Oh well, back to the drawing board, proving once again that historical discovery is a process subject to change.
Fact is, slight modifications are to be expected when writing about history in the public domain. It seems there’s always something new appearing from likely and unlikely sources, information that sheds slightly different light on a familiar subject. The latest example involves the long-defunct Turners Falls Reporter (1872-1922) and its airing of the word Peskeompskut, which is now, minus the second letter p, the accepted Indian name for Turner’s Falls. We’re not talking about Turners Falls the industrial Montague village. Instead, the long-ago obliterated and submerged cataract with a Gill-side flume whose roar could be heard from miles away on days when the swollen Connecticut River was running strong, before the noise of railroads and automobiles polluted our valley. Discussed here last week, important new information came promptly from Montague historian Ed Gregory. I’ll call it the Gizmo effect.
Gizmo? That’s Gregory’s Turners Falls childhood nickname, one he still answers to and sometimes even signs off as in emails. The man rescued the tattered and torn Turners Falls Reporter collection from the Montague Historical Society and has scanned and digitized everything pertaining to Turners Falls. Thus, after I incorrectly identified 1875 as the year the “unsourced” word Peskeomskut was introduced to the Franklin County lexicon, Gizmo sent the Jan. 6, 1875 article in its entirety, and guess what? Deerfield historian George Sheldon was the source. Not only that, but the 1875 reference was actually a rerun of a nearly identical Sheldon entry that had appeared six months earlier, on July 8, 1874, in the same weekly community newspaper.
The 1875 Reporter account read like this:
Peske-Ompsk-Ut
The above caption is the Indian name of Turners Falls. Through the kindness of Hon. George Sheldon of Deerfield, a gentleman exceedingly well posted in the early history of western Massachusetts, we are indebted for the information.
Tuk, means in general, a river with waves.
Peske-tuk, a divided river.
Ompsk, a divided, or cleft rock.
Ut, means at, on or in.
The name the Indians gave to this place was Peske-ompsk-ut — the place where the river is divided by the cleft rock. A name given by the eye of the Indian. This might have been written Pesq instead of Peske, thus Pesqompskut and easily run into Pesquampscot and shortened into Squamscot or Swampscot, which was the name Drake affixed to the place as a new discovery, in his edition of Hubbard’s Indian Wars,” published in 1865.
The name when written Peskeompskut might be divided and pronounced Pes-ke-omps-kut.
Yours respectfully,
George Sheldon
P.S. The present name, Turners Falls, was given by Rev. Edward Hitchcock. In honor of the brave Turner, who led in the fearful massacre of the Indians at this place on the 19th of May, 1676.
The July 8, 1874 entry is identical minus the postscript about Edward Hitchcock.
After a brief telephone discussion in which I speculated Sheldon may have used the Indian name elsewhere before it appeared in the Reporter, Gregory promised to hunt through the Pioneer Valley Memorial Association Proceedings, which bore fruit. Yes, sure enough, on Wednesday, awaiting me in my morning email inbox was an 1871 reference to the word in Volume I (1870-79), in a short listing about an Aug. 2 field trip that year. The finding begged the question of whether that was the first mention in print of the word Peskeomskut in its many spellings.
Aware that Sheldon was a prolific late 19th-century contributor to the Greenfield newspaper, where he piecemealed out much of the information that later appeared in his 1895 “History of Deerfield,” I thought it possible that some obscure, heretofore unknown mention of Peskeomskut had first appeared there, in the Greenfield paper. Not so, according to Historic Deerfield PVMA Librarian David Bosse, who checked his library’s Sheldon files and discovered that his Greenfield-newspaper ramblings began on Feb. 11, 1885, about 10 years before his two-volume Deerfield history and genealogies hit the street, and 11 years after the Turners Falls Reporter entry. So rule out the Greenfield paper as the first place the word is mentioned.
Meanwhile, in another telephone conversation, this one with friend and historian Peter A. Thomas, he was curious about Sheldon’s breaking down of Pekeomskut’s syllables. Having never encountered anything similar from Sheldon, he speculated aloud that perhaps 19th-century historian Rev. Josiah Temple had been Sheldon’s source. Temple and Sheldon co-authored the “History of Northfield,” and Temple authored three other town histories, one for Whately, another for Brookfield and another for Framingham. What separated Temple from Sheldon and other valley historians of his day, was his careful attention to Indians and Indian language. Thomas opined that maybe this interest in the Native tongue may have come from scholarly pursuit of languages in theological studies at Harvard or Yale. Not so. Thomas found no mention of Peskeomskut in Temple’s other writings. Also, a quick look at Sylvester Judd’s “History of Hadley” turned up no mention of the Indian placename.
So, upon further review, it appears that the word Peskeomskut first appeared in an obscure 1871 PVMA Proceedings field note, then, three years later, showed up in the Turners Falls Reporter, a likely place to air it out and stir discussion on the bank of the great falls.
Oh yeah, before I forget, the astute Gregory also cleared up another little inaccuracy he found in last week’s column. Having been told by a reliable source that Gill bard Josiah Canning was the Turners Falls Reporter’s editor, I went with it. Well, not so. The editor was Addington D. Welch. Canning, a prolific writer and published poet, was, according to Gregory, a frequent contributor but not editor of the village weekly.
So, there you have it. Sometimes a man must just fess up to errors and move on. In the big, deep historical picture, though, think of it: What’s six months among sleuthing companions?.
Now the question is: Who was George Sheldon’s source?
Recorder sports editor Gary Sanderson is a senior-active member of the outdoor-writers associations of America and New England. Blog: www.tavernfare.com. Email: gsand53@outlook.com.