Nipmuc

Lyrics

[Intro]
Before the name Southborough.
Before Marlborough.
Before the King's grant.
There was just the sound of the Assabet,
finding its way through the pines.
The smell of wild strawberry on a warm morning.

[Verse 1]
We called them Nipmuc.
People of the freshwater pond.
They knew the lean months and the fat ones.
Their stone weirs caught the alewives coming upriver.
Their hands planted the three sisters,
corn holding up the beans, squash shading the roots.
A good arrangement.
Their fires burned clearings in the woods you later called parks.

[Chorus]
But the river doesn't keep names.
It only remembers the shape of the bank, the weight of a canoe.
The paper remembers Waban, remembers Onamog.
But the land remembers the unnamed, the uncounted.
The quiet footfalls between the trees.

[Verse 2]
Then came a new smell on the wind.
Coal smoke mixing with the birch fire.
A new God, taught in a straight-walled house at Okoongkomesit.
And new words on paper, deeds and surveys.
Lines drawn through hunting grounds.
A different kind of arrangement.
Not so good for everyone.

[Chorus]
But the river doesn't keep names.
It only remembers the shape of the bank, the weight of a canoe.
The paper remembers Waban, remembers Onamog.
But the land remembers the unnamed, the uncounted.
The quiet footfalls between the trees.

[Bridge]
Sixteen seventy-five.
Sixteen seventy-six.
The year of the burning.
The year of the running.
The year of the bitter salt wind on Deer Island.
The smell of fear and sickness, a world away from pine and strawberries.
So many names washed away by that winter tide.

[Outro]
The Assabet still finds its way.
The strawberries still grow, if you know where to look.
I carry the deeds, the surveys, the histories written by the victors.
But under the asphalt, under the foundations,
the earth holds a different memory.
A different name.
Nipmuc.