3mt-6: The Poetry of Passaconaway

After the death and devastation from the Algonquin apocalypse, some of the Indian villages along the Merrimack River were completely wiped out and the ones that weren’t struggled to remain active communities. Maybe because of their distance from the coastal epicenter of disease, the Pennacook Indians, whose village was far upriver in what is now Manchester, NH, were less affected. Accordingly their chief, Passaconaway, became the great sachem of the entire Merrimack Valley, the first leader of what historians call The Pennacook Confederacy.

William Wood in his "New England Prospect" describes Passaconaway’s extraordinary talents:

The Indians report of one Passaconawaw, that hee can make water burne, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphise himself into a flaming man. Hee Will do more; for in Winter, when there are no green leaves to be got, hee will burne an old one to ashes and putting these into 'water, produce a new green leaf, which you shall not only see but substantially handle and carrie away; and make a dead snake's skin a living snake, both to be seen, felt, and heard. This I write but on the report of the Indians, who confidentially affirm stranger things.

This may be the mythological world view of the Algonquin, but nevertheless it describes a powerful man, yet one who could not resist the European invasion. Charles Edward Beals, Jr. relates in his “Passaconaway in the White Mountains” the great man’s final speech:

Hearken to the words of your father. I am an old oak that has withstood the storms of more than an hundred winters. Leaves and branches have been stripped from me by the winds and frosts-my eyes are dim-my limbs totter― must soon fall! But when young and sturdy, when my bow-no young man of the Pennacooks could bend it-when my arrow would pierce a deer at an hundred yards-and I could bury my hatchet in a sapling to the eye-no wigwam had so many furs-no pole so many scalps as Passaconaway's! Then I delighted in war. The whoop of the Pennacooks was heard upon the Mohawk―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 sat me down at Pennacook. They followed upon my footsteps; I made war upon 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 they still 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 had 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 worm will sport upon it Then think, my children, of what I say; I commune with the Great Spirit. He whispers me now―'Tell your peopie, 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 they shall turn with the plow―these forests shall fail by the ax―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.

Although there is some doubt as to whether these are actually the words of Passaconaway, there is little doubt they were his sentiments. And so fell a mighty oak that dwarfed our maple trees.

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three maple trees
-part one
-part two
-part three a
-part three b
-part four
-part five