Penakuk

The Pennacook were a loose confederacy of Algonquian-speaking village communities of central Abenaki stock, settled along the upper Merrimack River in New Hampshire. Their name means at the bottom of the hill, and their main towns stood at Amoskeag Falls and Pennacook.

Related to but distinct from the coastal Wabanaki Confederacy, they were among the first peoples to meet English colonists and were cut down by epidemics, then harassed by Mohawk and Mi'kmaq raiders. In the seventeenth century the sachem Passaconaway kept the peace with New England, but King Philip's War, which began in 1675, dragged in his people.

His successor Wonalancet held neutral while other bands fought. After the defeat many Pennacook were enslaved while the rest fled to the Hudson valley or Quebec, where they merged with the Abenaki of Odanak and the Wabanaki nations.