Mascoma (Mascommah) Part 2

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful, beautiful weather!  The weekend starts tomorrow and we couldn't wish for a better weather forecast for the next three days.  There's a "The Conniption Fits" is going to play.  A lot of people should be there.  "The Conniption Fits" are organizing the whole thing on Facebook.   I think tickets are going to cost $25.00.

To pick up where I left off a week ago on Mascommah

I think it's interesting that women signed the main deeds. Then seventeen males signed a separate document attesting to the fact that these women were the true and rightful owners of this land. This seems to indicate that land ownership descended from the woman. This is confusing in that I have always thought that Native Americans didn't understand the concept of land ownership. However, these deeds clearly stated that they are wives of male members of the tribe, and the land descended to them from their mothers. The only thing I can think of to explain this is that these deeds were signed in 1735. By this time, the Indians would have learned about land ownership, and maybe would have adopted the concept from the English. Interestingly enough, though, important male owners had to sign a document verifying that the women had the right to sell this land. I also wondered if the men didn't want to go on record as having given up their tribal land, so they made one of the more important women sign the actual deed giving up the land. This is all speculation, I absolutely admit.

How important was Mascommah? He signed three deeds. Many of the Indian signers only signed one or two deeds. There were several Indians who signed up to nine. If you want to make inferences on importance based on how many deeds he signed, Mascommah was probably moderately important, but was not a main chief by any means.

Who were Mascoma's contemporaries? Who were the English men who signed those deeds? Taking each deed individually, we will start with the first deed, a deed for land on the Deerfield River, somewhere around Ashfield and Colrain, Massachusetts. The English men who signed this deed were Ebenezer Hinsdell, Elijah Williams, Joseph Wells and John Hastings. Joseph Kellogg, Esquire was the interpreter for the Indians. This deed was signed on August 6, 1735, and it appears that it was signed in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Ebenezer Hinsdell was the founder of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In colonial times, spelling was not an important consideration and you would find people's names spelled all different ways. This was doubly true of Indian names, which were hard to pronounce and spell, but the Hinsdell/Hinsdale spelling just goes to show that it happened with English names too. Hinsdale was ordained as a minister, and planned to become a missionary to the Indians of the Connecticut River Valley. Instead, he became the chaplain at Fort Dummer, a Fort on the Connecticut River right near where Brattleboro is. He ended up being in charge of trade with the Indians, as well as converting them to Christianity. He must not have been a very good preacher, because the “Annals of Brattleboro tell us “the Indians engaged at first but before long went back to their old ways.”

Although the Indians from Western Massachusetts had relocated to Schaghticoke, they often traveled back to their homeland to trade. In 1734, Hinsell presided over a treaty with the Schaghticoke

Indians, receiving and welcoming three Indians as “commissioners” One of them was described as a lieutenant named “Massamah” - which could have easily been Mascommah. This was a time of peace, with the Schaghticokes entering trade agreements and signing treaties, but twelve years later, they would be back to “wage bitter war on the invaders of their ancestral lands.”(Colin Calloway The Western Abenakis of Vermont 1994) Ebenezer Hinsdale was born in 1702 and died in 1763.

Elijah Williams was a storekeeper in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and a member of the local militia. In 1756, he was the commander of the Crown Point Expedition. This was an offensive against a French held position on Lake Champlain during the French and Indian War. Elijah was born in Deerfield in 1712 and died there in 1771.

Joseph Kellogg was born in Hadley in 1691. When he was 12, he was captured by Indians during the Deerfield Massacre. For the next ten years, he switched back and forth between the Indians and the French, becoming proficient in English, French, and several Indian languages. He travelled with the Indians and the French on trade expeditions. He went all the way to the mouth of the Ohio River. In fact, he was probably the first English person to get that far. Finally, in 1715 his brother went to Canada and dragged him home, promising him that he would have plenty of opportunities back in New England. Upon arrival home, he was made “Interpreter to the Indians and Sargeant of the Guard” at Northfield. Kellogg married, and stayed at Northfield for most of the rest of his life, although he was constantly called to serve as interpreter at Fort Dummer and Fort Number 4. He was Justice of the Peace in Northfield. He died on an ill fated mission to Oswego, New York, in 1756. ( Bedini, Silvio, “Joseph Kellogg of Deerfield “ The American Surveyor, Spring 2004 http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor-CompassAndChain-March-April2004.pdf)

I think Mascommah could have been friends with Joseph Kellogg but I do not think he was friends with Ebenezer Hinsdell.

John Hastings was a doctor who was born in Hadley, Massachusetts in 1689. He served at Fort Dummer and later at Fort Number 4, near present day Charlestown, New Hampshire.

I couldn't find anything out about Joseph Wells.

The second deed concerned land on the Connecticut River near Northfield, Massachusetts. Williams, Hinsdell, and Hastings all signed this deed, too, and again, Joseph Kellogg was the interpreter. In addition, Thomas West was a signer of this deed, instead of Joseph Wells. I couldn't find any information on him.

The third deed concerned land near Sunderland, Massachusetts. This deed was signed by just two English men, Joseph Kellogg and William Brattle. We already know about Joseph Kellogg and William Brattle was the founder of Brattleboro, Vermont.

In Search of Mascoma (Mascommah)

I am a history lover, and don't know as much as I would like to about Upper Valley history.  A question that I have always wondered is "Who was Mascoma".  In the lobbies of every Mascoma Bank, there is a framed letter explaining where that name came from.  You can see a copy of the letter here, http://www.mascomabank.com/lebanon-historical-society or in the lobby of any Mascoma bank.  I have always been interested in this, since, I, too, came from Western Massachusetts, on the Connecticut River, and moved north to the Upper Valley.  When I googled the name "Mascommah", I found a book, "Indian Deeds of Hampden County" by Harry Andrew Wright.  http://books.google.com/books/about/Indian_deeds_of_Hampden_County.html?id=Wq7j8EoY-m8C

Our Mascommah signed three deeds in this book.  One deed was to land along the Deerfield River, up to where the Deerfield River empties into the Connecticut, one deed was for land in Sunderland Massachusetts and surrounding towns.  I have seen some comments that suggest that this parcel of land extended west all the way to Newfane, Vermont.  The third deed was for land in Southern New Hampshire and Vermont, beginning north of Fort Dummer and extending up the Connecticut River past Putney. Mascommah didn't sign the actual deeds to the land, he signed confimations to the original deeds.  The original deeds were signed by women, the confirmations were signed by men, confirming that the signers of the original deeds had the authority to sell that land.

Each of the confirmations start out saying that "We the subscribers Indians of the Sauhtecook Tribe, whose ancestors habitations were by or near the Connecticut River, in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay".  This tells us so much about Mascommah.  The Schagticoke Indians were formerly from Squakheag, which was the name of the Indian village where Northfield, Massachusetts is now.  They became refugees after King Philip's War, and ended up in what is sometimes called the first Indian reservation in America, Schaticoke in New York.  Eventually there were three refugee villages, one at Mississquoi, one at St Francis in Canada, and one at Schagticoke.  Over time, the Schaticoke Indians drifted to St Francis, with the last inhabitants of Schagticoke leaving during the French and Indian War.

When I was in the sixth grade, we learned about the Indian signers of the deeds turning over our town to the English.  When we asked what happened to these Indians, we were told that they all died of smallpox.  I had this vision of each Indian keeling over in the chair, gasping his last breath from this horrible disease, as soon as his quill lifted from the paper.  Clearly, that's not what happened.  These Indians had to leave and find somewhere else to live, especially after the King Philip's War.  They moved up the Connecticut River, and finally landed at Schagticoke. 

This also tells us that Mascommah identified himself and his ancestors primarily with the Connecticut River and the brooks and other waterways that emptied into that river.  This is one of the biggest pieces of evidence for him being the Mascoma of the river and lake.  The Mascoma empties into the Connecticut and so would have been of great interest to Mascommah. 

There is really very little evidence that this Mascommah is the Mascoma of the lake and river, although I believe that he is.  We have the evidence that he was very much "of the Connecticut River and its tributaries".  I was thinking that I would feel better if I could find another Indian from both Vermont and Massachusetts who had a body of water named after him.  Well, I couldn't find one.  But I did find Chief Greylock.

Chief Greylock was a contemporary of Mascommah's.  He led a war against the English settlers.  His base of operations was at Mississquoi.  He is commonly referred to as an Abenaki Indian and a member of the tribe indigneous to Vermont.  Greylock's war took place between 1773 and 1776, nine years before the deeds were signed.  You have to wonder if the signing of the deeds happened as a result of the defeat of Greylock by the English.

Here is the storyof Chief Greylock:

Chief Graylock was born around 1660 in a Waronoke Village, which is now the town of Westfield. His native name was Wawamolewat. The Waronokes were a part of the Pocumtuck Confederacy of Central Massachusetts. They were great fur trappers, they traded with the British, as the population increased, and game decreased, they no longer had a way of making a living. In 1674 the tribe moved to the Berkshires. Chief Graylock had a secret cave on the slope of Mt. Greylock located in Adams, Massachusetts where he harassed the British settlers as they moved into his domain. He also lived with the Waronoke Tribe near Stockbridge Massachusetts, then they moved on to Schaghticoke New York, and finally to Canada, where Chief Graylock met a Winooski woman. Together they settled down at Missisquoi Bay just north of the Vermont border. He built a huge fort there known as Graylock's Castle. " (From the Berkshire Web -http://www.berkshireweb.com/sports/hiking/graylock.html)

I use Chief Graylock as an example of an Indian who had a mountain in Massachusetts named after him - Mount Greylock, but was also associated with Vermont, Mississquoi, St Francis and Schagticoke.  These Indians were very geographically mobile.  Having been ejected from their true ancestral homelands, they moved from one refugee village to the other, combining and then recombining to create new villages and tribes.  Without a doubt, Greylock and Mascommah knew each other.  I personally thing that Greylock was dead by the time Mascommah signed the deeds.  I also think Mascommah was much younger.

To be continued.