Sunday, June 28, 2020

Musketaquid and Petapawag

This past week I paddled the waters of two locations possessing what I think are great Native American names.

 The first, "Musketaquid", is generally understood to mean something along the lines of "grass grown river" or "place where the water flows through grass" and no section fits the above description better than the Sudbury River upriver from Sherman's Bridge in Wayland, MA.  Sky, water, and grass... 


With only an occasional tree upon which a very solemn heron greeted the morning sun...

Sherman's Bridge welcomed this paddler back to the terrestrial realm...

The second place, "Petapawag", is said to be the Native American word for the area where Nod Brook flows into the Nashua River and generally believed to mean "swampy place" or "miry place".   At a spot near the Nashua River's Petapawag Boat Launch and the intersection of Nod Road and Main Street in Groton is this stone marker...
...which mentions the first English settler, John Tinker, having "built prior to 1659 an Indian Trading Post about 500 yds easterly of this marker".  So I  headed in an easterly direction down Nod Road and came to the John Tinker Trail...
...which ends at a beautiful spot overlooking one of the Nashua's sloughs.
However, if the stone marker's mention of 500 yards is accurate the John Tinker Trail is closer to 700 yards distant. Other than the stone marker, most written historical accounts mention Tinker's Trading Post having been located near the mouth of Nod Brook so with that in mind I tried paddling to the brook's mouth from the Nashua River in hopes of finding the site.  Paddling into the brook's mouth revealed a very swampy place with only one section where there was any land high enough to fit the bill.  At the base of this small hill or ridge was this tree bearing some interesting markings... 

After finding a spot where anything close to landfall could be made, I climbed the bank to the elevated terrace at the top... 
  A look down to my boat gives an idea as to its height in relationship to the brook/river confluence...

Of course I have no idea whether or not this terrace existed back in the 1650's, but if it did it may have been a suitable location for a trading post.  Additionally it is located just about 500 yards from the stone marker except rather than being "easterly" it's in a more northeasterly direction.

 At any rate I wonder what John Tinker might have given in trade for these specimens...
...gathered up along the way.

One thing I found troubling in reading about John Tinker was his practice of offering credit to Native Americans for up to two hunting seasons worth of furs in advance.  In A Tinker Family: The Ancestors and Descendants of Joseph Wescot Tinker by Frederick James Libbie was the following: "At this time and later, he (Tinker) was a trader with the Indians, buying beaver and other skins.  Original notes of hand are preserved, with Indian marks, showing how some of them mortgaged to him all their prospective gains for two hunting seasons."  When some Native Americans failed to deliver an adequate amount of furs he then allowed them to sell him land in order to satisfy the debt.  According to John Pendergast's The Bend in the River Tinker famously did this with one of the great sachem Passaconaway's sons, Nammacocomuck, who was imprisoned for a 50 pound debt he signed for.  Passaconaway had to sell one of the most beautiful islands in the Merrimack River, Wickasee, to get his son out of jail. 

From Petapawag I headed upriver...
 ...and ran into a rather friendly groundhog...

I'd imagine the coat he's wearing may have fetched a good sum at Tinker's Trading Post.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Everything But Boganegan


This past Monday morning proved perfect for an early (0630) morning launch into the Merrimack River. I'd try locating a place not shown on any modern maps...Boganegan.  I first saw mention of this place while reading John Pendergast's The Bend in the River: A Prehistory and Contact Period History of Lowell, Chelmsford, Dracut, Tyngsborough, and Dunstable (Nashua, NH), Massachusetts.  Pendergast wrote the following about John Cromwell, the first European settler in the area which became Tyngsborough: "His dwelling was on the present site of the Pheasant Lane Mall in Tyngsborough and Nashua, just south of the Middle/Late Archaic fishing weir originally called Boganegan after an individual Indian or a small group which lived near the weir (see Map 9 from Pendergast's book above).  The prehistoric name of the area where his house was located is Naacook, 'fishing place.'  The stone piles jutting out into the river are still visible and is presently known as 'Dead Man's'.  It is about two miles north of the Tyngsborough Bridge.  At this site square holes have been driven into large stones in the river much like those which 10th and 11th century Western European seamen dropped metal pins into to moor their vessels."

This being more than enough information to whet my appetite, I paddled away from Riverfront Park and headed upriver.  Knew I'd reached the Pheasant Lane Mall upon seeing this...
...assemblage of 8 mostly submerged shopping carts, perhaps a modern-day fish weir?

The only rocks I could find that jutted out into the river were these...

...on the west shore.  

There was also this one...

...and these having a hand-laid look...

I never saw any stones with the square holes Pendergast mentioned.  I did note some large submerged rocks near the eastern shore but, again, didn't see any square holes.  If there is an ancient fish weir in this area it's probably submerged deep below the surface since the 1847-built Pawtucket Dam significantly raised the water level.

I went as far as Salmon Brook...

So while I didn't find Boganegan either on the river or on the internet, I did find some old iron tools...
...that may have dropped out of a collapsing riverbank...
...and encountered a large flotilla of ducklings...

Also found some trash which included a couple of older bottles, REX Distillers Boston, MA and CERTO...

Even came across an old Nashua and Lowell Railroad milepost overlooking the river which showed the number 6 on both sides...
...keeping things in perfect balance.

Took a last peek at the stately Tyngsborough Bridge...
...before ending my search.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Closing Out One Strange Spring



Our 'Covid Spring' paddling season has come to a close and it'll be forever remembered by me as the strangest I've experienced...a season where the earliest birds really did get the worm.  During these days of uncertainty, social distancing, and mask wearing who'd have guessed that the one thing we could reliably count upon would be ideal weather. Of course weather this good (without rain) does have a downside as the photo above showing the dam on the Nashua River in Ayer attests.    

The Nashua became one of my frequent haunts this spring joining others in my circuit such as:   
The Assabet...

 
The Squannacook/Nashua confluence...
The lower Squannacook...
...where I encountered the 'Sage of the Squannacook'...


The sloughs of the Nashua in Groton...
...where an eastern kingbird made his circuit of the yellow lillies...

The Charles between Dover and Needham...

The Concord between Carlisle and Bedford and...
The Sudbury on a rare cloudy day...


This spring also provided an opportunity to join fellow members of a winter hiking society (Erik, Jules, Jonathan, Conrad, and the society's founder, Joe) for a couple of aquatic hikes: 

Hope we didn't scare anyone when we approached the take-outs...


Trash has remained light during these Covid times with this small haul being typical...

One recent exception...

Another artist's riverside mural...

This paddler is glad to have paddled through the Covid Spring and looks forward to more of the same during the upcoming summer paddling season.  So long as the State of Massachusetts sticks to its plan of using 4 key metrics in setting the course, I'm cautiously optimistic that paddlers will continue having safe paddles and landfalls...
 

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Worth a Second Look



Three weeks back I had an unexpected encounter with a petroglyph etched into a standing stone.  After consulting with one of the area's writer/historians, I'd learned the image may be a representation of the Native American motif known as the "Underwater Panther" or "Mishipeshu". This past Tuesday I decided to revisit the stone and make sure it hadn't been a dream.

Got a crack-of-dawn start and arrived early at the launch site.  No sooner had I arrived than a nearby homeowner approached...not to hassle me, but to provide a bear alert as he'd just seen one in his backyard.  Shortly after he departed, I saw the bear ambling towards where I needed to go. Needless-to-say I found myself doing a good bit of loud whistling. First time for me seeing a black bear in my home state which I considered a good omen.

The mighty Connecticut River had been greatly reduced by a relatively long spell without meaningful rain.  The Montague City gauge showed 7.5' compared with 13.8' when I was there on 5/20.  As a result things were tame enough to allow paddling to Smead Island...
History tells of 100 wigwams and 30 canoes having been destroyed on Smead's Island by colonial forces in the days following the Turners Falls massacre of 1676.  However, the 
Smead's Island referenced in those accounts was likely the next island upriver, known today as Rawson Island.

After visiting the island I headed down the Connecticut paddling past the Deerfield River's mouth where swirling currents often prevail.  On Tuesday the confluence was calm and clear as could be with this sea lamprey enjoying his digs there...

From here on down to Third Island were dozens of dead shad...some on the bottom, most floating or stuck in branches...
A dead opossum? ended up in the mix.  
For the many immature eagles seen that day it must have been like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

At the railroad bridge a train crew pulling out of the East Deerfield freightyard enjoyed a commanding view of the river...
 

A little further downriver I stumbled upon a riverside campsite located at the mouth of Hatchery Brook...
After ascending the above pictured stairs another 3 flights await...
...which brought me to the well-maintained (by the AMC) campsite located high above the river.  There's a picnic table, tent platforms, and a bear-proof storage container.  The site can accommodate 10 campers and users are reminded to secure their boats and asked to refrain from having campfires. 

Approaching Third Island I could appreciate why the young Pocumtuck sachem Wattawolunksin chose to maintain his lodge there within sight of Mt. Toby (known to Native Americans as Kunckwadchu) ...
In The History of Montague:A Typical Puritan Town by Edward P. Pressey the author wrote the following regarding life of indigenous peoples before the arrival of Europeans: "Life for the most part was one long sweet dream" and also "When no war cloud hung over Kunckwadchu, this was paradise."  A map of Franklin County in 1858 by H.F. Walling identifies this island as Grindstone Island.

Today the island provides lodging for an eagle family...
 
...and the nesting adult eagle enjoyed the view of Kunckwadchu.


My main objective for the day, however, was to re-visit the petroglyph I encountered on 5/20 and eventually I came upon it veiled in shrubbery...

After temporarily pulling back the veil, the glyph and I were, once again, eye to eye...

How could I not respect this mythical creature I've been learning more about, and the powerful legends associated with it?  The story about the image and its possible creator is slowly unfolding, and I'm left to wonder why the creature revealed itself to me. I proceeded to make what I considered to be an appropriate offering...
  ...in hopes of keeping our relationship on good terms.

Additionally, this small amount of trash was removed from Mishipeshu's waters...
...which included one of the more colorful inflatables I've ever encountered...