Posted on 06/14/2004 5:59:40 PM PDT by Jimmyclyde
By Trudy Tynan Associated Press Writer
DEERFIELD, Mass. - No one argues that they reflect one side's view _ etched in stone _ of a 300-year-old war fought when this western Massachusetts community was the frontier.
Proud descendants of Deerfield's white settlers erected historical markers by the dozens here back in the days when the battleground with Indian tribes had shifted west to the Black Hills of South Dakota.
But now, some say, the markers have become a modern embarrassment in this museum village that for centuries has been consumed with preserving history.
So, in an exhibit, unabashedly called "Covering Up History," historians have hung removable banners over some of the marble plaques in Memorial Hall Museum commemorating the attacks on Deerfield during the French and Indian Wars. Visitors are invited to comment on the rewrite.
The aim is to drape the rhetoric of the 1870s and 1880s, when the museum was established, with a more modern version of events in the late 1600s and early 1700s that no longer denigrates one-time foes.
"It was hard for me and other members of the staff to rationalize the words. Phrases like 'bloodthirsty savages' are hurtful to people," said Suzanne Flynt, a curator at the museum operated by the Pocumtuck Valley Historical Society.
Visitors can still lift the banners to view original inscriptions, such as "Mary Field, adopted by an Indian. Was named WALAHOWEY. She married a savage and became one."
The covering version reads: "Mary, adopted by a Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk). Was named WALAHOWEY (WELAHAWI). She married a Kanien'kehaka and adopted the culture, customs and language of her new community in Kahanawake."
Mary was 6 when a combined force of Mohawks, Hurons, Abenakis and French Canadians attacked Deerfield in 1704 killing 50 residents and marching more than 100 others, nearly half of them children, off to captivity in Quebec.
While most of the captured children were eventually returned, some, mostly girls, refused to leave the matrilineal Mohawk society, where they had more rights than the Puritan colony offered women. A few others converted to Catholicism and built a new life in French Canada. The first archbishop of Quebec was a grandson of one of the Deerfield captives.
"History is written by the victors," Robert Jones, a retired Navy commander and carrier pilot said Friday as he lifted the banners to read the original inscriptions.
Jones, of North Conway, N.H., wearing a cap from the carrier USS America, said he and his wife now travel the nation in their recreational vehicle visiting museums.
The written comments left by other visitors were divided, but most said they hoped the museum would keep both interpretations of history.
"We need to realize they (interpretations of history) will change again," wrote Kathy Krup of Chippewa Heights, Ill.
The fate of the outdoor memorials marking skirmishes and battles poses a more difficult problem, Flynt said.
"The question has long been what do we do," Flynt said. "Our organization put them up. And some are just granite boulders."
One proposal is to move all the offending historical markers into a sort of graveyard of political incorrectness by the museum. The historical association is also considering installing competing signs alongside the old markers. But that, Flynt says, would cost thousands of dollars.
Chiseling out the offending language or removing the markers has been ruled out, she said. "We don't want to do anything irreversible."
Monique Fordham, director of Friends of Wissatinnewag, an advocacy group named for the site of a nearby native village where more than 300 women, children and elderly were slaughtered by colonial militia in 1676, called the exhibit "a good first step."
"Finally, they did something," she said.
Her group had complained years ago about the markers, including one that praises "the patriotism and bravery" of the soldiers involved in the attack on the noncombatants.
She would prefer to see new markers erected alongside the old.
"Our organization believes in teachable moments," Fordham said. "And that would create an opportunity for some lessons."
Yes I like this idea. Let's get the Nazi interpretations of WWII or their interpretations of say the "summer camps of joy and fun" known to us in our interpretation as the death camps.
What a joke.
bump
Down the memory hole....
Next....they will probably cover up this offensive quote on the Deerfield "Civil War Monument which stands on the Old Meetinghouse Hill which is within the limits of the Old Fort built A.D. 1689 and which remained until A.D. 1758. And which was one of the chief defences of the early settlers against the attacks of the savage indians."
"Aye call it holy ground
The spot where first they trod!
They have left unstained what here they found
Freedom to worship God."
I had a colleague at NYU, since dead, who wrote in a book review that his ancestry was part Indian and that in his opinion American Indians often behaved with excessive cruelty. Torture was a regular part of their culture.
There was much to admire about the Indians, too. But the bad has to be taken with the good. Rewriting history to make loonie PCs feel more comfortable isn't the way to deal with the problems of the past.
Clearly hate speech. Consider yourself warned!
What a load of crap!
'Hurtful' is another word like 'diversity' that I'm sick and tired of hearing. 'Hurtful' is when the 'bloodthirsty savages' put your feet in the fire or when the 'settlers' bus' a cap in yo' ass!
The feminization and wussification of America continues.
Human sacrifice and cannibalism were also known among the savages that inhabited early
America....
That was simply the way it was....for a while we made it better....seems to be returning to the depravity that once was...
So whose the savages now...?
My husband & I visited Old Deerfield Village last Fall.
I asked about that quote on Civil War Monument at the History Museum.
None of the reference librarians knew the source. I suggested they do a 'google' search on the quote and we found the author, an Irish Poetess Felicia Hemans.
It's from her "Pilgrim Poem" which was so popular at the time the monument was erected that no one thought to give her any credit.
Aparently everyone in Deerfield could recite her poem.
My, my.... how the times have changed.
If they really wanted to be hurtful...
"Mary decided to stay in their heathen and backward culture that had yet to even invent the wheel by the time the colonist settled the land."
Upset, that is, at Jefferson's wording, not at the incidents which provoked his language.
...and was dead by age 30.
How about this rationalization: "These words were written over 120 years ago. People thought differently than they do now."
If the museum curator is too stupid to understand this simple but powerful fact of history then she needs to find a new job.
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