Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/149

 BAKER'S RIVER.

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��except his canoe and his hunting, fish- ing and cooking apparatus, all of which were of the roughest and most simple character.

Up to the year 1700 and later, these hardy Coosauks traversed freely the places where thriving villages now stand and the intervales along the banks of their own Asquamchumauke. . This riv- er from its mouth to just below Went- worth Village was a great resort for the Indians. As they passed back and forth between the Pemigewassett and the Connecticut, on hunting and fishing ex- cursions, or for the purpose of traffic with the Squams or Peuacooks, on the one side, or with the Canada tribes on the other, they followed up this river to just below Wentworth Village, some- times in their canoes and sometimes by laud. Here they left the river and fol- lowed up the valley of Pond Brook to the ponds in Orford and Piermont, over what was termed a carrying ground or place, and from thence one route led di- rectly across to the Connecticut River in Piermont and another turned north from the upper pond and extended up to the place where long afterwards and now long ago, was Tarleton's Tavern, thence to the valley of the Oliverian Brook, so called, and thence to their encampments on the k, Ox Bow." A line of spotted trees indicated these routes, known as carrying grounds.

Some of the early exploring parties of the whites followed this route from Ply- mouth to Wentworth, thence up Pond brook to the upper pond in Piermont and then turning northward sought the val- ley of the Oliverian Brook or River, and thence west to Haverhill. Other parties followed-Baker's River up as far as War- ren Village and thence by one route or another crossed over to the Haverhill Valley. Above the present site of Went- worth Village, the Indians did not use the river much as a thoroughfare, but they pitched their tents along upon its borders, dwelling there in summer, and following their usual avocations of hunt- ing and fishing. The location of some of these camping grounds have been dis- covered, by the arrows and hatchets of

��stone, which have been found in these places. #

The Indians had undoubtedlj 7 explored this river to its source, and were well ac- quainted with its origin, as the name they gave it would imply. They had an encampment, or a place of favorite resort at the mouth of the river upon the north side of it upon the intervale near where it unites with the Pemigewassett. Here they built their wigwams; here they de- posited their furs and game ; here they had their sports ; here they sang their songs; danced their war' dances, and smoked the pipe of peace. Here, Indian graves and bones have been found, also stone mortars, pestles, hatchets, arrows and other Indian utensils.

As they passed up and down the river by land, they soon found and marked paths from point to point, cutting off the bends in the river and thus shortening the distance and making the route more direct, and hence many of the first roads laid out *by the whites in the several towns upon the river were laid out and built upon these lines of spotted trees, which originally marked the wandering Indians path from hill to hill, and along the valleys.

But a question naturally arises here, why was this river, the Indian " As- quamchumauke, " called in English, * - Ba- ker's River?" We find that it was so called, when the first settlers came on ; it is so called in the journal of Capt. Powers in 1754, of whose travels, we shall hereafter speak.

It seems that early in the year 1709, one Thomas Baker was taken captive from Deerfield, Mass., by the Indians and carried up Connecticut River to Lake Memphremagog and thence to Can- ada. The next year he was ransomed and returned by the same route to his home in Northampton, Mass., thus hav- ing gained a knowledge of the route and of some of the haunts of the Indians. In 1712, he raised a company of 31 men, in- cluding one friendly Indian, as a guide. His object was to ferret out and destroy, if possible, the Indians having their en- campment somewhere upon the waters of the Pemigewassett River. He then

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