Member First Friday: Exploring the Uncommon Ground – Pawtucket-Pennacook Spaces and Colonized Places on the Molodemak

This talk explores the local and regional history of Pawtucket-Pennacook spaces, which became some of the earliest colonized places on the Molodemak/Malamake (deep river in Abenaki)frontier. For thousands of years, Indigenous bands inhabited W’banakik (the Algonquian Dawnland), before Europeans sailed to the Atlantic coast. The Pennacook Sagamore Kancamagus described the mighty Malamake as “One Rever great Many Names,” referring to numerous wolhanak (river valley) communities and interconnected kin networks, along its banks, from the river’s Atlantic mouth (later Newburyport) to its northern source. This presentation highlights Abenaki and English interactions along its shores, including how the river served as a vital conduit of socio-economic exchange for Abenaki groups, as well as cross-cultural trade, cooperation, and conflict with English colonists.