Indigenous Cultural Heritage in New Hampshire

The areas shaded in orange on this map indicate the approximate locations of Indigenous villages and communities in the 17th century, at the time of European contact. Many of the Indigenous communities in the area still migrated seasonally for subsistence purposes. Because they were semi-permanent communities, the size and locations of their villages varied according to the season. They also had well-established waterway and overland trails, some of which are depicted and labeled here.

The overland trails on this map are based on the work of Chester B. Price, who published "Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire" with the NH Archaeological Society in 1958. His work described and mapped 24 trails and their historical significance (Price, 1958). The trails included in Price's work cover the entirety of New Hampshire. Several trails extend past the state's borders, which reiterates the fact that New Hampshire's borders were arbitrary to Indigenous understandings of the land.

Zoom in on the map using the plus sign in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen to see trail labels, and click on the orange areas to learn more about each village.

SOURCE: Price, Chester B. 1958. "Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire." The New Hampshire Archeologist, 8: 2-13.

Before covering all of present day New Hampshire, Chester B. Price published a series of "Indian Trails" for the Libby Museum in 1956 that focused on the Lakes Region. In addition to trails surrounding Lake Winnipesaukee, Price's 1956 map includes 16 campsites, six villages, and two English forts.

Upon encountering Indigenous communities, Europeans identified groups based on the location where they met. These names did not reflect how the Indigenous communities recognized and referred to themselves.

The landscape of present-day New Hampshire bears many of the place names used by the region's Indigenous residents. By claiming places as Indigenous, these sites bear witness to the ongoing presence of Native American communities and their connection to the landscape in meaningful ways. That being said, some of these Indigenous place names have been misinterpreted. It is our aim to clarify their etymology.

In the Abenaki language, Woban-aden-ok means “to the place of the high white or crystal/mica mountains,” or what Euro-American settlers refer to as the “White Mountains.” The former Stone Face also known as the "Old Man of the Mountain" on Cannon Mountain represents a site of socio-historical, cultural, and economic contestation between the tourist Euro-American narratives claiming the land, and Indigenous attempts at counter-geography: viewing the landscape as an invaluable source of the peoples’ history and cultural heritage.

By using landscape as a story, about relations between Indigenous people and colonial settlers, Chocorua Mountain claims this site as Native American. Mount Washington exemplifies Native Americans’ respect for and reverence of natural landscapes as sites of divine powers and the settler colonial challenge to these beliefs. Mount Passaconaway sheds light on the colonial expansion leading to land-contestation between and within Euro-American settlers and regional Indigenous communities. Mount Jasper demonstrates Indigenous communities’ creative and extensive use and exchange of lithic materials for millennia prior to European colonialism. Hence, the region’s landscape of what is today called New Hampshire flourishes with Indigenous presence.

Winnipesaukee, Piscataqua, Nashua, Kangamangus, Amoskeag, Kearsarge, and other places recall this connection. Despite the colonial narrative of the Native American erasure, Indigenous peoples knew this landscape and its resources. They continue to value and participate in our diverse communities’ daily lives.

Click each point on the map to the right to learn more about Abenaki place names and culturally significant landscape features. The illustrated points (mountains, fish, and waterways) indicate locations with longer narratives. The points beyond the NH boundaries are part of N'Dakinna. Zoom in to read the names of bodies of water.

SOURCES: DeLucia, Christina. 2018. Memory Lands: King's Phillip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. Yale University Press. Sassen, Saskia, 2000. "Women's Burden: Counter-geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival." Journal of International Affairs 53(2): 503-524.

Over 12,000 years ago, after the gradual recession of a mile-high layer of ice, the ancestors of today’s Abenaki people encountered a new landscape. Over the millennia, people left behind traces of their presence, some of which have been identified by archaeologists. Click on the points on the map to find out about the archaeological sites in New Hampshire that have contributed to our knowledge of the long-term presence of Indigenous peoples.

Note: In order to protect culturally sensitive sites, these points are approximations rather than exact locations.

In U.S. history, conflicts have often stemmed from misunderstandings concerning natural resources and land ownership. In order to understand historic events depicted on this map, we must consider the environmental contexts.

In his 1983 publication, Changes in the Land, environmental historian William Cronon argues that if Europeans had not crossed the Atlantic to settle in the New World, New England ecosystems would look vastly different (Cronon 1983: 160). While European settlers were not the sole agents of environmental change in New England, the ways they altered the environment were both profound and irreversible (Cronon 1983: 161). Settlers arrived with foreign animals, plants, diseases, as well as unfamiliar beliefs, practices, and laws that forced destructive changes on Indigenous communities (Cronon 1983: 163).

During the 1600s, colonial settlements spread and rapidly grew in size. Many Europeans considered the Indigenous peoples to be living in poverty and compared them to England's beggars (Cronon 1983: 33). This perception was primarily based on how Indigenous communities utilized the land. What many settlers failed to recognize was that New England's abundance of resources was a direct result of Indigenous peoples' use of the land throughout the pre-colonial (formally known as “Pre-Contact”) history (Cronon 198: 80). In other words, the settlers did not make the connection that the resources that initially attracted them to New England were a result of Indigenous care and management.

As Cronon (1983: 159) explains, by 1800, the ability of the remaining Indigenous communities "to move about the landscape in search of ecological abundance had become severely constrained." The forced assimilation to Euro-American culture for the Indigenous populations resulted in long-term negative health and wellness effects and severe destruction to Indigenous communities and their home.

Click the markers on this map to learn more about the New Hampshire Historical Highway Markers and monuments that have been erected by New Hampshire detailing some of the events and conflicts that ensued after the arrival of European peoples. Each commemorative marker features varying degrees of skewed colonial narratives, which we discuss and interpret in this map.

SOURCES: Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.