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Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Agriculturalist: A person with skills in the science, art, or occupation of cultivating land and raising crops; farmer.
Cultivated: Prepared and used the land for growing food.
Prior to the mass-colonization of their homelands, the Pennacook cultivated land to provide their main source of food. In the spring, they planted large gardens of squash, beans, and corn on their land near the waterfalls in present-day Lowell. They also fished for salmon, shad, eels, and sturgeon. In the summer, they traveled downriver, to present-day Newburyport, where they caught ocean fish and shellfish.
In the fall, they harvested their vegetables, gathered nuts and fruit, and hunted deer and other animals. For the winter, when they moved further inland away from the river to protect themselves from the cold winds off the water, they lived on a diet of smoked meats and dried vegetables.
To the Pennacook and other tribes living in the Merrimack Valley, fish was an incredibly important food source. At the waterfall now referred to as Pawtucket Falls, native people from across the region gathered during salmon runs in the spring to catch fish, which they preserved and stored for winter.
This 1585 drawing shows a group of Algonquian people fishing. The Pennacook would have used the similar tools and techniques. From their dugout canoes, they used spears to catch fish. In the background of the picture, men are checking their weirs, the large wooden traps used to catch fish as they moved upstream.
Image Left: Maplewood Press. Image Right: National Geographic Kids.Image Bottom: 1585 carving by Theodore de Bry and John White. Made in the vicinity of the Virginia Colony.
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