CHARLEMONT — If we take down monuments and there is no physical record of their having existed, would we forget about the past? How can we use historical objects to see how we came to that juncture in time and to inform where we need to go in the future?

These are questions that practicing historian Rob Weir hopes attendees of his presentations will consider. With discussions around removing the giant fiberglass Native American statue outside the Native and Himalayan Views souvenir shop on the Mohawk Trail (Route 2) having recently come to a close with the statue’s sale to an Oklahoma café, the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club invited Weir to speak earlier this month about the area’s beloved, and sometimes controversial, roadside attractions.

The Greenfield Recorder met with Weir, author of “Who Knew? Roadside Revelations in Western Massachusetts,” to learn about the Native American statue’s history and consider how this history can shape the community’s present outlook.

The towns in western Massachusetts and beyond were connected by a trolley system, but with the invention of the automobile, trolleys fell by the wayside.

“Henry Ford started the trail,” Weir said. “The age of the automobile changed everything.”

The new industry of automobile tourism ushered in the creation of state byways, including what we know today as Route 2, or the Mohawk Trail.

“The Big Indian wasn’t the worst misrepresentation,” Weir said, mentioning that the term “Mohawk Trail” is misleading because the Mohawk people were not the area’s native inhabitants.

Indigenous tribes would travel along the Connecticut River and its tributaries, including the Deerfield River, during salmon and shad season, which would lead to conflicts between tribal confederacies, he explained.

“You could say the Mohawks were the first invaders from New York,” Weir added, jokingly referencing how many New Yorkers move to western Massachusetts today to begin a lifestyle of more rural living.

Weir pointed out that calling the road “Mohawk Trail” is a tourism invention, similar to calling this area the “Pioneer Valley.” It is used to promote the area to tourists.

The state adopted the roughly 67 miles of road as a scenic byway and people flocked to Route 2 to take in the region’s natural beauty.

“Where people go, retail follows,” Weir continued.

As automobile tourism took hold, stores popped up along the highway. Some shops capitalized on the selling point of being located along the seasonal travel route of native peoples. These included “trading posts” such as Native and Himalayan Views, formerly known as the Big Indian Shop.

“The only thing you could trade was pieces of paper with the presidents’ faces on it for stuff that was made elsewhere,” Weir clarified.

Native Americans had little involvement with the Indigenous representation along the Mohawk Trail, Weir noted. Rather, because it was primarily white people who were making these tourist attractions and selling cheaply made goods that were not made by the Indigenous people they claimed to represent, it shows a moment in history where racist imagery dominated the market.

“I am always nervous to tear down monuments,” Weir mentioned. “They can be used as teaching tools.”

However, in the case of the Native American statue on Route 2, Weir acknowledged it was not being used as a history lesson. The building is a store, not a museum, and the statue isn’t representative of local tribes, but rather of Plains, or Midwest, tribes.

Weir hopes Native Americans can have more of a presence along the Mohawk Trail, aside from through historical societies and libraries.

“I hope when people drive up and down the Mohawk Trail they think about why it is called that and they think about Native Americans,” he said. “There is an opportunity to tell a story here.”

Weir said monuments, when used correctly, can help build a better future.

“It would be nice to look at what happened to Native Americans, what happened to Black people, what happened to women, what happened to immigrants and say, ‘We fixed that,’” he said. “Well no, we didn’t, so you have to think about history as a tool for repairing the present and building a better future.”

Bella Levavi can be reached at blevavi@recorder.com.