This is the first in a series of posts designed to provide information about a tour I have led many times in the past few years. The tour was designed by the Mohican people (Muhheconneok = People of the waters that are never still), primarily by Bonney Hartley, with assistance from many other members of the tribe. The selected points of interest were based on research done by my brother Rick, who searched historical documents to determine exactly where each site is located. Additional (and ongoing) support has been provided by The Trustees and by Housatonic Heritage.
For a self-guided tour, you can download this brochure, or obtain a paper copy from a kiosk at The Mission House, 19 Main Street. In each of these posts, I will share some information from this brochure, as well as from the Housatonic Heritage website. I will also offer my own comments, based on questions that are frequently asked during the tours. I will not cover all the verbiage in the brochure, so if you would like more detailed information you can refer to that document.
The tour begins in front of a large building at 50 Main Street. I grew up in Stockbridge, and spent twelve years in this building as a student, prior to the existence of the regional school district. I am a 1963 graduate of Williams High School. The Williams family name appears often in the history of Stockbridge, and these posts will make mention of their deeds (some good, as in the bequest for what would become the town’s first public school; some evil, such as taking land from the Natives).
These days, this building houses the Town Offices, the Police Department, and many other functions. Here is a description from the brochure:
Originally, the land upon which the Town Office now stands was described as “Plowing Land” owned by a Mohican named Aaron Sausockhock, who sold it to William Goodrich in 1773 as he entered Revolutionary War. Within the Town Hall are many vital documents to Stockbridge Mohican history, which have remained here since they were originally filed when the town was founded for the tribe: You will find in the Clerk’s office the original Stockbridge Indian proprietor book, records of the tribe’s recorded births, deaths, and marriages, as well as other early town records (1737-1825) which show numerous facets of the tribe’s participation in the local government.
Look above the entrance doors to the Town Hall and note the bust honoring Mohican sachem Konkapot.
Laurel Hill, the hill behind Town Hall, was the site of a great Ox Roast sponsored by George Washington during Revolutionary War as thank you to Tribe for service in war (1783), as the tribe was forced to leave.
Early in the tour, a common question concerns a timeline. I am usually wearing a t-shirt that reads “Indian Town 1736” — which was the year in which the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a resolution to create such a town. Again, from the brochure:
In 1737 a royal charter creating Indiantown gave 1/60th of the territory each to Reverend Sergeant, a Schoolmaster, and four English families for a total of 2,304 of 23,040 acres. Mohican people were expected to “model” themselves after the English families. The initial Mohican population in Indian Town was about 125 people.
By around the year 1700 the English population in New England began to exceed the Native population. Ship after ship arrived on these shores, carrying English people who were looking for a better life in the New World. But most of the imbalance came from the great Dying Off that carried away as much as 90 to 95 percent of the Native population — the indigenous people had no natural immunity to the myriad European diseases brought here by the Colonists.
Many of the elders of the local tribes could remember a time when there were ten Indians for every one that then remained. Although there was not universal agreement, most of the local indigenous people realized that they should take up the English offer to create a sanctuary town, which would be designated as their land forever, in exchange for them giving up any claim to the surrounding areas. As hinted to at the end of the first quotation above, “forever” ended in 1783, when the tribe accepted an offer from the Oneida people in New York to move there and take over a township of the same size as the Indian Town here had been.
The 1737 charter mentioned above did not contain a name for the new town. It was usually referred to as “the Indian Town of the Housatonicks” — the English had a habit of giving names to local people based on some geographical feature or name. The name Massachusetts, for example, comes from the Algonkian words for big (mas), hill (achu), and place (-et) — the place of the big hill (referring to the Great Blue Hill south of Boston). Housatonic is the English pronunciation of the Algonkian word awasadenic = beyond (awas) aden (hill/mountain) place (-ic), or “the place beyond the mountain.” More on that in a later post…
A couple of items in that first quotation deserve comment. One is the mention of an ox roast “sponsored” by George Washington: he was truly thankful for the support of the tribe during the Revolutionary War. Many (perhaps a majority) of the men in the tribe had served on the side of the Colonists. Unfortunately, as many as half of those never returned home, and several of the ones who survived came back to Stockbridge to find that their land had been stolen by the English people. So the funds sent for the ox roast provided more of a farewell party for the tribe than a celebration of the War.
An archaeological dig conducted after the brochure was written led to the understanding that the ox roast probably took place across the river from Laurel Hill. The video describing this Stop accurately places the ox roast site on the other side of the river, near the location of King Solomon’s longhouse. See the end of this post for a link to that video.
The second item is to “note the bust honoring Mohican sachem Konkapot“ above the entrance. The likeness is one artist’s conception of what he might have looked like, since we have no contemporaneous drawings of him. His “real” (Native) name was Pophnehonnuhwoh (POPE-pa-knee-HON-uh-whoa). The Algonkians did not have an alphabet, so all spellings of their words reflect how they sounded to European ears.
With notable exceptions, the English had no interest in learning the Native language, which they disparaged as “primitive” and “ugly” and “nasal” — they arrogantly expected that the Natives would want to learn a more civilized language such as English (although, in my view, the Algonkian language is much more sophisticated and concise than English).
As a result of their disinterest, the English did not understand (nor could they pronounce) the Native names. The English were also confounded by the Native practice of changing or taking on new names throughout their lifetimes, often to reflect interests, physical characteristics, or accomplishments. The Natives were much more accommodating and polite, so to make things easier for the Colonists, they took on English names. Pophnehonnuhwoh, for example, called himself John Konkapot.
My grandmother thought that “Konkapot” was probably a Dutch word, maybe meaning “coffeepot” or “copper pot” but I was unable to find any word in Old Dutch that resembled it. Pophnehonnuhwoh was born to the west of the present location, in what was once New Netherlands, and where Dutch continued to be spoken well into the 19th century, so Konkapot may well have come from the local dialect of Dutch.
I begin my tours by reciting some words from the Algonkian language. Because I began my language studies before the days of Zoom, I attended classes given in the Abenaki dialect. The last Native speaker of the Mahican dialect died in 1946, and the tribe is in the process of revitalizing that dialect. The Abenaki homelands are to the north or us, and were at one time part of New France, so the transcriptions of the language into the European alphabet were originally done by French Jesuits.
Next up: Stop Two — “Chief Konkapot’s Property” — including a discussion of the role of the sachem, answering such questions as “how is the word pronounced?” and “why were there two sachems in Stockbridge?” We will also explore the functioning of the clan system (see the four clan animals below).
In 2019, when this walk was created, several members of the tribe traveled to Stockbridge to narrate the story.
A introductory video is available here on youtube. The speaker mentions that the homelands extended west to Stockbridge and beyond, but that should have been “east” — the western boundary is on the other side of Albany, near where Schenectady is today.
A video version of Stop One has also been recorded, and includes personal anecdotes and information that is not in the brochure.