Kendra Dean, SCA Interpretive Ranger
Mt. Chocorua is a gorgeous mountain in Albany, NH that has a rich and complicated history. It has inspired many types of people, from outdoor enthusiasts, to painters, to storytellers. This stunning summit can be reached from multiple trailheads, including the Piper Trail, which is a short drive from White Lake State Park. You can see the rocky peak peeking out above a nearby hill from the beach at White Lake.
There are many stories associated with this mountain, which is said to have been named after a Native American who died on that mountain. One of the most common versions of the legend goes like this: in 1725, there was a settlement conflict between Native Americans and white settlers resulting in the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond, or the Battle of Pequawket, after which many Pequawket tribe members moved to Canada to avoid further conflict with white settlers (so far, the story is historically accurate). There was a war chief from that tribe, Chief Chocorua, who stayed behind in Tamworth, NH due to his close companionship with a white settler named Cornelius Campbell. One day, when he had tribal business to attend to, he left his son in the care of the Campbell family. The boy found a bottle lying around that he decided to drink – it was a bottle of poison meant for eliminating foxes. When his father returned and found his son dead, he was overcome by grief and pledged revenge on Campbell’s family. Soon afterwards, Cornelius Campbell found his wife and children had been murdered. Blaming the war chief, Campbell pursued Chocorua up a mountain and had him cornered on the highest boulder. Knowing he couldn’t escape, Chocorua shouted a curse on Campbell and the other white settlers, and rather than let his old friend kill him, he jumped off the ledge to his death.
1826 painting by Thomas Cole, engraving by George Hatch. Originally titled “Death on Chocorua,” later changed to “Chocorua’s Curse”
If this story had any truth to it, it has been twisted and sculpted by storytelling over time. The first written account of a story with the character Chocorua was a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1826 titled “Jeckoyva.” The story with the Campbells was written in 1830 by Lydia Maria Child, an activist during the 19th century. That’s about 100 years after the story took place- plenty of time for a legend to be created.
According to archeologist and historian Mary Ellen Lepionka, the origin of the mountain’s name, was likely a completely different from the story. The first written reference to the name of the mountain itself was in 1784, when historian Jeremy Belknap referred to the mountain as “Corua,” an Algonquian word for a type of snake, particularly one that guards a mountain spring (in this case, likely the common water snake that is native to the region). Lepionka describes how local indigenous people may have believed serpents to be messengers from the underworld, and that rock crevices in high places were where spirits like the water serpent lived. As a result, these indigenous people did not often venture to these high places for fear of angering these spirits. Would Chocorua have gone up this mountain, even to flee, knowing this?
In 1791 Belknap referred to the summit as “Chocorua,” the “choc” likely coming from the Abenaki word meaning “rocky outcrop.” In any case, we can be sure the name was influenced by Abenaki language and/or culture. Lepionka says that it is unlikely that a Chief Chocorua actually existed, because if he had, he would have been a notable enough figure that there would be indigenous stories about him that were passed down orally, and there are not.
Another interesting part of all this folklore is an epidemic dubbed the Burton Ail, since it took place in Burton, NH, during which livestock were unexpectedly dying. It occurred over a stretch of decades following the supposed death of Chocorua. This event may have helped create the legend of Chocorua, since the stories claim that his last words included a curse upon the white settlers’ livestock. The Burton Ail was apparently so bad that the townspeople petitioned to change the name of the town in 1833 to Albany in the hopes of removing its association as a place where livestock would likely die. People eventually learned that the deaths were due to mineral-contamination in the soil of the area.
The fact that there are so many varieties of the stories surrounding Mt. Chocorua is a testament to people’s love of storytelling. Stories can be a powerful tool to shape cultures and spread ideas. Did the ideas from these myths come about as a way to simply tell a good story, or is there any truth to them? There is no real way of knowing the full story, but it is still worth hearing these stories to understand how they speak to our past, and how the past is intertwined with our lives today.
Note: I recommend reading Lepionka’s full essay through the last link of this page for more details.
References:
Mount Chocorua History — Chocorua Lake Conservancy
Chocorua Redux: Revisionist History of a Name — Chocorua Lake Conservancy
