Who were the Pocumtuck people and what were their lives like?
The Pocumtuck people, whose homeland included what would eventually become the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, were connected culturally and linguistically to the Algonquian people. This group also included the Norwottuck, Sokoki, Abenaki, Mahican, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Penacook, Pigwacket, Pequot, and Mohegan peoples.
The Pocumtucks did not have a large central village and they did not live in permanent dwellings. Small clusters of wigwams (also called “wetus”) were connected by a network of paths and were sometimes palisaded. In the fall and winter the Pocumtuck people lived in protected areas and moved to riverbanks and open spaces during the farming and fishing seasons.
Gardens were small and consisted of the “Three Sisters”- corn, beans, and squash, and tobacco was grown as well. The land was occasionally burned to clear out underbrush for easier travel and hunting, and to encourage the growth of nut-bearing trees.
Women were responsible for agriculture, feeding and clothing their families, and raising the children; the men hunted, fished, and protected their people. Children helped with family tasks such as scaring crows from patches of corn. They were also allowed plenty of time to play and their games often taught them skills they would need as adults. They learned the history of their people and homeland from stories told to them during the winter when there wasn’t much work to do, and people spent more time inside their homes.
What happened when English settlers arrived in the Pocumtuck homeland?
In 1665, town leaders from the English town of Dedham, Massachusetts, came west to the Connecticut River Valley looking for land. It had been decided that a section of Dedham would be turned into a “praying town,” where the area’s Native American peoples could live if they were willing to be converted to Christianity. As a result, White people in that area had to move elsewhere and the town leaders decided that land in the Pocumtuck homeland would be a good place for them. As they looked over this area, they didn’t realize that the Pocumtucks lived there and erroneously assumed it was unimproved land, as they saw no roads, fences, towns, or large cultivated fields. They failed to see, or overlooked, the ways in which the Pocumtucks had been managing the land. English Protestant religion taught that they had a Biblical promise to fulfill to improve the land if it appeared vacant or unimproved and they believed that they had the right to drive away the original inhabitants, in this case the Pocumtucks, to accomplish this.
At first relations between the Pocumtucks and the English were smooth. The Pocumtucks traded animal pelts, especially beaver, to the English and received items new to them such as cloth, metal, and glass. They also once gave the then starving English settlers a large quantity of corn. However, tensions began to build in the second half of the 17th century. Over-hunting had resulted in depletion of the beavers and as the Pocumtucks and others encroached upon other Native hunting lands in their efforts to satisfy the European demands for furs, relations with the English and between various Native groups deteriorated. Plus, there seemed to be an endless stream of English settlers moving onto Indigenous homelands and bringing with them diseases, such a smallpox, to which the Native peoples had no immunity. Thousands died.
Wars
Raids and battles occurred. In 1675 and 1676, Metacom’s (or King Philip’s) War raged through Massachusetts as Native American groups combined in a failed attempt to drive out the English. In May of 1676, during Metacom’s War, Captain William Turner and his men retaliated in an attack at sunrise on the Pocumtuck summer fishing village of Peskeompskut (Turners Falls today), oblivious to whom they massacred. Only women, elderly men, and children had been present; the warriors were elsewhere.
In the winter of 1704, the English settlement of Deerfield was attacked by the French from Canada with their Native allies, which might have included some Pocumtucks. The attack was part of Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713; also known as the “War of Spanish Succession”) and was a French effort to halt the gradual expansion of English settlement and political domination in New England. More than 100 Deerfield residents were taken captive and marched to Canada. Within two years, most captives had been redeemed and returned, with a tiny handful choosing to remain with the French and their Native allies.
What happened to the Pocumtuck people?
Many Indigenous people, including the Pocumtucks, saw no end in sight to the English occupation of their homelands and the resulting hostilities, and chose to leave their homelands rather than assimilate to peacefully remain among the English. They headed west and north to live with larger Indigenous groups and to be further from European settlers. The cultures and languages of these smaller refugee groups disappeared completely, or nearly so, as they made the difficult choice to assimilate to survive. The few who remained in their homelands also chose to assimilate, this time to English ways, to survive. They, too, nearly, or completely lost their languages and cultures.
