The Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place & Culture at Franklin Pierce College The Monadnock Institute NEWS An annual record of thoughts, activities, and events for “place-makers” in the region Spring, 2003 Fall Conference 2003: The Wild Side of Place n Saturday, October 4, 2003, the Monadnock In- stitute will host its eighth annual conference on a Oplace-related theme at Franklin Pierce College. This year our focus is the wildlife of the Monadnock Region. Keynote speakers will include Hancock resident Sy Mont- gomery, author of Search for the Golden Moon Bear, Encantado: Pink Dolphin of the Amazon, and The Wild Out Your Window; Paul Rezendes, internationally acclaimed photographer and author of Tracking and the Art of Seeing and The Wild Within: Adventures in Nature and Animal Teachings; and naturalist David M. Carroll, resident of Warner and author of Swampwalker’s Journal: A Wetlands “Raven” metal sculpture by The Taylor Welding Team, Alstead, NH Year and The Year of the Turtle. The symposium will also Read more about the artists on Page 6 include guided explorations of local wetlands and forests on the FPC campus. Registration materials will be available on the Monadnock Institute Web site beginning in June. Institute News Updates Our Regional Stories Anthology Project was featured this spring on NH Public Radio’s The Front Porch, hosted by John Walters. Stories Circles were also the focus of a Bos- ton Chronicle television program that interviewed John Harris and Harold Larro, the son of a Marlborough quarry worker. What’s Inside The Monadnock Institute is part of the program for the National Conference of the As- sociation for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), to be held in Boston June 3-7, 2003. Executive Committee members will conduct a workshop on place Deep Presence: Abenaki History Remarks from the 2002 annual education on Tuesday, June 3, and advisory board members Tom Wessels and Howard 2 conference held in October Mansfield will lead a hike up Mount Monadnock on Saturday, June 7. Education Update The May/June 2003 edition of Orion Magazine includes a feature story by Kristin A summary of the Keene High School Grubbs of the Monadnock Conservancy, entitled “Blueprint for Change,”on the 5 projects, the Archaeology Summer Field School, and FPC place-related courses. Monadnock Institute’s collaboration with teachers and students at Keene High School. Anthology Project Dr. Gerald Burns, Executive Committee Chair, presented on the Art of Place to Keene A progress report on the written High School teachers on February 4, 2003. Dr. Burns was joined by Peterborough 6 anthology planned for publication, Web Historical Society Director Michelle Stahl and area artist Mary Iselin. site upgrades, and Stories Circle events. The NH Municipal Association’s annual conference in Manchester on November 20, Rindge 2020 An update on the college/town partner- 2002 included a presentation by Maryann Harper, Rindge 2020 community coordina- 7 ship to help Rindge plan for its future. tor, Joni Doherty, assistant director of the New England Center for Civic Life, and John Harris on the aims and aspirations for the Rindge 2020 Project. A Record of Participation A list of 2002 conference registrants, The work of the Monadnock Institute was the cover story, as well as the focus of several 8 Executive Committee and Advisory articles written by Institute faculty John Harris and Catherine Owen, in the most recent Board members. edition of Franklin Pierce Magazine. Conference 2002 Summary Deep Presence: Abenaki History and Influence OLLOWING A GREETING AND Marge Bruchac also addressed the myth Fwelcome by Franklin Pierce of erasure of Abenaki people by College Provost Dr. Suzanne Buckley, focusing on the history of particular Penobscot and Pennacook elders Donald individuals and families in the and Beverly Newell greeted the 175 Connecticut River valley. One leader participants gathered under a tent on the was the sachem Shattookquis, who in Manor lawn. As founders of the New 1666 deeded over a portion of land Hampshire Inter-Tribal Native American around Brookfield, Massachusetts to Council, the Newells provided a John Pynchon for 300 fathoms of description and tribal homeland map for wampum. Shattookquis later traveled the twelve historic Abenaki groups in with the Pocumtuck people west to what has come to be known as New Schaghticoke, and then north to Hampshire. The Newells also Canada. Throughout the 18th and 19th summarized how the Council supports centuries, former Connecticut River Native people in the state, organizes valley Indians often returned to places social events, and raises scholarship funds like Newbury, Bellows Falls, Marge Bruchac for Native high school students. Northfield, Greenfield, and Deerfield. On one visit to Deerfield, in 1837, a daughter of this girl lived to a very great Keynote speaker Marge Bruchac began group of 24 Abenakis were described age, and with her grandson, John Watso, or her remarks by offering a traditional as “comfortably well-off for Indians.” Mountain, lived in the village of St. Francis, Abenaki greeting and thanking the living the old village of the Abenaki tribe.” things around her as well as her ancestors. In the 1880s, Israel Sadoques, a hunter She recognized the Newells for their with the Hudson Bay Company, and his Elizabeth Sadoques described how Eunice, energy and wisdom, and described her wife, Mary Watso, an herbal “Doctress,” the granddaughter of this captured role as an educator and storyteller. “My moved south from the Odanak Reserve Williams child, came to the town where a goal is to mend broken bits of the past, at St. Francis, in Quebec, Canada to great many Williamses lived, and then to pass them on to the future in improve their health and revisit their “Williamsecook,” and met her English a way that restores some measure of homeland. Israel and Mary took up cousins. “She was treated nicely, and was respect and understanding.” residence in Keene and continued to shown the door full of nails, and was told make and sell Abenaki baskets. Their that the deep marks were made by an Marge emphasized that Native people youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married Indian’s hatchet, on that memorable night have known this landscape intimately Claude Mason and had two children, of the battle, when Eunice Williams was for more than eleven thousand years. Claudia and Mali, who passed on the taken captive to Canada.” Everyone in the To illustrate this point she talked about family story. This family became known audience that day in 1922 thought that it ancient traditions of creatures known as as the “last Indians” in Keene, a was very quaint that an Indian woman had “earthshapers.” One such story common but misleading label for Native family “stories” to share, but no one describes how a giant beaver took up people who acclimated into Yankee believed that her words were a truthful residence in the lower Connecticut society. In 1922 Elizabeth Sadoques rendition of history. Elizabeth and her Valley, damming up the river and related part of her family story to an daughter Mali spent years unsuccessfully constructing a lodge. When the creature assembly of scholars in Deerfield, MA: trying to convince White scholars that refused to move, the humans appealed stories such as these contained a true and to Hobbamock, the shaper, who did “These stories were handed down as the accurate record of their family’s history. battle with the stubborn beaver and only means of preserving these great deeds broke its neck. Hobbamock allowed and events. As a child I heard the same Marge described the documents she found the River to flow free once more, and stories of hunting the great bear and establishing a clear link between the turned the body of the beaver to stone. moose, of travels down long streams over Sadoques family, the Abenaki visitors in “Those who visit this site today will thundering rapids, through peaceful valleys 1837, and the events of 1704. She reported notice to the east the shape of the head and blue mountains. Among these stories that recent efforts to validate these stories, of the creature in the form of Mount one stands out more conspicuously. It using documents in the collections of Sugarloaf.” This story contains many told of a number of captives brought to Deerfield museums to corroborate Native “small fragments,” pieces of encoded our village, and of a number of children oral histories and interviews with Mali and history of a time when Native people brought to the campfires of the Abenaki. Claudia’s families, are now being met with witnessed profound changes in the One child came from a long way down the interest and encouragement by the land, such as the retreat of ice sheets Connecticut, from a town where there scholarly community. 2 and the collapse of dams and lakes. lived a number of Williamses. The grand- Bruchac closed her remarks with an ironic individuals who are unearthed should be derstanding the Native presence in the reading of a statement by Jesuit priest reburied as close as possible to the site Monadnock Region, for these stories are Christian LeClair, on the intellectual where they came out of the ground. intimately fitted to specific details of the capacity of the Abenaki: “these people do Each time Donna walks out into the landscape and contain vast and detailed not know how to read or write; they have woods of New England, she is fully aware knowledge of this place. He suggested nevertheless enough understanding and that she “walks over the bones of my an- that the Monadnock Institute consider memory to learn how to do both, if only cestors, and at the same time over the hosting a conference on Abenaki themes they were willing to give the necessary faces of my great grandchildren.” She every few years as a way to begin to col- application.