconaway stepped on a splendid bearskin mat, the largest and best he had ever known, for was he not “The Son of the Bear?” The softer and finer furs surrounded him with their warmth, and as his left hand grasped the side of the sledge for steadiness, he found a long rawhide whip in his right hand. He had seen the settlers’ use these and had always wanted one for himself. Now his wish was fulfilled.”

“One crack of the whip was the signal, and away they sped over the frozen wastes of the Merrimack, crossing meadows at open rapids or broken waters (falls), but generally following the river northward through what we now know as Boscawen, Franklin, Tilton, Winnisquam, Laconia, and Lakeport to Lake Paugus, named after his grandson.”

“At Arquedahkenash, (The Weirs) it was necessary to slacken speed for here was his last earthly view of the representatives of his people. Out on the ice where the Weirs Station now stands, the brief stop was made, and as he looked upward and to the left, he saw several rows of the spirit forms of sachems and sagamores with whom he had worked so many years. All those on the shore had hands and arms extended high in the air,―the Indian’s sign for “Welcome, brother.”

“He started to address them, but the Great Spirit sealed his lips. The wolves were again tugging at their traces, anxious to perform their task. He had given them a quick glance and then again turned to the left, this time to see the spirit forms of his sachems and sagamores fading away, with the single right arms and hands of each one lifted high,―the Indian’s sign for “Farewell, brother.”

“A small group of former Winnepesaukees now appeared on the shore and this is what they saw. The wolf train with its precious load sped onward over the glassy surface of the lake, so beautifully streaked with windrows of the whitest and purest snow. The speed increased, (we can understand it now as we have seen a modern plane do the same thing) until the watchers on the shore saw them in the air, making straight for Agiococook (Mt. Washington) the highest of the hills.”

“Now but a speck in the sky, they were at the top, and a brief moment of heavenly light such as they had never experienced before, illumined the scene. Here in a brilliant light, between two white clouds they saw their beloved Passaconaway, Greatest Chieftain of the tribes, received into the welcoming arms of the Great White Spirit,―the God of the Indian, and the God of all mankind.”

George Calvin Carter, PASSACONAWAY: THE GREATEST OF THE NEW ENGLAND INDIANS. Granite State Press

Passaconoway

PART 5: SURRENDER TO THE EUROPEANS

In the end Passaconaway knew that his people would be swept away by the advance of the Europeans. Joseph M. Wilson, in his History of Dracut says that, “Up to this time all of the wilderness north of the Merrimack belonged to Passaconaway and his tribes and seeing by this grant that the English were going to claim it all without considering his or their rights” he knew that his people’s ability to keep control of their land was doomed.  Potter in his History of Manchester says, “We hear nothing more of Passaconnaway or his people, till 1660. At that time, being of very great age, he was seen by an Englishman at Pawtucket, who was much conversant with the Indians upon the Merrimack. It is possible that this Englishman was Gen. Gookin. There was a vast assemblage of the Indians at Pawtucket, and borne down with age and cares, the old Sagamon, at a public feast, made a farewell speech to his people.”

” ‘Hearken to the words of your father. I am an old oak that has withstood the storms of more than a hundred winters. Leaves and branches have been stripped from me by the winds and frosts — my eyes are dim — my limbs totter — I must soon fall! But when young and sturdy, when my bow — no young man of the Pennacooks could bend it — when my arrows would pierce a deer at a hundred yards — and I could bury my hatchet in a sapling to the eye — no wigwam had so many furs — no pole so many scalp locks as Passaconaway! Then I delighted in war. The war whoop of the Pennacooks was heard when the Mohawks came — and no voice so loud as Passaconaway’s. The scalps upon the pole of my wigwam told the story of Mohawk suffering.’ ”

” ‘The English came, they seized our lands; I set me down at Pennacook. They followed upon my footsteps; I made war with them, but they fought with fire and thunder; my young men were swept down before me when no one was near them. I tried sorcery against them but still they increased and prevailed over me and mine, and I gave place to them and retired to my beautiful island of Natticook. I that can make the dry leaf turn green and live again — I that can take the rattlesnake in my palm as I would a worm, without harm — I who have communion with the Great Spirit dreaming and awake — I am powerless before the Pale Faces. The oak will soon break before the whirlwind — it shivers and shakes even now; soon its trunk will be prostrate, the ant and the worm will sport upon it! Then think, my children, of what I say; I commune with the Great Spirit. He whispers to me now — Tell your people Peace, Peace is the only hope of your race. I have given fire and thunder to the pale faces for weapons — I have made them plentier than the leaves of the forest and still shall they increase! These meadows shall they turn with their plow — these forests shall fall to their axe — the pale faces shall live upon your hunting grounds and make their villages upon your fishing places. The Great Spirit says this, and it must be so. We are few and powerless before them. We must bend before the storm; the wind blows hard; the old oak trembles; its branches are gone; its sap is frozen; it bends; it falls! Peace, peace with the white men — is the command of the Great Spirit — and the wish — the last wish of Passaconaway.”

According to Wilson, Passaconaway lived out his days “on the Indian reservation at Pawtucket Falls on the north bank of the Merrimack which later became a large part of Dracut.” Potter says he lived north of Manchester in his old ancestral home. Both agree that that he did eventually convert to Christianity as result of the preaching of Rev. Eliot. Potter provides the reliable evidence to back his claims. “It has been supposed that Passaconnawy died about this time, and our historians give no account of him after the time of the delivery of ‘his dying speech to his children.’ But this supposition is erroneous. Passaconaway was alive in 1663, and at the head of his tribe, so his speech of 1660 can hardly be considered his ‘dying speech,’ without some stretch of the imagination.

Passaconoway finding his planting and fishing grounds encroached upon by those having grants from the government of Massachusetts; already deprived of his planting grounds at Natticook where he had planted for a long while; and the legislature having announced their intention to grant his lands at Pennacock whenever ‘so many should be present to settle a plantation there.’—he began to think he soon should not have land enough to erect a wigwam upon.” Accordingly. May 9th, 1662, Passaconaway presented a petition to the Massachusetts legislature which was approved, giving Passaconoway a grant 3 miles square along the Merrimack which included parts of what is now Manchester, Merrimack, Londonderry, Bedford and Litchfield, NH.  The irony of this petition is highlighted by Potter who says, “The record of this grant discloses an important fact. In less than twenty years from the time Passaconaway submitted himself to the colonists, and put himself under their protection, he and his tribe were literally reduced to beggary. The Bashaba of the Merrimack valley, and the rightful owner of all its broad lands, had become a ‘poor petitioner’ and ‘pore supplicant’ for a plantation of pine plains, and did ‘earnestly request the Honored Court to grant two small islands and ye patch of Intervaile’ to him—receiving them doubtless with all due submission and thankfulness, if not humility! Old age, as well as contact with civilization, must have done its work upon the spirit of this haughty sagamon, for him thus to have meekly asked his usurpers to grant him what properly was his own.”

Passaconaway – John Greenleaf Whittier’s Account

PART FOUR

Whittier penned these lines long after the Native Americans had surrendered the Merrimac to the mills, leaving the cruel contrast of industrial bondage, along a river that had once been so free.

1. THE MERRIMACK

O child of that white-crested mountain whose springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle’s wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine;
From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea.

No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees
Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in the breeze:
No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores,
The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag’s fall
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn.
But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,
Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had swung.

In their sheltered repose looking out from the wood
The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;
There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone,
And against the red war-post the hatchet was thrown.

There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young
To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines flung;
There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid.

O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan
Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone.

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.

II. THE BASHABA

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,
And, turning from familiar sight and sound.
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
A glance upon Tradition’s shadowy ground,
Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast;
And that which history gives not to the eye,
The faded coloring of Time’s tapestry,
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply.

Roof of bark and walls of pine,
Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,
Tracing many a golden line
On the ample floor within;
Where, upon that earth-floor stark,
Lay the gaudy mats of bark,
With the bear’s hide, rough and dark,
And the red-deer’s skin.

Window-tracery, small and slight,
Woven of the willow white,
Lent a dimly checkered light;
And the night-stars glimmered down,
Where the lodge-fire’s heavy smoke,
Slowly through an opening broke,
In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
Sheathed with hemlock brown….

…Here the mighty Bashaba
Held his long-unquestioned sway,
From the White Hills, far away,
To the great sea’s sounding shore;
Chief of chiefs, his regal word
All the river Sachems heard,
At his call the war-dance stirred,
Or was still once more.

There his spoils of chase and war,
Jaw of wolf and black bear’s paw,
Panther’s skin and eagle’s claw,
Lay beside his axe and bow;
And, adown the roof-pole hung,
Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
In the smoke his scalp-locks swung

Gloomed behind the changeless shade
By the solemn pine-wood made;
Through the rugged palisade,

Grimly to and fro.                                                                                   Nightly down the river going,
Swifter was the hunter’s rowing,
When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing
O’er the waters still and red;
And the squaw’s dark eye burned brighter,
And she drew her blanket tighter,
As, with quicker step and lighter,
From that door she fled.

For that chief had magic skill,
And a Panisee’s dark will,
Over powers of good and ill,
Powers which bless and powers which ban;
Wizard lord of Pennacook,
Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
When they met the steady look
Of that wise dark man.

Tales of him the gray squaw told,
When the winter night-wind cold
Pierced her blanket’s thickest fold,
And her fire burned low and small,
Till the very child abed,
Drew its bear-skin over bead,
Shrinking from the pale lights shed
On the trembling wall.

All the subtle spirits hiding
Under earth or wave, abiding
In the caverned rock, or riding
Misty clouds or morning breeze;
Every dark intelligence,
Secret soul, and influence
Of all things which outward sense
Feels, or bears, or sees,—

These the wizard’s skill confessed,
At his bidding banned or blessed,
Stormful woke or lulled to rest
Wind and cloud, and fire and flood;
Burned for him the drifted snow,
Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,
And the leaves of summer grow
Over winter’s wood!…

Not untrue that tale of old!
Now, as then, the wise and bold
All the powers of Nature hold
Subject to their kingly will;

Passaconaway – Strong Magic

PART THREE

We all are aware of the legends of the Native Americans and how their lives were interwoven with the natural world which surrounded them. Charles Leland in his book The Algonquin legends of New England writes, “…the poetry of nature, has quaint and beautiful superstitions. To every Algonquin a rotten log by the road covered with moss, suggests the legend of the log-demon; the Indian corn and sweet flag in the swamp are the descendants of beautiful spirits who still live in them; Meeko the squirrel, has power of becoming a giant monster; flowers, beasts, trees, have all loved and talked and sung, and can even now do so, should the magician only come to speak the spell.”

“Both before and after accepting Christianity, Passaconaway was famous for his almost superhuman feats of strength and magic. While he performed some of these elsewhere as he went among the tribes from the Winnepesaukees and Ossipees on the north, to the Narragansetts on the south, his best work in this line was done at Amoskeag, where was to be found the perfect setting for all that he desired to accomplish in maintaining his position among the tribes.”

“Many of the things he did seem difficult to explain, but he did them, in full view of both Indians and whites, there is no doubt. Both official and unofficial groups came from afar on divers occasions. Ample testimony to the authenticity of these events was given both verbally and in writing, to the authorities at Massachusetts. One member of an investigating committee reported that he did so with the aid of his ‘Consort the Devil.’ After he accepted Christianity he sought the advice of the Apostle Eliot who advised wisely, in view of his intimate knowledge of the Indian mind, that they might continue so long as he did not ascribe what he did as due to the favor of deity.”

“What did the Amoskeags and their visitors witness at Amoskeag Falls in what is now Manchester? They saw ‘rocks move, trees dance, green leaves in winter, blocks of ice in summer, squirming, harmless adders in winter, frozen fish and frosted branches in summer, and at any season dry leaves curling up and burning in a bowl, without apparent cause.’ ”

“He could seemingly call mists to envelop himself together with all those immediately near him, and to disperse the same mist at will. He would stand erect upon a pile of small dry sticks, have them ignited until he seemed to be a veritable flaming man. The mist would come and when presently it had gone, he would be found calm and unharmed. Reversing the process, the mists would come while there was no fire. Instantly flames would appear, only to have entirely vanished when the fleecy clouds passed on.”

Perhaps the most spectacular feet was accomplished while there were a number of his own and white visitors grouped on the river bank. The mist would come and when it was gone he would be found on the other shore with arms upraised. The watchers would soon be again en-veiled in mist, which soon passed on, when,  Passaconoway would be found coming up the river bank, dripping wet as one just out of the water.” This is similar to the legend told by Charles Leland, who writes, “There are stones in the forest with names on them. They give great power to dream. I have seen in my dreams the m’teoulin of ancient times,—the magicians my father told me of long ago. I have seen them diving under the waters from one island to another. I have seen them, dive ten miles.”

No Indian ever attempted to explain how these things were done. Was not their Passaconaway, greatest chieftain of them all, able to do great things that no other Indian could do? The Great Spirit himself had given him these powers. Why should they inquire? Many a white man who did, received a stern rebuke, as was his due. Among the whites, whether sent officially or as voluntary visitors, there was much verbal and many written explanations, but the fact that almost none of these ‘explanations,’ were like any of the others, is an indication of how well the great bashaba guarded his secrets, which he carried to the grave. It is well, for they served their time and served it well, and helped cement the confidence that existed between the leader and his people.”

William Wood, was one of the original sources of the information which he reported in his New England Prospect, written in 1634. “…their powwows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and necromantic charms by which they bring to pass strange things, if we may believe the Indians who report of one Passaconaway that he can make water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphise himself into a flaming man. But it may be objected, this is but deceptio visus.  He will therefore do more, for in winter, when there is no green leaves to be got, he will burn and old one to ashes, and putting those into water produce a new green leaf which you shall not only see but substantially handle and carry away, and make a dead snake’s skin a living snake, both to be seen and felt, and heard. This I write but on the report of the Indians, who constantly affirm stranger things.”

“But to make manifest that by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment, and honest gentleman related a story to me, being an eyewitness of the same; a powwow having a patient with the stump of a small tree run through his foot, being past the cure of his ordinary surgery, betook himself to his charms, and being willing to show his miracle before the English stranger, he wrapped a piece of cloth about the foot of the lame man and upon that wrapping a beaver skin through which he—laying his mouth to the beaver skin—by his sucking charms he brought out the stump which he spat into a tray of water, returning the foot as whole as its fellow in a short time.”

Much of the foregoing comes from C.E. Potter in his History of Manchester.