George Sheldon’s Vanishing Indian Act
MARGARET M. BRUCHAC
Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Vol. 39 (1 & 2),
Summer 2011
© Institute for Massachusetts Studies, Westfield State
University
“The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association was established
in 1870 as a means to preserve “memorials, books, papers and relics” that would
“illustrate and perpetuate the history of the early settlers, and of the race
which vanished before them.” The founders, including George Sheldon, used
Deerfield Academy’s original building as a location for Memorial Hall Museum,
which opened in 1880. Although Sheldon promoted Memorial Hall Museum as a place
where Pocumtuck and English history would intersect, there was no space
dedicated to living Indians…
…Sheldon also eagerly pursued amateur excavations of the
Pocumtuck dead. Dozens of Native burial sites, wigwam circles, old planting
fields, former storage pits, and even the Pocumtuck fort site, were located
within the bounds of the town of Deerfield. Epaphrus Hoyt identified the
Pocumtuck fort site atop the Pocumtuck Range as a locale where “a great variety
of rude Indian implements, as well as bones, have there been found.” Skeletal
remains had also been found at Bars Long Hill, at John Broughton’s Hill, and at
“an Indian burying place west of the ‘Old Street burying ground.’” Sheldon saw
these physical remains as material proof of Indian extinction: “In connection
with the indications of abode . . . fragments of weapons and utensils can
always be found. With these proofs about him the close observer can say with
confidence, here dwelt the red man; here stood his fort, here lay his
cornfield, and standing on a selected spot he can add, underneath my feet lie
his mouldering remains.”
In an 1886 essay for the Greenfield Gazette & Courier
titled “Relics of the Departed Race,” Sheldon described some of his finds.
Although he viewed Native human remains as abandoned relics, it is notable that
these burial sites were not haphazard; they illustrated the kinds of careful
interments done by living relatives. In addition, they clearly dated no earlier
than the 1600s, since the personal adornments and funerary possessions included
a mix of Native and non-Native goods, from shell wampum to glass trade beads:
“In one grave there was found what appeared to be the
remains of a basket . . . In another, that of a child, was a stone figure,
about four inches long, perhaps representing a fish or serpent…”
George Sheldon, I believe, willfully misrepresented the
dense documentation of Pocumtuck and Nonotuck strategy and resistance. He
ignored the flexibility of Algonkian Indian identity and failed to recognize
that a shift in residence did not automatically erase indigenous ancestry. During
the 1600s, as they had for millennia, Native people living in the middle
Connecticut River valley employed seasonal travels, fluid kinship networks, and
flexible alliances. These activities both confused and transgressed colonial
social and political boundaries. The absorption of Pocumtuck people into the
Schaghticoke and Abenaki populations was not a mysterious diaspora to a foreign
country; people simply followed familiar paths to live among their cousins and
allies..."
J. Kehaulani Kauanui interviews Dr. Marge Bruchac (Abenaki), a scholar whose research focuses on the historical erasure and cultural recovery:
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