When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

The white settlers called it the Great Pond; but long before they came to Maine the Indians had named it Pennesseewassee pronounced Penny-see-was-see the lake-where-the-women-died from the Abnaki words penem-pegouas-abem in memory perhaps of some unhistoric tragedy.From their villages on the upper Saco waters the Pequawkets were accustomed to cross over to the Androscoggin and often stopped at this lake midway to fish in the spring and again in winter to hunt for moose then snowbound in their yards. On snowshoes or paddling their birch canoes along the pine-shadowed streams these tawny pre-Columbian warriors came and camped on the Pennesseewassee; we still pick up their flint arrow-heads along the shore; and it may even be that the short brown Skraellings were here before them in neolithic days.