ea 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.