MONTAGUE — Just days before the 350th anniversary of the Great Falls Massacre of May 19, 1676, hundreds gathered in downtown Turners Falls to commemorate and reflect on the massacre’s lasting impact and mark a milestone in the continued mission of reconciliation and healing.
Each year, the Nolumbeka Project, a non-profit organization for the preservation of Native Americans/American Indians of New England history and culture, hosts a Day of Remembrance for the Great Falls Massacre, where 300 Native American non-combatants, namely women, children and the elderly, were killed in a pre-dawn attack by English forces led by Capt. William Turner during the King Philip’s War, also called Metacom’s Resistance.
Saturday’s events were especially poignant for the commemoration of 350 years since the massacre, which is Tuesday. The Nolumbeka Project hosted three concurrent events to commemorate the anniversary: a sign dedication, commemoration ceremony, and deed transfer and ceremony for a monument in Gill, erected in the 1900s to signify the English’s perceived victory in the Great Falls Massacre.
The day began with the sign dedication. Along the banks of the Connecticut River in Unity Park now sit three signs that highlight the importance of the Great Falls, called Peskeompskut by Native Americans who held it as a peaceful area for fishing, trade, and intertribal gathering. The signs detail the Great Falls Massacre and the 12-year battlefield study funded by an American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) Site Identification and Documentation grant from the National Park Service, overseen by the now former Battlefield Grant Advisory Board.
These three signs were designed by Native artists, with content written by the Nipmuck and Elnu-Abenaki peoples alongside the archaeologists with Heritage Consultants LLC, who created the 406-page final technical report for the ABPP. A $5,000 grant from FirstLight Hydro Generating Co. helped fund the creation of the signs.
While the history of the Great Falls Massacre was largely told by the English, Native American perspectives of that day, and the subsequent battle between English and Native forces, have been a focal point for this effort to tell the whole story centuries later. On Saturday, this decades-long effort had another touchstone.
“We are correcting the wrongs that have been written in our histories for hundreds and hundreds of years. We are now starting to correct that,” Liz ColdWind Santana-Kiser, tribal historic preservation officer for the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians, tribal elder and former advisory board member, said. “We hope to bring this across the country, so it’s the beginning for us to tell the truth of the massacres that took place in our land.”
As part of the dedication, board members of the former advisory committee and town officials from Montague, Gill, and Greenfield spoke, with music by the Eastern Medicine Singers, an intertribal drum group specializing in Eastern Algonquin traditional music from Rhode Island.
Speakers shared appreciation for the significance of the completion of the signage project and the battlefield study, the partnership between towns and community members to make the project possible. They also stressed the importance of the day in the commitment to reconciliation and truth-telling about what happened during the massacre.
“Some folks are going to see it as signs, but we see it as a well over a decade worth of work,” Town Administrator Walter Ramsey said, noting three signs are located near where the 2004 reconciliation ceremony took place, during which the town and members of the Narragansett Tribe formally recognized the conflict and set forth the local commitment to healing and reconciliation.
Shortly after noon, the Eastern Medicine Singers began the commemoration event, which featured several Native and non-Native speakers and performers, drawing in around 200 people on the lawn of the Great Falls Discovery Center.
The commemoration lasted about three hours, and featured a list of speakers and performers, including Nolumbeka Project President and Chairman of the Nehantic Tribal Council David Brule, acting as an emcee. Some of the performances included songs performed by the Eastern Medicine Singers, a soaring flute piece by Strong Eagle Daly, a call to ancestors by Roger Longtoe Sheehan, chief of the Elnu-Abenaki Tribe, and a stirring poetry reading by Martin Espada. Speakers included Santana-Keiser, Margaret M. Bruchac (Nulhegan Abenaki), Deborah Spears Moorehead (Seaconke and Pokanoket Wampanoag), Kathryn Akuahah Wheaton, a Nipmuc elder and chief of the re-established Quaboag Tribe of Nipmucs, among others.
One common point made by speakers of the day included the recognition that, despite the atrocity of the Great Falls Massacre and other acts of violence against Native American people, Native people are still here, and the work toward a better future isn’t over.
Jose “Ite” Santana, Council President of the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians (CBNI), was joined by his family on stage to deliver a heartfelt speech.
Santana detailed his first experience being in Turners Falls and spoke of the massacre, sharing his thoughts on its impact on his family’s ancestors and its reverberation through generations. He shared the need to recognize the event of May 16, 1676, not as a battle, but as a massacre, while sharing his vision and hope for healing and continued preservation of Nipmuc tradition and culture.
“As we leave here today, I want you to carry something with you, not just the history of this place, but the resilience that came after it,” Santana said, “because what happened here was meant to end a people, but it didn’t. Instead, it became part of a story that is still being written — a story of survival, a story of return, and a story of healing, and most importantly, a story of continuance.”
A subsequent report of the deed transfer and ceremony in Gill will follow this report.
