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HERITAGE TROLLEY TOUR
EROY COVE - 1623
SHIP “PROVIDENCE’AT
DOVER,N.H. | OCT. 1998~INTRODUCTION~
The year 1998 marks the 375th anniversary of the settlement of Dover Point and the 20th annual Dover
Heritage Tour. As the City of Dover and the Northam Colonists Historical Society celebrate these milestones,
it is only appropriate that the 1998 Heritage Tour focus on the people, places, and events surrounding the
settlements of the fishing and farming communities of Dover Point and Dover Neck.
‘The Cochecho River and Piscataqua Basin were home to aboriginal people 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. Ancestors
of these people migrated northward, in pursuit of big game such as mastodons and mammoths, about 10,000
years ago, with the shrinking of the glaciers. Many set up nomadic camp sites by river falls, where fishing was
good and, where, in later periods, they could portage their dugout canoes. The descendents of these nomads
were the people of the Algonquins, including the local Cochecho and Piscataqua tribes.
At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the local peoples had well developed fishing and farming traditions.
‘The early people had been attracted to the Piscataqua and Cochecho because of the plentiful salmon, shad,
alewives, and lamprey, which they fished with weirs, basket traps, spears and bone, and stone hooks. Alewives
are small pond-fish; shad are larger, and keep to the larger streams and lakes for spawning, Salmon prefer the
cold, swift water fed by springs. At the beginning of the fishing season, the native men built an ahquedakee,
or weir, which was constructed by placing a line of sapling stakes across the river, driven into the mud some
ten or twelve feet apart. Birch tops or brushwood was interwoven among the stakes, stretched from stake to
stake to make a barrier to the fish; to one side a space was left to let some fish pass. Fish caught by the weir
would be collected daily and prepared for storage. The squaws dressed, split and laid the catch in the sun to
dry, or hung the fish in the wigwam to smoke. The natives also speared fish by torchlight, and in the winter
season fished through the ice with stone hooks. The seacoast Indians also took fish with nets in a manner still
pursued on the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia.
In addition to plentiful fishing grounds, the natives near the Piscataqua and Cochecho Rivers valued the
outcrops of quartz and felsite along its banks. The hunters and gatherers quarried these rocks for use in tool
making. Archaeological sites along the river have unearthed many Native American artifacts. Most of the
artifacts uncovered are waste matter that accumulated from the making of tools, and broken fragments of
pounding implements or axes,
The typical crops of the Pennacooks were corn, beans, melons, squashes, pumpkins, and gourds, They also
gathered acoms, walnuts and chestnuts, and dug for groundnuts. The seacoast land was heavily forested, so
farmland was cleared by girdling and burning, Tilling of the soil was done using only an axe or hoe. The axe
was their main instrument in agriculture, as well as in other business, and was in use all through the tribes of
northem North America. The common axe had a sapling for a handle, pliant so as to bend around the axe, and
tied with the roots of spruce or the sinews on animals, They sometimes formed their hatchet handle by a more
slow but surer process: they selected a small, straight hickory, oak or other tough sapling of the proper size,
and splitting it as it stood, forced the stone axe through the cleft, They left it there until the sapling, in its
growth, had enclosed the axe firmly within its wood. The sapling was then cut at the proper length, and the
handle shaped to the taste of the owner. Their hoes were generally made of clam shells, or sometimes granite,
fastened to stiff handles,They planted in rows, much the same as we do at
present. Fish was used as a fertilizer, with a shad or
alewife buried in each hill of corn or vegetables. The fish
were so plentiful that the wives of the first settlers
shoveled them out of the brooks with fire slices and
"shod shovels," while their husbands were preparing the
fields. This technique, as well as the advice to begin
planting “when the oak leaf became as large as a
mouse's ear,” were among the skills passed on to the first
settlers.
Much of the success for European survival in New
England is due to the Native American skills. Thousands
of years of experience had taught the Cochecho and
Piscataqua tribes how to plant and process maize, to
collect medicinal herbs, to track, trap, fish, clear land,
build canoes, make snowshoes, and navigate rivers.
Indian leader Passaconnaway presided over nearly a half
century of relative peace with encroaching European
settlers. His descendants were less forgiving of the
double-dealing Europeans that used trickery, guns,
whiskey and disease to effectively wipe out the native
population. A rash of organized native reprisals struck
nearly every Seacoast town around the tum of the 18th
century. By the middle of the 1700s, the American
Indian was all but extinct in New Hampshire.
For more than a century after Columbus had discovered
America, the Piscataqua was unvisited and virtually
unknown to European explorers. The first exploration of
its shores, of which there is any record, was that of
Martin Pring. In 1603, twenty-three year old Pring
fitted-out his fifty ton ship Speedwell with thirty men,
and William Brown’s twenty-six ton bark Discoverer
with thirteen men. This small fleet was fitted out under
the patronage of the mayor, aldermen and merchants of
the wealthy English city of Bristol. They first touched at
some of the islands near the entrance of Penobscot Bay,
then visited the mouths of the Saco, Kennebunk, and
York rivers, which Pring says they found "to pierce not
far into the land." They next proceeded to the Piscataqua,
which Pring called the westernmost and best river, and
he explored it ten or twelve miles into the interior. Capt.
Pring, who, wrote of “goodly groves and woods and
sundry sorts of beasts, Stags, Deere, Beares, Wolves,
Indian Customs
To prevent the crows (which the Indians called
"Kaukor,” from the sound of eaw or screech) from
devouring the young com, small lodges were built in
the fields, in which the elder children watched, They
did not kill these crows, as they held them as sacred
as their greatest benefactors. They had a belief that
a crow brought their first kemel of com and a bean
into the country from the south west, a present from
their Great Mamit, *Kaurautonwit's" field, in the
southwest. From this kemel of com and from this
bean, they supposed they derived all their com and
beans. Hence, they thought the crow entitled to a
share, and did not offer a bounty on his head, even
though he might at times take more than was fairly
his share.
Their com was of various sorts and colors, and was
‘cured in various ways. Much of it was used when
green, either boiled or roasted for immediate use;
and still another portion was gathered when in the
milk and dried in the sun upon mats, for fall and
winter use. The com thus prepared was called sweet
com, and when boiled or soaked and roasted, had
much the same taste as green corn. The ripe corn
was gathered into heaps, and dried thoroughly, and
put by for parching and grinding. They generally
parched their com before grinding or pounding, as
they usually pounded their com with pestles in
wooden mortars, Their pestles were usually of
Branite, but often of other stone. They were often
elaborately finished, and sometimes upon the top of
them there was an attempt at rude sculpture. Dover
Historian Dr. Jeremy Belknap speaks of one upon
which was sculptured the head of a serpent. Their
mortars were often formed of stone, but were more
recently formed out of the transverse section of a
log, and often these were made in the top of a stump.
They had gourds of various kinds. They cultivated
the water melon and the Pompion or Pumpkin. The
water melon was used in fevers. The squash and
pumpkin were cooked by boiling or steaming and
often eaten raw. The common gourd was cultivated
for use and pleasure in the form of dippers and
musical instruments. Other specimens of the gourd
‘were cultivated for their edible properties, and were
designated by the general name of Askietasquash.