By NANCY EVE COHEN • JAN 11, 2021
A cairn on Monument Mountain, where the Stockbridge
Mohicans left stones in the 1700s. It was looted in 1840 and later
reconfigured.
“The
Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians today are based in Wisconsin. But
their homeland spanned the Housatonic and Hudson river valleys, and stretched
from Manhattan to northern Vermont.
Over the
decades, members of the tribe have come back to the Berkshires to protect
cultural sites…Hiking up Monument Mountain, in Great Barrington, I come across
Chris Graham, and his dog Sophie. I asked if he knows why it’s called Monument
Mountain.
"I don’t," said Graham, who hikes here often. "I know
that there’s the monument at the top of it, the inscribed rock."
That inscription describes the donation of the land to The Trustees.
But the name — "monument" — refers to something left behind by the
native people, explained retired Stockbridge police chief and local historian
Rick Wilcox.
"There is an actual pile of stones or a cairn on the far side of
the mountain. It was along the Indian trail between Great Barrington, Sheffield
and Stockbridge. They would travel by that path and when they went by it, they
would drop a rock on the pile," said Wilcox, on a walk up the mountain.
It’s considered a sacred site. But treasure-hunting vandals looted the
pile in 1840. It was later reconfigured, but it’s not well-marked. Before we
found it, Wilcox took me to the wind-swept summit.
"They call this part Squaw Peak," Wison said.
But "squaw" is now considered a derogatory slur. The
Stockbridge Mohicans have asked the Trustees to change the name to “Peeskawso,”
meaning virtuous woman. The Trustees is doing that, as well as renaming a trail
and adding signage to better reflect tribal culture.
As we descended, Wilcox pointed out the monument — the stone pile,
around 5 or 6 feet tall.
"It’s wonderful to be able to see it. And it’s unfortunate that
it was desecrated," Wilcox said. "You know, so much of their history
has been hidden or wiped out, and so this I guess is in some ways an example of
a piece of their history that was kind of brought back to life."
https://www.nepm.org/post/its-been-erased-stockbridge-mohicans-retell-reclaim-their-story-berkshires
Donation piles are one of the only types of rock pile acceptable to conventional archeologists. I see them (or think I do) routinely at the edges of sites.
ReplyDeleteBut I have a bee in my bonnet about them: Donation piles mark the location of significant events and are inherently meaningless *in themselves*. They do not have design, nor do the sites have design. So focusing on them is focusing on the one part of the topic of rock piles, where the piles and sites have no structure and have no information. In terms of advancing general knowledge, they are a dead end.