Category: Munsee

On View

All shows are located on the newly renovated, refurbished and reopened second floor of the Berkshire Museum.

Where: Berkshire Museum, 39 South St., Pittsfield

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m., Sundays.

Admission: $15, adult; $8, children; free for Berkshire Museum members, EBT cardholders and children ages 3 and under.

Information and tickets: 413-443-7171,berkshiremuseum.org

Note: All visitors 2 and over are required to wear protective face coverings inside the museum regardless of vaccination status.

Exhibitions now on view:

“Muh-he-con-ne-ok: The People of the Waters That Are Never Still”

What: Journey through the past, present and future of the Stockbridge Mohicans in this exhibit of insights into the history and culture of Berkshire County’s Indigenous community.

When: Through Jan. 9, 2022.

“The Land of the Thunder Dragon: Bhutan Through the Lens of Mead Eagle Photography”

What: A collection of 26 informal portraits, breathtaking landscapes, and lively scenes created during several visits spanning from 1999 to 2011 by Berkshire photographers Sally Eagle and Dan Mead.

When: Through Jan. 9, 2022.

“Objects and Their Stories”

What: A brand-new Berkshire Museum experience that activates the museum’s 40,000-object collection to tell a never-ending series of stories about human history, exploring the ways in which humankind has shaped and been shaped by the world around it.

When: Ongoing

In the second-floor pocket galleries:

Special presentations of works by Alexander Calder and Stephen Hannock’s “Flooded River: Rose Dawn.”

The history of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok — past, present and future — flows softly, subtly through a newly renovated second-floor gallery at the Berkshire Museum.

Throughout there are stories of battles fought alongside European settlers in King George’s War (and later in the Revolutionary War), of a celebratory feast with George Washington, of conversion to Christianity, of colonization and assimilation, of land “purchased” and taken by…

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. – After a year of planning and construction, the new and improved second floor of the Berkshire Museum is ready to open. The goal of the extensive renovations was increasing flexibility in the galleries.

“You will never get to say ‘been there, done that,’” said executive director Jeff Rodgers. “You can always expect to see something new, and the way we designed the galleries, nothing is permanent. We want everything to be flexible and adaptable.”

What You Need To Know

• The newly renovated second floor of the Berkshire Museum is ready to open
• There are three new exhibitions in the second floor gallery space
• Each gallery has new floors, lighting, and increased flexibility for exhibits
• This is only phase two in the museum’s ongoing renovation plans

There are three new exhibitions in the second floor galleries. The first is ‘Objects and Their Stories,’ a rotating display of items from the museum’s permanent collection.

The other two are both temporary: A showcase of local photographers Sally Eagle and Dan Made called ‘The Land of the Thunder Dragon: Bhutan Through the Lens of Mead Eagle Photography,’ and ‘Muh-he-con-ne-ok: The People of the Waters That Are Never Still,’ an exhibition on the Stockbridge-Munsee Native Americans.

“This exhibition takes a look at cultural and historical ideas, going from the deep past right up to the present,” said Rodgers about ‘Muh-he-con-ne-ok. “It runs from historical objects, culturally important objects, right up to oral histories from Stockbridge-Munsee community members today.”

The galleries also feature new floors and a new lighting system, as well as new mobile museum units, which will be brought to schools and community centers throughout the county.

“They are quick fix,” said Rodgers. “I can change the labels on them in no time flat. We…

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  Modern yihakan:  A 21st century take on the yihakan, the traditional Algonquian longhouse, grounds the interpretive peninsula at Machicomoco State Park. William & Mary anthropology Professor Martin Gallivan was a consultant in the design of the park, Virginia’s newest.  Courtesy photo

by Joseph McClain |  July 28, 2021

Before there was Machicomoco State Park, there was Cappahosic.

In fact, since the park sits on what is likely the same land, Martin Gallivan wanted Virginia’s newest state park near Gloucester to bear the name.

“Cappahosic was a fairly sizeable community for an Algonquian town,” Gallivan said. But state park officials pointed out that there is an existing, modern community located upstream, also called Cappahosic. To avoid confusion, the park was dubbed with the Algonquian word meaning ‘special meeting place.’”

Gallivan, professor and chair of William & Mary’s Department of Anthropology, says he’s perfectly happy with the Machicomoco name. He’s even happier with how the park turned out, as he was a consultant in the design.

“It’s a really innovative design,” Gallivan said. “The space is different than any other state park you’ve been in. It’s different than any other national park you’ve been in. It subtly and creatively immerses you in a Native landscape in a way that I don’t think any other place around here does.”

Gallivan is the author of The Powhatan Landscape: An Archaeological History of the Algonquian Chesapeake, and has conducted numerous archaeological examinations of the riverine Native communities, of which Cappahosic was just one. He said Cappahosic was one of the minor Powhatan communities.

“This wasn’t a big town,” he…

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NEW BETHLEHEM – “Jim was all about the betterment of the community. He was consistent and it was never about him.”

That’s how retired District Judge Dan George characterized former New Bethlehem Police Chief Jim Merwin who passed away on Wednesday, July 7 at the age of 83.

Merwin, who became police chief in 1987, is remembered as the one who restored integrity and professionalism to the then-struggling New Bethlehem Police Department.

When Merwin took the helm, the department was suffering from a series of scandals and investigations. Aware of the monumental task that lay ahead of him, Merwin reportedly said at the time that he would “work overtime to heal the force’s damaged reputation.”

According to George, who remembers well the disarray that plagued the department at the time, Merwin’s work and dedication to the community accomplished that.

“After three-and-a-half years of dealing with that mess, [Jim] was a breath of fresh air,” George said. “If I was picking the cream of the crop of all the local officers [I’ve worked with], Jim would be at the top of the list.”

Former New Bethlehem Borough Council member Ed Goth concurred, noting that Merwin was “very dedicated to the police department and New Bethlehem Borough.”

“He would work hours and hours outside of his normal time because he felt that it was the right thing to do,” Goth said. “He was very well-respected within the law enforcement community.”

Clarion County Sheriff and retired state police trooper Rex Munsee recounted several important cases — including a homicide, suicide, bank robbery, assault and more — that he worked with Chief Merwin.

“When you worked with Jim, he was just so down to earth,” Munsee said, noting that Merwin often conducted suspect interviews like a conversation. “He was a non-threatening police officer, and he listened to what people said.”

One of their more…

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by Cliff Weathers

Seven months have passed since customers of Suez and Nyack water utilities learned that their drinking water exceeded New York State’s Maximum Contaminant Level for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). These two extremely toxic chemicals are  part of a larger class of chemicals known as PFAS. These chemicals, which are toxic even in minuscule concentrations, are known to cause a host of serious health problems that include kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, decreased immune response, and decreased birth weight and skeletal birth defects. There is no known safe level of any PFAS chemical.

While it’s unclear what the source of contamination could be, the contamination is widespread in both Suez and Nyack water sources. Nyack Water serves some 15,000 people in Nyack, South Nyack, Central Nyack and parts of West Nyack, and draws water from the Hackensack River. Suez serves some  300,000 people in Rockland County and New Jersey and draws water mostly from its network of wells, reservoirs, and surface waters across the county.

Testing suggests multiple sources, or dispersed sources of some kind, rather than one single polluter. Multiple PFAS were detected in almost all water sources. All but one of 63 water sources tested had detectable levels of PFAS. PFOA. Two or more PFAS were detected in 87% of tested water sources, with up to eight different PFAS detected.

Upon receiving notice that water supplies in the county exceeded state standards for those two PFAS, the Rockland Water…

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PITTSFIELD — The Berkshire County Historical Society has received a $6,000 grant from the Berkshire County Education Task Force in support of a new…

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Nearly $150,000 in federal grants, including a match by six Berkshire County nonprofit organizations, will fund interpretive programs and projects exploring the history and heritage of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Tribe. The indigenous community’s original 18th century homelands were in South Berkshire, northwest Connecticut and the Upper Hudson Valley of New York state.

The funds appropriated by Congress, based on National Park Service recommendations, were awarded by Housatonic Heritage, which has offices in Stockbridge and in Salisbury, Conn., as well as an Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield.

The projects supported by the grants, combined with funds raised by the local institutions on a minimum one-to-one match, include:

• Berkshire Historical Society, $1,875, for Trails and Tales at Arrowhead. The Interpretive walking trail focuses on Mohican history in the area and includes a Zoom presentation by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Director of Historic Preservation Bonney Hartley.

• Berkshire Museum, $35,000, for Mo-he-con-e-ok: The People of the Waters that Never Stand Still, a major exhibition being curated by a Stockbridge-Munsee Community historian.

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• Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, $7,300, for expanded programs related to its Native American Interpretive Trail, in conjunction with the Berkshire Museum exhibition.

• Hancock Shaker Village, $1,400, for The Shakers and Indigenous People: An interpretive signage project.

• Southern Berkshire Regional School District, $1,000 for a summer educational film documentary based on travel to Bowler, Wis., current home of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, and to various sites of significance after the Mohican-Munsee removal from their original homelands.

• Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives, $11,000, for Deeds of Our Past: The Stockbridge Indians and Colonial Bonds. The program acknowledges the Stockbridge-Munsee Community through artifacts and archival documents.

The projects are to be completed by June 30, 2022, said Dan Bolognani, executive director of Housatonic Heritage. With fundraising by the local nonprofits…

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“Welcome home.”

That’s how Brian Cruey, the Trustees of Reservation Berkshires director, greeted Heather Bruegl, cultural affairs director for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. It wasn’t just an act of kindness, but a recognition of history, as the pair helped to open “Mohican Miles,” a new exhibit at the Trustees of Reservations’ Mission House in Stockbridge. It includes artifacts and educational displays curated by the tribe’s museum in Bowler, Wis.

More than relics from the past, the exhibit is also a voice in the here and now — a real presence right on Main Street for a people who are part and parcel of the history of this land, but saw their own history systematically threatened by the expanding American empire. The Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians now resides in Wisconsin, a thousand miles from the South County town of their namesake after broken treaties and cruel dispossession forced them out of their ancestral homelands. Yet they still call this place home, a reverence for these Berkshire hills they have proudly carried through centuries of unimaginable hardship.

It is morally imperative to acknowledge this, but the Mohican Miles exhibit goes a crucial step further by not just recognizing history but allowing the tribe to tell it, relinquishing a settler-colonialist stranglehold on a rich history too often minimized in America’s founding mythos. “The whole exhibit is told in our own voice so we have a footprint on Main Street again,” Bonney Hartley, historic preservation manager for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, told The Eagle.

The tribe has a five-year agreement with the Trustees to tell its story through the Mission House exhibit, a project made possible by the hard work and cooperation of local and tribal historians and advocates. At the exhibit’s opening, Ms. Hartley singled out former Stockbridge police chief and local history buff Rick…

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STOCKBRIDGE — For descendants of the town’s original settlers, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, a return to their ancestral homelands always packs a powerful, emotional punch.

That was especially evident last week, as several tribal members dedicated a new public exhibit at the Trustees of Reservations’ Mission House at 19 Main St. Artifacts from the Mohican Nation’s archives went on display, curated from their museum in Bowler, Wis., in the area where the descendants have resided since the 1850s, after their forced exile from Stockbridge and a long westward journey, enduring tremendous hardship.

In the 1730s, after the 125-member tribe arrived from New York’s Upper Hudson Valley, Stockbridge — it originally was named Indian Town — was settled as a missionary community for the Mohicans and English to coexist and co-govern. The Rev. John Sergeant, an English settler, created a mission house in the town to promote Christianity.

The Stockbridge-Munsee Community now has a five-year agreement with the Trustees to tell its story through the Mission House exhibit, said Bonney Hartley, historic preservation manager for the tribe. “The whole exhibit is told in our own voice so we have a footprint on Main Street again,” she explained.

Stockbridge native Trudy Fadding, a rising junior at Williams College, worked with the tribe’s historical preservation office in Williamstown to help develop the exhibit.

Through a college internship with Hartley last winter, Fadding researched and prepared the content and text for the “Mohican Miles” exhibit panels.

Timeline

1734: The 125-member Mohican tribe arrives at Indian Town (later named Stockbridge) from its ancestral homelands in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley.

1736: John Sergeant, a European settler, creates a mission house to promote Christianity.

1737: A land grant signed by Massachusetts Bay Colony “Governour” Jonathan Belcher, on behalf of King George II, gave 1/60th of the territory each to…

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History is written by the victors — except in the rare instance when it is not.

In 1939, authors Christina Marquand and Sarah Sedgwick wrote, “The Stockbridge of today, swept clean of its original owners, the Indians, is what the Williams and the English families up on the hill built for us.”

In March 1736, the General Court in Boston granted six square miles (23,040 acres) on the Housatonic River north of Sheffield to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation. In addition, six white families, “the English” — missionary John Sergeant, brothers Timothy and Joseph Woodbridge, Ephraim Williams, Ephraim Brown, and Josiah Jones — were granted 400 acres each. The Mohicans retained 90 percent, the English 10 percent of the settlement called Indian Town. Later, it would be renamed Stockbridge.

Highway robbery

Col. John Stoddard, the surveyor, laid out 32 meadow lots along either side of the river for the Mohicans. The six “settling lots” for the English were on the hill. The Mohicans expressed concerns, even fear, but were assured by Stoddard that the law would protect them and their property.

In “The Red Man Dispossessed” (New England Quarterly, March 1994), Lion Miles traces the dispossession and ousting of the Mohicans from their land: “The Indians found the English were not content with [the land grants]. The Indians charged that the English claimed lands amounting to 4800 acres, twice the 2400 originally allocated.”

The methods of theft were various. With Williams in the lead and others following, many questionable practices were employed.

The whites purchased land from the Mohicans for outrageously low prices without first securing the approval of the General Court. The approval was required precisely to ensure fair prices.

To avoid involvement of the General Court, the English swapped land. The Mohicans did not understand relative land values and were duped. To…

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