The Merrimack River: its source and its tributaries. Embracing a history of manufactures, and of the towns along its course; their geography, topography, and products, with a description of the magnificent natural scenery about its upper waters./ By J. W. Meader.

ITS SOURCE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
been suggested by its eminent appropriateness: "The smile of the
Great Spirit." Emphatically a "smile,"' equally to the Indian and
the white man, of the Great Spirit, this lovely lake has been. To
the white man it has been a teeming and inexhaustible source of
pleasure and profit, and is literally a fountain of untold wealth to
him and his posterity. To the Indian it was a granary and a treasury, affording him the means of subsistence, material for all his
implements, primitive, yet indispensable to him, whether on the warpath, the chase, or in the economy of his family and domestic
arrangements. It also afforded him tlie means of travel arid communication with his neighbors; and thle alluvial bottoms, quite numerous about the lake, cultivated by the squaws, served for his scanty
tillage, providing him with gourds, and also an opportunity to indulge in that indispensable Indian institution, the green-corn dance.
Like all the tribes of the Merrimack valley, the WAVinnipesaukees
were tributaries and confederates of the powerful and warlike nation
of the Pennacooks, and it is said that the established or customary
holidays of the Indians were a sort of movable feasts of the Pennacook confederacy, alternating between the leading fishing-places,
such as Pawtucket, " Namoskeag" and Winnipesaukee, and the
prominent points where game was collected, and the agricultural
districts, although the latter, being few and very limited, were of
secondary and inconsiderable importance or consequence. The Winnipesaukees maintained a permanent fish-weir, or ahquedaukenash,*
as they called it, at the outlet of the lake where all the tribes were
cordially invited to assemble for the spring and fall catch, and all
who could, attended. One remarkable fact connected with the fishing, at this place was that nothing but shad were captured. Of all
the migratory tribes that left the sea in the spring for their spawning-ground, the shad alone reached the lake, the eel seeking the
congenial mud; the alewives, being small fry, took to the smaller
brooks and ponds, where the absence of large fish rendered it less
hazardous to their ova. Salmon and shad proceeded together, until,
reaching the forks of the Merrimack in the town of Franklin, they
parted company; the salmon h'eading up the Pemigewasset, which,
having its sources high up among the mountains, and its course
* The last syllable of this word- ash- attached to an Indian noun, signifies the plural
number; applied to inanimate things.
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