A recent article in The Recorder by Gary Sanderson (June 8, 2018) takes issue with historians who come from “faraway places” and “take over as self-appointed arbiters of local history.” Although Mr. Sanderson claims his intent is not to argue or accuse, he manages to get off a shot or two that I feel require a measured response, and not only because I am one of the historians whose work falls within his sites.
Sanderson’s article centers upon a disagreement that arose during a recent talk given by Lisa Brooks, who was presenting on her new indigenous-centered history of King Philip’s War, “Our Beloved Kin.” Sanderson objects to the fact that, when presented with his perspective about a particular seventeenth-century Indian encampment, Brooks, who is Abenaki, offered a differing interpretation. “I was seeking a listener, not a teacher,” Sanderson explains.
Sanderson appears to mean well and, no doubt, has encountered both geographical and historical influences that lead him to his ideas about how indigenous people occupied the land some three hundred and fifty years ago. But it is troubling that he was unwilling to hear the response of a noted Abenaki scholar who, far from being a stranger to the region, has lived here and made it her focus of study for many years. Sanderson apparently wanted to have a one-sided conversation and was put out by the fact that a person with actual indigenous ties to the region differed slightly from his point of view and dared to interject her insights.
Perhaps more troubling, however, is the language Sanderson uses to make his case. Despite his intent not to accuse, he calls historians like Brooks “self-serving.” He says, “they come, they own, they ignore resident wisdom.” This is an interesting insult to hurl at a Native American historian. It almost sounds as though it were Brooks, and scholars like her, who were the colonizers and not Sanderson’s Scots-Irish ancestors who ventured here hundreds of years ago from an actual faraway place, violently forced Native people off the land, and have continued to come, to own, and to ignore the wisdom of the original inhabitants ever since.
This sort of language does not seem accidental to me. Nor does it seem accidental that Sanderson repeatedly uses the phrase “our indigenous past” as though he would lay claim to being indigenous himself. Sanderson apparently would like to assert proprietorship not just over the land, but over the ancient stories that circulated among Native peoples long before white settlers ever arrived. Sanderson is dismissive of Brooks’ interpretation of oral narrative, calling it “artistic license, projection, or embellishment,” but never seems to question the veracity of his own sources which are likely to trace back to nineteenth-century accounts written by the very white settlers who were invested in driving Native people off the land. There is an arrogance here, however unintended, that is born of colonial privilege. He says he was seeking a “listener, not a teacher,” but it behooves any good historian to be both teacher and listener at all times — even when we believe we have the truth in our corner.
Which brings me to Sanderson’s final claim concerning the birthplace of the nineteenth-century Pequot minister, activist and author William Apess. In my 2017 biography of William Apess, I speculate that Apess may have been born on Catamount Hill in Colrain. It is not an “assertion” as Sanderson claims, but a clearly articulated supposition based on a good deal of collected evidence. Far from ignoring the local Colrain historian who was apparently angered by my hypothesis, I spent many hours discussing the matter with her and sounding out her objections. In the end, I presented her preferred place of birth for Apess as one of two possible conclusions we might draw. Sanderson himself was kind enough to send me an email at the time to let me know that, despite initial objections, after actually having read my book, he thought I had been “fair-minded” in my approach. I don’t know what made him change his mind — perhaps his disagreement with Lisa Brooks was a final straw and all of us “faraway historians” (I grew up and lived most of my life in the faraway Berkshires) are now equally guilty of challenging his authority over local indigenous history.
I was disappointed that, in my research, I was unable to conclusively discover William Apess’ place of birth and, as far as I am concerned, the subject is still open and I actively seek information on it. But, more importantly, I would like the region to be more responsible when it comes to historicizing the lives of indigenous people. William Apess’ life is fascinating and his contributions to American literature are immeasurable, and yet most residents of Colrain (and the U.S. in general) have never heard of him. When I set out to correct this fault, I understood that I would have to listen carefully to the stories of both Native and settler communities. But I also understood that history, as we know it, has been grossly negligent in honoring and recounting the lives of indigenous peoples and, sorry as I am to say it, local Colrain historians, both past and present, have contributed to this negligence. As I note in my book, there is nary a kind word about indigenous people in all of the histories written about the area in which Natives are routinely portrayed as savages and villains. Imagery all along the Mohawk Trail on Route 2 continues to project inaccurate and worn out clichés of Native identity. And about William Apess, arguably Colrain’s most famous resident, there has been complete silence.
But Natives lived in and amongst the first families of Colrain — they played a role in the town’s history, established kinship relations with the earliest settlers, and, in the case of Apess, were powerful mouthpieces for the establishment of the Methodist church on Catamount Hill and elsewhere. As for Lisa Brooks and Marge Bruchac (who also comes under attack in Sanderson’s article), both are Native scholars of great integrity and insight who have devoted their entire careers to understanding the lives of indigenous people in this region. They are not the “strangers.”
The old adage that the victors get to write history is only partially true. More accurate is that the victors are doomed to forget history. They are driven over time to forget the brutal costs of intolerance and violence by which the land is secured in their names. And this is always a recipe for mistakes of the past to be repeated.
Nevertheless, in my talks in the area I have found residents eager and open to correct such mistakes in regards to writings about indigenous peoples. I hope that Sanderson, and many others, will be on hand when, this fall, we unveil an historical marker in Colrain, celebrating Apess’ 1798 birth there, finally marking his presence on the land.
Perhaps then we can launch a sustained conversation among those interested in acknowledging and honoring the histories that indigenous peoples of the region continue to carry with them.
Drew Lopenzina is an historian who grew up and lived most of his life in the Berkshires and is the author of “Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up the Pen in the Colonial Period.” He currently lives in Norfolk, Virginia.