Native Insight: Deep, deep history of ancient Pocumtuck homeland

By GARY SANDERSON

Recorder Staff

Published: 11-24-2017 1:22 PM

It’s been many years, decades in fact, since I’ve walked the riverside acreage surrounding McClelland Farm Road in East Deerfield. Honestly, I think it’s safe to say I haven’t even driven through there in my married life, which brings us back nearly 40 years. Before that, I used to hunt pheasants there, down by the river, thus my familiarity.

Traveling north on River Road past Pine Nook to the old East Deerfield Melnick Farm, McClelland Farm Road branches off straight ahead along the Connecticut River at a sharp left-hand turn that takes you up River Road past the Franklin County League of Sportsmen’s Clubs and on to Cheapside Bridge. A dirt road, McClelland Farm follows the Connecticut River north a mile or two before turning abruptly west around the northern East Deerfield railroad yard perimeter before reconnecting with River Road, south and east of Cheapside Bridge. The sharp western turn parallels the distant point overlooking the Deerfield/Connecticut River confluence. Then, the road follows Deerfield River upstream. North of the road’s western leg sits a chunk of fertile flood plain with a history, shallow and very deep, of agricultural and habitational use. Included is a prehistoric riverside village site dating back at least to early-Archaic times. All indications point to seasonal encampments there dating back to the Clovis and perhaps even pre-Clovis peopling of the Connecticut Valley. We’re talking in the neighborhood of maybe 13,000 years.

All sides of both rivers at that important site, where Franklin County’s two largest rivers meet, have for years been a treasure trove for Indian-artifact hunters. South of the Deerfield and west of the Connecticut sits the McClelland Farms Road plain. Across the river in Montague is the fertile floodplain situated west of Greenfield Road. Then, north of the Deerfield in Greenfield is tillage surrounding the old Kells Farm at the base of Rocky Mountain, bordering the Connecticut upstream from the General Pierce Bridge, which connects Bingville to Montague City.

Drive a stake into the ground at the northeastern point of Deerfield, overlooking the Connecticut/Deerfield confluence, and draw a quarter-mile-radius circle and you’ve marked a site of extraordinary archaeological importance. Extend that radius out to, say, three miles and it only gets better, pulling in Cheapside and Petty Plain and the North Meadows to west, Rock Dam, Turners Falls, Riverside and Canada Hill to the north, and Wills Hill and the pine barrens of Montague Plains to the east. All of these sites have produced evidence of human occupation dating back to Paleo times, not to mention recorded indigenous when European explorers first set foot here during what is called the Contact Period (ca. 1635-1665).

What’s interesting about this particular slice of Franklin County, where the Deerfield and Connecticut rivers collide, is that it is currently under an archaeological microscope focused on the early historic period, that is the May 19, 1676 “Falls Fight.” This wee-hour attack that is credited with turning the tide of King Philip’s War in colonials’ favor is now under intense academic scrutiny. Yes, that battle and all the dynamics leading to it, plus the spectacular site itself — a natural waterfall with deep, deep indigenous fishing history — is interesting indeed; however, by focusing on the site in 1676, we’re leaving out nearly 12,000 years of human history far preceding colonial intrusion. That’s what we call deep history.

Now, suppose you knew that in the past 25 years an ancient riverside shell midden was discovered by an amateur archaeologist investigating the Connecticut River’s western bank just below its confluence with the Deerfield. Or how about that recently discovered ancient trail overlooking the west bank of the Green River just above its confluence with the Deerfield River a mile or so upstream, opposite Pine Hill resting in Deerfield’s North Meadows. Yeah, of course it’s fascinating to know that, 341 years later, an imported team of Connecticut metal-detecting sleuths and academics have identified a Falls Fight retreat route down that footpath by uncovering a trail of 17th-century musket balls. But wouldn’t you like to know for how many millennia indigenous Pioneer Valley people and migrants to and from used that prominent trail? Wouldn’t you like to know why there was an Indian burial ground within a stone’s throw down the hill and across the river in Cheapside? There, in 1914, Smith College anthropologist Harris Hawthorne Wilder arrived at the scene of trolley-track construction to excavate a group of more than a dozen indigenous graves discovered by workmen. So, where was the Cheapside Indian village connected to the graves? You know — the village referenced by our Battlefield Grant scholars, and likely the same one from which the name Fort Hill originated in association with a forgotten village overlooking Cheapside from the Petty Plain terrace? Battlefield Grant researcher Kevin McBride found copper artifacts that suggested a habitational zone along the Meridian Street bluff overlooking Green River Park. Could he have stumbled across Fort Hill? It’s definitely possible, if not probable.

The Pocumtuck Fort Hill reference is found in Thompson’s “History of Greenfield” and other contemporaneous sources. But still to this day uncertainty and confusion reigns regarding the site. If the village site has been identified by a field-research team, the information is hidden in some dark, locked closet that’s off limits to the general public. In these days of cultural-resource management, a treasure trove of confidential archaeological reports and scholarly magazine articles known only to insiders remain hidden from dedicated, salivating local historians trying to understand the deep history of their place, in this case the ancient Pocumtuck homeland.

Questions remain as to why the footpaths to our deepest history remain concealed behind a dark academic cloud. Archaeological and anthropological fears of looting by collectors is the traditional explanation that keeps the enticing truth hidden behind closed doors and tight lips.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

Greenfield Police seek robbery suspect
Driver taken to hospital after Interstate 91 rollover in Bernardston
New Salem man faces charges after striking school bus in Barre
My Turn: Biden’s record and accomplishments are extremely positive
‘There’s nothing we can’t fix’: Busy Bee Computers opens in Greenfield
Greenfield’s Lucas Allenby, Landon Allenby qualify for USASA Nationals

It’s too bad, and guess what? There’s no relief on the horizon, one intentionally kept far, far away. Hopefully, this current, ongoing federal battlefield-grant study will blow off the lid and expose the secrets of a vanished, vanquished indigenous race that lived here for millennia before we arrived.

Then, and only then, will we truly understand this place we call home.

Recorder sports editor Gary Sanderson is a senior-active member of the outdoor-writers associations of America and New England. Blog: www.tavernfare.com. Email: gsand53@outlook.com.

]]>