Someone posted a note on “Williamstown Issues and Information” suggesting the Mohawk Trail, so labeled on new signs on the Williamstown bike path, wasn’t a good name because it could be confused with the automobile road and because we should consult with Native Americans before borrowing their names.
A response attracted a whopping 72 likes and 54 comments, some for or against the name but most dealing with “cancel culture” — that is, whether we’re being too fussy about the (mis)use of Native American names. As with athletic team mascots.
A Mohawk Trail sign recently appeared on the nearly completed bike path.
Photo provided by Lauren Stevens
History is fun — and revealing.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation provisionally calls it the Mohawk Trail because initial funding came from grants associated with the automobile road. The road got its name, really, from a pageant held in North Adams to celebrate the state’s 1914 improvements to the way over the Hoosac Range. A scene in the pageant depicted the Mohawks’ 1665 trip over a foot path from their Hudson Valley home to drive the Pocumtucks from their Connecticut Valley home. Thus, settlers of European origin found the richest agricultural land in New England already cleared of trees and uncontested in what they called Deerfield.
Entrepreneurs in North Adams and those setting up gift shops, restaurants and cabins on the refurbished road took to the pageant’s “Indian” theme. Gradually, the state came around to following their lead, calling it the Mohawk Trail — even though, rather than Mohawks or Mohicans whose land the trail crossed, the businesses tended to favor Western Native Americans. Their removal and whites’ settlement of the West was fresher in peoples’ minds than Colonial days; the “Big Indian,” which gave its name to a…
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