Rivers
More than eleven thousand years ago, in the region surrounding Mount Monadnock, early native peoples found inhabitance. They would later be known as the Pennacook tribe, people who spoke Algonquin and came to dialects of Abenaki. Pěnâ-kuk—at the bottom of the hill, highland. A people who fished the tidal waters and wetlands in and around the Merrimack river watershed. Historically, they have been considered a people of hunters: one technique included the construction of a weir—a series of large rocks moved into an irregular line across and near an outlet of a river pointing downstream, with a matting woven of twigs and tough bark strung between the rocks, leaving only a narrow opening for the shad to pass through. Across the Northeast many Algonquian-speaking bands of peoples held names for the rivers they inhabited—Kenebec (deep river), Androscoggin (river of cliff rock shelters), Nashaway (place of two rivers)—the river, life-source and being. It would be the river that would bring the white man.
Song Language Music Naming Subjectivity Translation Emerson History Erasure[violence] 427 Child of the Bear Indian Words Intention Rivers Preservation Body[music] Thresholds Dialogues Water Return