Legend Of The Spirit Keepers Pennacook Lodge, Order Of The Arrow Volume 1 | Page 2

The Legend Of

The Spirit Keepers
In the lands that make our council there lived a group of Abenaki, a people of the
dawn, known as the Pennacook. Their range once extended from the sacred top of
Agiocochook, now known as Mt. Washington, and all lands southward to the
Saughus to the Blue Hills and on to the Ponkapoag. They were a people bound
by language and custom. For a thousand generations these children of the forest
fished and hunted, defended and protected, explored and discovered, woke and
slept, lived and died beneath the shining stars of heaven. In these lands where
nature could prove least forgiving, a common spirit of the people bound the
Pennacooks together through any challenge.
To give thanks for the bountiful gifts latent in nature’s depths, the people
prayed and gave thanks to God. They created great stone monuments to connect
themselves though the spirit keepers of the land. From these great testaments to
the powers of the world the Pennacook’s sought the protection from the great spirit
and banished the dark that would do the people harm.
From the water-flushed heights of Pawtucket Falls, the Sachems of
the Pennacook’s sat to lead in inspired governance from among the people.
Passaconaway-Great
Upon a throne adorned of beaver skin, turtle shells and pheasant quills,
stood protected with the tomahawk, hearing the cry of loon and collecting the sustenance of
the cod and lobster sat the powerful Passaconway, the child of the bear. He was a spirit
keeper, a powerful Bashaba- a chief of chief’s, born with medicine of the earth in his veins.
He could control the very essence of nature, throwing lightning among his enemies and
turning dry leaves green again.
Joyously content, the Pennacook’s lived for centuries upon the banks of the Merrimack and
the Concord and along the New Hampshire and Massachusetts seacoast, undisturbed by
foreign neighbor. But upon the waves of the great sea came a shadow that would plunge deep
within the heart of the people. The invaders were coming.
At first they came from the north, Acadia, bearing the gifts of peaceful friends. Trade
with them was good but a plague swept unseen and unheard from village to village. Voices,
once reaching from each wigwam with abounding laughter fell silent, muted by the eerie cry
of silence. Entire villages ceased to exist and the number of the Pennacook that walked the
earth slipped eight fold.

Bashaba