American Natives to revisit Holderness on June 4

HOLDERNESS — They were here 11 years ago on the occasion of this town’s 250th anniversary to demonstrate their traditional life-supporting and survival skills which made it possible for some early settlers to survive their first severe winters here. Coming on Saturday, June 4 are the descendants of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Natives of New Hampshire, hosts of the event that drew such enthusiastic interest a decade ago.

Starting at 10 a.m. and ending about 4 p.m., many of these same descendants will revisit the town’s riverside common and bandstand behind the post office at Curry Place in the center of town as guests of the Holderness Historical Society to demonstrate again many of those same skills; ash-splint basket-making, pottery, construction of a birch bark canoe, various tools, generational storytelling, drumming and fashioning of a large pine log into a dugout canoe. Native derived foods will also be served.

The special dugout canoe project, expected to take days to complete, is especially meaningful to the Society for three years ago they took delivery from the Shelburne Museum on Lake Champlain in Vermont a mid-17th century Native dugout discovered in Squam Lake back in 1939. That artifact has since become the cornerstone of public interest and research into life here centuries before European surveyors arrived. Still there is a ninth generation family of such early settlers living nearby.

Experts from all around have come to measure, sample and photograph this so-called Squam Lake dugout exhibited at the Society. Wooden samples were carbon-dated by laboratories in Colorado and California with annual growth rings calculated by UNH foresters, tool marks by a professor from UMass. It was carved out of white pine by both stone and metal tools.

This event, co-sponsored by the Hopkinton Historical Society and is open to the public.There is no charge, but come early as parking is limited.