Pennacook, Pawtucket, or Merrimack (Amerind tribe)
Nation | Defunct
1500 CE to 1736 CE
The Pennacook, also known by the names Penacook, and Pennacock, are a North American people of the Wabanaki Confederacy that primarily inhabit the Merrimack River valley of present-day New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as portions of southern Maine.They are also sometimes called the Merrimack people.
An Algonquian-speaking tribe, they are more closely related to the Abenaki tribes to the west, north and east such as the Penobscot, Piguaket or Pawtucket than to the other Algonquian tribes to the south, such as the Massachusett or Wampanoag.
This similarity is both linguistic and cultural.
However, during the time of early European settlement, the Pennacook are a large confederacy that are politically distinct and at odds with their northern Abenaki neighbors.
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The European-American population of New England totals about eighty thousand people, including sixteen thousand men of military age.
They live in one hundred and ten towns, of which sixty-four are in Massachusetts.
Many towns have built strong garrison houses for defense, and other have stockades enclosing most of the houses.
The region includes about ten thousand five hundred natives, including four thousand Narragansetts of western Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut, twenty-four hundred Nipmucks of central Massachusetts, and twenty-four hundred combined in the Massachusetts and Pawtucket tribes, living about Massachusetts bay and extending northwest to Maine.
The Wampanoags and Pokanokets of Plymouth and eastern Rhode Island number less than one thousand each.
The various tribes, though unconnected in government, speak dialects of the same language, and have a similar culture.
The war quickly spreads, and soon involves the Podunk and Nipmuck tribes.
The Native Americans attack at Middleborough and ...
...Dartmouth on July 8, ...
...Mendon on July 14, ...
...Brookfield on August 2, and ...
...Lancaster on August 9.
The Native American forces in early September attack Deerfield, ...
...Northfield, and ...
...Hadley (possibly giving rise to the Angel of Hadley legend.)
The New England Confederation declares war on the Native Americans on September 9, 1675.
The next colonial expedition is to recover crops from abandoned fields for the coming winter and includes almost a hundred farmers/militia.
Having grown careless careless, they are ambushed and soundly defeated in the Battle of Bloody Brook (near Hadley) on September 18, 1675.
The attacks on frontier settlements continue at Springfield (October 5) and ...