As a boy in the 1950s growing up in Hopkinton, I annually visited the historical society building to view the Indian dugout on display. The massive craft, a hollowed out white-pine trunk, filled me with awe.
Growing up in the area, I was also fascinated by the tale of Hannah Dustin and was aware of the 1746 massacre of settlers near the Turkey River.
But this past week, I revisited the Hopkinton Historical Society to engage the current exhibit: “Changing Views: Relations Between Hopkinton’s Early Settlers and Native Americans.”
It proved to be a corrective to my childhood imagination. The artifacts on display largely dated to the decades prior to Hopkinton’s incorporation in 1765, present a more accurate picture of the “relations between Hopkinton’s early settlers and Native Americans” than my boyhood imaginings.
The shift away from stereotypes is a good thing and one in line with the town’s recent decision to repurpose Columbus Day as “Indigenous Peoples Day” as of October 2018. Or put another way: “The exhibit grew out of a desire to explore some of the stereotypes regarding Native Americans and Euro-Colonists. … We found an interesting overlap of similar tools and household items that would have been used by both groups.”
The display of ancient Native American tools of stone juxtaposes them to 1700’s iron tools. A stone axe replicates the form and purpose of a metal broad axe. The display fronts the grand dugout familiar to me from my childhood, a vessel arguably an amalgam of Euro and Indian design and a watercraft documenting the significance of the virgin white pines of the 18th century for both groups. A lesser known tree, the balsam fir, was used by the Abenaki for an ointment against itches, as a disinfectant, an interesting commonality across contemporary cultures, one documented by two leather medicine bags of herbal remedies used by a Euro-Colonist doctor.
Life in the wilderness of early 1700s Hopkinton was surely challenging for the first generation of settlers. For example, the name Stumpfield Road (off routes 202 and 9) attests to the fact that the pioneers left the stumps of the trees they felled, allowing them to rot in the clearings over time, saving the settlers arduous labor.
Importantly, the exhibit makes the point that the Abenaki likely assisted the Euro-Colonists, passing on their intimate knowledge of the natural environment for food, clothing and shelter. Cross-cultural cooperation of this kind flies in the face of the facile stereotype of resolute pioneers versus ruthless savages.
What eventually signified a cultural shift was the mapping of the wilderness. Granted by Massachusetts to the New Hampshire colony as District Number 5 – there is a road by that name near Concord’s Penacook Lake – this mapping of land speaks to the socio-political standardization of Abenaki territory: “Although settlers used some of the Abenaki names, albeit in Anglicized form, they imposed new names for many more places, erasing the historical and cultural relationship of the Abenaki to the land.” In a word, Benôkoik became Penacook, Bagôntegok became Contoocook and the earliest extant map of Hopkinton (1803-05) traces roads familiar to us today.
Surely, the most evocative artifact speaking to these issues is a contemporary finger-woven bag of milkweed fibers by an Abenaki woman, Vera Longtoe Sheehan. Many generations after the 1700s, she wove the fact of standardization into the deceptively simple design. Her creative act of cultural memory interprets the sweep of history presented so vividly in this summer’s Hopkinton Historical Society exhibit.
“Changing Views: Relations Between Hopkinton’s Early Settlers and Native Americans,” will be on display through Aug. 31. Hopkinton Historical Society is located at 300 Main St., and is open Thursdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information about the exhibit or programs, contact the society at 746-3825, nhas@tds.net or HopkintonHistory.org.
(Richard Schade is a summer resident of the Sugar Hill District of Hopkinton.)
Herb Walk at Kimball Lake Cabins:
The Hidden Histories of New England’s Georgian Shoes:
The Abenaki: The First Travelers:
Living History: Spinning, Weaving, Splitting, & Switchel:
“Footsteps behind Him on the Road”:
Twist, Tie, Knot: Indigenous Textiles of the Northeast: