Posted on 06/20/2004 5:46:51 PM PDT by NortNork
DEERFIELD -- Residents of this pristine postcard of a place take their history seriously. The French and Indian raid on English settlers here in 1704 is not just the stuff of textbooks, but it's also vivid lore, spoken of in rich detail by town dwellers in this Pioneer Valley spot that boasts one of New England's first museums. Yet in the minds of some, the history etched in dozens of tablets, plaques and gravesites across the county is in need of change. With this year marking the 300th anniversary of the raid, the local historical society -- which oversees many of the markers -- has taken to placing removable covers on memorials with language it considers offensive, such as references to ''savages" and ''Negro servants." The coverings are cloth, shaded to mimic the swirls of the marble tablets and scripted with revised text. So where one marble tablet originally read, ''Mary, adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one." The covering's text reads, ''She married a Kanien'kehaka and adopted the culture, customs and language of her new community in Kahnawake." Not everyone is pleased with the revisions, calling it cultural sensitivity run amok. One couple, Rose and James Matthews of Woodbury, Conn., wrote in a letter to the historical society, ''We condemn your attempt to create a warm and fuzzy feeling for our Colonial history because of political correctness or personal attitudes. What will you do next? . . . [claim] the hatchet marks were actually tooth marks made by tall mice seeking shelter from the cold?" The question of whether to redress insensitive language enshrined in historical records has surfaced with increasing frequency in recent years, with varying approaches and solutions employed. Explanatory text has been placed next to an original at times.Changing the wording of a marker, historians said, is rare. The best known instance is that of the obelisk marking the end of the Santa Fe Trail. An unidentified man in 1974 chiseled out the word ''savage" from the inscription, leaving an indentation in its place, which has been allowed to remain. Generally, though, Dwight Pitcaithley, the chief historian of the National Park Service, said efforts have been made to leave historical markers intact -- even when deemed offensive by modern standards."A general policy is to respect them for what they are," Pitcaithley said. Officials at Deerfield's local historical society said they have faced mounting pressure from Native Americans in recent years to revise historical markers commemorating the 1704 raid, long portrayed as an unprovoked attack on pioneers by marauding French and Native Americans. The predawn assault left 50 English settlers dead. Another 112 were taken captive and marched to Canada in brutal winter conditions. Almost a third of the captives returned to New England, including the Rev. John Williams, who wrote an account of the raid that became a best-seller in Colonial times. In fact, some say, a more accurate history reflects that the settlers helped incite the attack by snatching the land from the Native Americans -- a view not included in the nearly 40 memorial plaques and markers, known as ''blessings in the landscape." Many were erected in the 19th and early 20th centuries by descendants of the raid's victims. The markers' new coverings, the historical society officials say, include the missing piece of the story. ''We're hoping to engage visitors in a dialogue about this history written in stone, and have them think about who wrote the words, whose history is being told and ultimately whose story is left out," said Suzanne Flynt, the curator of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association's Memorial Hall Museum. ''My view is that it's a first step." Brian Deer, a resident of Canada and a member of the Mohawk tribe, who advised the historical society on the wording, said he is pleased with the outcome. ''You can't just wipe it, you have to update them," he said. ''Replacing them would border on political correctness and you really don't want to do that. So you leave it all there, and reword them to today's language." But for some, the coverings amount to political correctness gone awry. ''The language of the time is part of the history, too," said Mary Beth Radke, a Deerfield resident. ''They shouldn't be covered up. Maybe they should be qualified, something put up nearby to say that the Native Americans had hardships too and reasons for doing what they did." The matter of how to reflect colonial history has grown more complex of late across Massachusetts, born some say of a 1983 change in the law that gave Indian burial grounds new protections. That brought more Native Americans into the process of identifying and interpreting historical sites. ''We are being contacted by more and more local Native Americans who are descended from the native tribes that lived in Massachusetts when it was first settled," said Brona Simon, the state archaeologist. ''The people are really interested in filling the gaps in their history and making sure the history is accurate." One case in point is Easthampton, where a dispute erupted in January over a planned memorial for an Indian attack 300 years earlier. A committee of the Easthampton Historical Society proposed the rededication of a marker and educational events on the site of the assault, but scrapped the plans after Native Americans complained that the presentations were one-sided. In nearby Deerfield, officials planning commemorations of its 1704 raid were acutely aware of the Easthamption conflict, and had previously faced protest over the raid's portrayal -- in the form of red paint poured on the monuments at night. As such, historical society officials say, they have taken pains to include Native Americans in their reinterpretation of the 1704 raid. In 1992, the museum added a stone to their Memorial Hall honoring the Pocumtucks, noting that in Deerfield they ''hunted, fished, and raised their families with a great understanding and respect for the land." The cloth coverings -- so far placed on three marble plaques contained in the Memorial Hall Museum -- are another step in the process, according to Tim Neumann, the executive director of the historical society. ''Many people are of the mind that history is set in stone," Neumann said. ''The truth, with a capital ''T," is history is very hard to document."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
They might as well write,
"America stood on this spot many
years ago but it wasn't really worth much in light of all that we know about it now."
That is what they want you know.
Was Mary adopted by the Indians because she was taken in a raid and her parents were murdered? Or because she was found orphaned, and the Indians generously took her in?
Just before dawn, February 29, 1704, a band of 300 French and Indians attacked the Massachusetts frontier village of Deerfield.
As Indians invaded his bedroom, the Rev. John Williams, minister of the Congregational church, expected “an imminent passage through the valley of death.”
“Taking down my pistol,” he wrote in The Redeemed Captive, “I cocked it and put it to the breast of the first Indian who came up, but my pistol misfiring, I was seized by three Indians who disarmed me and bound me naked.”
The misfiring saved Williams’ life. If he had succeeded, the remaining two Indians would have killed him. But he survived for what? He was to face more than two years of physical and mental anguish.
The attackers had killed 49 villagers, including two Williams children and a Negro woman member of their household. The surviving 111 people, many of them small children, faced a forced march of 300 miles through the wilderness, in the worst of winter, to Canada.
It resembled the Bataan Death March of World War II. They were poorly clothed, ill-fed, and sick. The Indians killed those who could not keep pace, including Williams’ wife, Eunice, who had recently given birth. They suffered their hardship with amazing resignation, continuing to assert their faith in God.
Eunice knew she was going to die.
“My wife told me her strength of body began to fail, and that I must expect to part with her; saying, she hoped God would preserve my life and the life of some if not all of our children with us.” The next day she fell wading a river. An Indian killed her with one stroke of his tomahawk. A hatchet also fell that day on the suckling infant of a neighbor and on an 11-year-old girl.
On March 7, a young woman who had suffered a miscarriage came to Rev. Williams. “Pray for me,” she said, “that God would take me to Himself.” She was anticipating her death which came later that same day.
In 1704 French and Indians attacked the town and ended up wiping out about 2/3 of the population, either through shooting/stabbing/chopping or in a forced march in winter.
All sounds pretty brutal.
Now, a politically correct question ~ what in the world is a Mohawk Indian woman doing passing judgment on what is or is not said at Deerfield about who did what to whom?
I don't think a Mohawk can be trusted when it comes to this particular town ~ they've been trying to destroy the place for 360 years, or cover up what they did!
This all seems manifestly unfair and improper.
Over at http://www.dickshovel.com/pocu.html it elaborates on what happened to the Indians the Mohawks attempted to eradicate.
It states: "Perhaps as many as 5,000 in 1600, the Pocumtuc population declined rapidly from epidemic and wars with the Iroquois and English. For the most part, the Pocumtuc were destroyed during the King Philip's War (1675-76).
A mixed group of 600 Pocumtuc and Nipmuc refugees relocated to the Mahican village at Schaghticook on the Hudson River (New York). Others went north to the western Abenaki (Sokoki) at either Missisquoi or Odanak (St. Francois du Lac) in Quebec. By 1758 the last groups of Pocumtuc and Nipmuc at Schaghticook had left and joined their relatives living with the Sokoki.
It can safely be assumed that the current populations of the Vermont Abenaki in the United States and the St. Francois and Bcancour Abenaki in Canada contain descendents of the Pocumtuc."
It's worth noting here that the Abenaki are the very same Indians who provided us with our word "squaw" which is their word for "woman". No doubt the Mohawk were among the first to call the Abenaki women "whores" and claim that's what "squaw" means.
Little by little the existence of the Abenaki is being denied, both by the European invaders, and also by their hereditary First Nations' enemies.
This should be called to a halt!
I'm descended from a Cherokee woman and also in another branch of the family, a native american from "east shore of the Chesapeake."
But my 6th great grandmother and her daughter, my 5th great grandmother were Water Carriers at Bryant's Station in Kentucky in August 1782 when the local Indians, recruited by the British, were preparing to attack the fort. The women, wanting the Indians to think that they didn't know of the up-coming ambush, went down to the spring to carry back the water with which the wooden fort would be protected from flaming arrows. Do an on-line search for Mary Polly Hawkins Craig and the water carriers. It's a great story.
It would seems Mary wasn't the only one...
"Raid of Deerfield, Massachusetts in Queen Anne's War February 29, 1704
Reverend Williams memorialized his Canadian experience in a book, "The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion", first printed in 1707. In it, he tells his story and that of his family and parishioners. Although four of his children returned home with him, his daughter, Eunice Williams, remained in Canada, joining the Mohawk tribe. She took the name A'ongote, which means "She (was) taken and placed (as a member of their tribe)," and in early 1713, she married a Native American man...
Source: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/colonial/deerfld_3
IMHO, these girls married their Red Indians (<-to use the British phrase)kidnappers b/c, well, what else could they do? Even if they had been left untouched and unmolested their reputations, not only in Deerfield but more or less everywhere, were ruined --and they knew it.
THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE RETURNING TO ZION is a must read for New England History
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=THE+REDEEMED+CAPTIVE+RETURNING+TO+ZION
So is: INCIDENTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ELGLAND
http://www.abetitles1.com/Title/1419764/Indians+Or+Narratives+of+Massacres+and+Depredations.html
The Indians were savages, that is undeniable. And when they combined with the French, they engaged in slavery, selling off the Deerfield residents as slaves to the French Canadian Priests.
This IS history, and people need to know it.
They are still organized. Every September they have a festival where folks come from around the country back to Millsboro, Delaware.
The earliest Saami settlement is in this area. Some folks mistakenly call it "New Sweden".
Nanticoke and Saami have some similar, though rare, health problems ~ no doubt they are relatives!
Regarding "local Indian" shenanigans, the Pigeon Roost Massacre (which my own people survived except for the Ramseys who had a child kidnapped and taken West), was a major military action taken by the Shawnee (at the Falls of the Ohio) against this new settlement which was made up of Oneida and Brotherton people as well as French Protestants and English speaking folks from Maryland and Virginia.
War wasn't just Indian against European back in the early days. It was more often European against European against Indian against Indian, and vice versa! As brutal as it was, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Butler's Rangers during the time of the American Revolution, even the Mohawks were aghast at how evil Europeans could be.
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