1676: This Much We Have Learned
Peskeompskut
On May 19, some of
us will rise at dawn and follow old footpaths now become paved highways where
semis and pick-ups speed down the blacktop singing under the whining and
wailing tires.
Some will pass the stone monument memorializing that May
19th of 345 years ago when more than three hundred human beings were trapped
and destroyed at the falls. They died at the hands of those who held swords and
knives to kill more efficiently, ordered to spare their precious powder and
munitions.
Some will resist the need to dump red paint on that
monument, we will have a better way to shame the destroyers. We will move past
that stone to reach the site where those Native people died that one day in
May.
“I heard my mother scream and then heard the thunder again
and saw another flash of light inside the wetu. My little brother, who was
sleeping beside me, screamed and I felt his body jerk then felt hot blood
squirting all over me…I grabbed my little sisters’ hands and began running
through the dark, screaming and ducking whenever a gun went off. All was confusion and noise… I remember being
at the edge of the cliff beside the river. I don’t remember jumping, but
suddenly I was in the river’s fast current, struggling to rescue my little
sisters, and get them into a canoe…I saw a bullet slam through one sister, more
bullets made the canoe twist and turn over and we all swam furiously, fighting
the current taking us towards the falls. I managed to claw my way onto a rock,
dragging my half-drowned sister with me. We saw the English soldiers coming
down the cliff, shooting at everything, their steel swords glinting…we hid
inside a small cave… then I saw a sword come down and heard my little sister
scream…I saw her head fall into the river, her eyes wide with terror and her
mouth cut off in a scream that would never end. I jumped into the river again
and dodged bullets and rocks as I joined a large number of people swimming
towards the falls.
I was swept over, flung into the air, then expecting to die
as the others had on the rocks at the bottom. I don’t know how, but I landed in
deep water and after falling down and down, I began to rise…one second more and
I would have drowned…I could see smoke and the glow of fire and knew that the
whole village had been torched…”
Oral history recounted by Corn Woman, Nipmuc
Some of us are old enough to remember My Lai, none of us are
old enough to have read the news of
Wounded Knee in 1890, well, maybe some would have noted in 1973 the second
Wounded Knee.
We don’t have to look so far however, we have right here our
own place of infamy, stained with the unspeakable loss of so many human beings
in a place we pass by daily without thinking.
At the very least we should pause to remember what happened that day in
1676 before we hurry on with our modern-day pursuits.
Some carry guilt, some feel the need to do penance, still
others choose say that to kill was justified and right.
Some of us have studied the event long and hard and have
learned.
We know that Falls Fight of 1676 in the context of King
Philip’s War, was one of great tragedy for the Indigenous peoples of the
Northeast. We could say too that it was a tragedy for young colonials, not
blameless yet pawns in the game played out by the earliest colonial schemers
who pulled the strings in plots to seize Indigenous slaves and land. They
needed to provoke a “Just War”, indeed, to justify their greed. We could name
John Hull, John Winthrop, Humphrey Atherton, among others of their ilk.
We know that 150 men, a mix of professional soldiers and
hot-headed young settlers infuriated by their losses of kin, farmsteads, and
livestock were bent on revenge when they left Hatfield on the evening of May
18. Many of them, like Custer’s men two hundred years later, rode to their
doom. More than 40 of them met that fate, but not before they murdered more
than three hundred Pocumtuck, Nipmuck, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Abenaki.
We have learned that they succeeded in making their way to
the falls, avoiding the camps of Native soldiers at the mouth of the Deerfield,
those on the islands in the Connecticut, the one on the top of Canada Hill at
Wissatinnewag, the one across the river from Peskeompskut camp, in what is now
known as Unity Park. Instead of facing a worthy adversary, they fell on the relatively
poorly defended camp of non-combatants.
We have learned that they lingered too long killing and
looting, so that all those Native camps were aroused and began to
counterattack. The raiding force was chased seven miles back the way they came,
all the way to the North Meadows of Deerfield. The Colonials lost more than
forty men in that panicked retreat.
Our research has yielded more than 600 battle artifacts,
mostly musket balls from that day along the trail of retreat. Most of those
lead balls were fired from east to west at the retreating militia, indicating
that the Natives were heavily armed, and in fact out-gunned the Colonials.
We have learned of a primary source eye-witness account of
the death of Turner, provided by a Narragansett warrior, John Wecopeak, who was
with Turner when he was shot.
At his trial in August 1676, Wecopeak related the incident
written down by the clerk of the Newport RI court before he was taken from the
court room and executed.
“ John Wecopeak alfo
faith that he was at the Fight with Captain Turner and run away by Reafon the
Shott came as thick as Raine, but faid alfoe, that he was at a great Diftance.
Butt John Godfree faith that the faid Wecopeak told them
that he faw Capt. Turner, and that he was fhott in the Thigh, and that he knew
it was him, for the faid Turner faid that was his Name.
Voted guilty of the
charge, and to dye as the others.
Record of Court Martial held at Newport RI in Auguft,1676,
For the Trial of Indians charged with being engaged in
Philip’s Defigns.”
We have re-learned the names of many of the Native leaders
and will repeat them at each telling of the fight at the Peskeompskut Falls:
Matoonas, Monoco, Canonchet, One-eyed John, Weetamoe,
Wennequabin, Wecopeak, Awashonks. We will remember the hundreds of others Whose
Names Cannot Be Known.
Yet we have also learned that through the telling and
remembering, there can be healing.
Representatives of the five towns where the events unfolded
in those days before those very towns existed, and representatives of four
tribes that have been here for millenia have been meeting monthly for more than
six years reaching deep into records and memory to find out what may have
really happened and more. To bring forth, to give voice to the
multi-generational trauma that has had enduring impact on the Indigenous people
of our region.
We are not looking back in anger, but moving slowly toward
healing through study, music, sharing, and learning on the banks of this great,
tragic, and eternal river.
“ For myself, I’d like to think that the memory of the place
by the Great Falls is being re-examined through this joint town-tribal project
for a reason….working to preserve the site has brought Northeastern tribal
descendants and townspeople together…So long as we allow space for differences,
and above all treat the people who perished here with the dignity and respect
they did not receive in life, we will be making some advances towards healing
and draw more meaningful lessons from this war.”
---Elizabeth James-Perry, Aquinnah Wampanoag artist and historian
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