Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/205

 COO-ASH-AUKE.

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��lard, better known as " Master l^al- lard," the noted teacher of a select school, but the sermons were usually or always read by Harris, whose skill as a public reader gave him an ac- knowledged prominence in this part of the services.

The remains of John Harris, with those of his wife and unmarried chil- dren, were buried in the old cemetery of Hopkinton village, on the right side of the lot. as one enters by the

��front gate, and a number of rods in- wardly. The remains of Catharine f.ittle lie in another part of the same yard. It is an unfortunate circum- stance that the graves of the Judge and Mrs. Harris are both in a sad state of neglect, the headstones being prostrate and broken. The grave of Ann Harris is not in any better condition.

There is no descendant of John Harris living.

��COO-ASH-AUKE.

��BY LEVI W. DODGE, SYRACUSE, N. V,

��'Twere long and needless here to tell How to my hand these papers fell, With me they cannot stay. — Marmion.

��There is perhaps no subject

��greater interest to the earnest antiqua- rian than the origin and history of ge- ographical proper names ; those of aboriginal no less than those of mod- ern attachment. The facts and impres- sions here recorded, may gratify the curiosity of some of the readers of "The Granite " interested in ve mat- ters of ye olden time.

Coos, the title attached to our north- ern county, is purely of Indian deriva- tion, and of the dialect of the Abene- kies, a confederacy of tribes once inhabiting the territory now included in New Hampshire and Western Maine, and north to the River St. Law- rence. It is a corruption of "Coo-ash," signifying pines ; the syllable ash being the plural ending in that dialect.

It was among the aborigines of the country even as in our own time, the inhabitants of any particular section were known by some name attached to, or descriptive of the portion of country in which they were located. We know the "Green Mountain Boys" live only in Vermont. So among the natives the Coo-ash-aukes were the dwellers of the " pine-tree country,"

��from Coo-asli, pines, and aiikc or akce, place or section, the latter having a broader signification than the terminal of auke, which was more generally applied

��to localities. This title was attached to the country and its inhabitants north of the mountains and along the Con- necticut valley above Moosilauke. It is not probable that these pine country Indians assumed tribal regulations un- til after the advent of the white man or the breaking up of the more impor- tant and powerful organizations below. Nor is this the only location bearing that title. There is a stream, a branch of the lower Merrimack, the outlet of Massabesic Lake, still known by its Indian name, " Cohos Brook ;" and the country around and through which it flows was once a dense forest of pine, the "'Coo-ash" of the natives. Nor is this the only Indian title still clinging like the ancient pine to its native soil around this northern section, and doubdess brought hither by those exiles from the lower Merrimack, when driven from the hunting grounds and the homes of their fathers, to seek a temporary abiding place " around the head waters of the Connecticut."

When, in the early part of the i 7th century, Capt. John Smith coasted along the shore of New England, and

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