Native Americans in the Rye Area
Indian New England Before the Mayflower, by Howard S. Russell, chronicles the settlement of native Algonquin stock from approximately 8000 years ago. When first explorers arrived in the early 1600s, the Penacook confederacy thrived in this area, with the local people being called Piscataqua. Champlain records a stop at Rye Harbor in 1608, where he documents over 200 settled peoples engaged in significant agriculture and fishing. With disease decimating the local population by the time of David Thomson's settling at Odiorne in 1623, the Abenaqui confederacy to the north had filled the vacuum left by the Penacook.
Native Story
Portrait of Sylvia Stanislaus, the Farragut basketmaker, in 1899.
Across the great water the dawn greets us;
Warm winds blow up to soothe us;
From far beyond wind and rain cool and nourish us
And the last light spreads across the land;
Down blows the cold and snowy fury.
The Great Spirit nourishes and strengthens us
Through the seasons of our lives.
We are the Abenaki peoples; this is how we see the world.
Roaming and working this land for thousands of year,
We fish offshore, among the Isles, on inland ponds.
Hunting in the endless forest
Shoreline wall of firs and pines and oaks and maples
Spreading inland, this is our home.
Our paths show the pattern of our lives
Wending along shore they gently rise inland.
Mounds of our shellfish show nature's abundance.
Enough for everyone, we can share with new light-skinned peoples
Will they cooperate with us?
Good relations now, but they seem different;
Do they want to share the bounty
Of land and waters with us?
