That Old War Cry!
Modern research is a wonderful thing particularly as it affects place names and local titles. It now develops that on the eighth of September, 1685, commissioners from Maine and New Hampshire met with certain Indians and signed a treaty of peace. Among the Indian signers was one chief, presumably of the Penacook family, named WAHOWAH. (Reference is to Mather's Magnalia, and Drake's Book ofthe Indians, Book Three, Chapter 8.) The treaty probably included the original 500 gallons which Hovey wrongfully attributed to Eleazar, the song itself being quite out on the matter of dates, since WAHOWAH lived nearly one hundred years before the founding of Dartmouth.
Wahowah was considerably involved in wars and slaughter and himself met a soldier's death in the field or at the stake while warring against the Mohawks in the 1690's. Before this last and fatal campaign he was a participant, despite the peace treaty above mentioned, in attacks at Berwick, Maine, Salmon Falls, Dover, and Pascataqua. At Salmon Falls there was much destruction and slaughter. The records indicate that Wahowah was a warrior of renown, albeit bloody, and it is to be imagined perhaps that his friends and followers used his name as a war cry on many subsequent occasions. He was, however, an Indian living within the present bounds of New Hampshire and played a prominent part in the early wars between French and Indian colonists.
