[CHAPTER XVI.]
Account of the Pawtucket confederacy in New Hampshire—Passaconaway, their Chief Sachem—He is disarmed by order of the Massachusetts Government. His residence, age and authority—He maintains a good understanding with the English—Visits Boston—The Apostle Elliot's acquaintance with, and notice of him—His views of Christianity—Festival, and Farewell speech to his tribe in 1660—Death and character—His son and successor, Wonolanset.—Anecdotes of the family—Legend of Passaconaway's feats as a Powah.
Turning our attention to a part of the country and to a people which have not yet been the subject of special notice, we shall now introduce, with the following passage from Winthrop's Journal, an individual of far too much distinction to be wholly over-looked. The date is of July, 1642:—
"There came letters from the court at Connecticut, and from two of the magistrates there, and from Mr. Ludlow near the dutch, certifying us that the Indians all over the country had combined themselves to cut off all the English—that the time was appointed after harvest—the manner also they should go, by small companies to the chief men's houses by way of trading &c. and should kill them in the house and seize their weapons, and then others should be at hand to prosecute the massacre. . . . Upon these letters the Governor called so many of the magistrates as were near, and being met they sent out summons for a general court to be kept six days after, and in the meantime it was thought fit, for our safety, and to strike some terror into the Indians, to disarm such as were within our jurisdiction. Accordingly we sent men to Cutshamkin at Brantree to fetch him and his guns, bows &c. which was done, and he came willingly, and being late in the night when they came to Boston, he was put in the prison, but the next morning, finding upon examination of him and divers of his men, no ground of suspicion of his partaking in any such conspiracy, he was dismissed. Upon the warrant which went to Ipswich, Rowlye and Newberry to disarm Passaconamy, who lived by Merrimack, they sent forth forty men armed the next day, being the Lord's-day, but it rained all the day, as it had done divers days before and also after, so as they could not go to his wigwam, but they came to his son's and took him, which they had warrant for, and a squa and her child, which they had no warrant for, and therefore order was given so soon as he heard of it, to send them home again. They fearing his son's escape, led him in a line, but he taking an opportunity, slipped his line and escaped from them, but one very indiscreetly made a shot at him, and missed him narrowly."
The Sachem here mentioned, and commonly, called Passaconaway, [FN] was generally known among the Indians as the Great Sagamore of Pannuhog, or Penacook—that being the name of a tribe who inhabited Concord, (New Hampshire) and the country for many miles above and below, on Merrimac river. The Penacooks were among the most warlike of the northern Indians; and they, almost alone, seem to have resisted the occasional ancient inroads of the Mohawks, and sometimes even to have carried the war into their territories. One of their forts, built purposely for defence against these invasions, was upon Sugar-Ball Hill, in Concord; and tradition indistinctly preserves to this time the recollection of an obstinate engagement between the two tribes, which occurred on the banks of the Merrimac in that vicinity.
[FN] Hubbard writes Passaconnawa; Mr. Elliot, Papassaconaway; Wood, in that most singular curiosity, New England's Prospect, has pointed out Pissaconawa's location on his map, by a cluster of marks representing wigwams.
The Penacooks were one member of a large confederacy, more or less under Passaconaway's control, which, beside comprising several small tribes in Massachusetts, extended nearly or quite as far in the opposite direction as the northern extremity of Lake Winepissiogee. Among those who acknowledged subjection to him were the Agawams (at Ipswich,) the Naamkeeks (at Salem,) the Pascataquas, the Accomintas, and the Sachems of Squamscot, Newichwannock and Pawtucket,—the latter being also the National name of all the confederates. Passaconaway is supposed to have resided, occasionally, at what is now Haverhill (Mass.) but he afterwards lived among the Penacooks.
He must have been quite advanced in life at the date of the earliest English settlements on the coast, for he is said to have died, about 1665, at the great age of one hundred and twenty years, though that statement indeed has an air of exaggeration. The first mention of him is in the celebrated Wheelwright deed of 1629—the authenticity of which it is not necessary to discuss in this connexion. In 1642, Passaquo and Saggahew, the Sachems of Haverhill (Mass.) conveyed that township to the original settlers, by deed sealed and signed,—the consideration being three pounds ten shillings, and the negotiation expressly "wth ye consent of Passaconaway." [FN]