In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 While historian Alice Nash enters the story of colonization through a single legal document that illuminates complex relationships among individuals at a moment in time, archaeologists Siobhan Hart, Elizabeth Chilton, and Christopher Donta look below ground to glimpse centuries of change. Their essay has its origins in a study, funded in part by the University of Massachusetts Office of Community Service Learning, of artifacts today curated by the Hadley Historical Society. They begin by by considering how Hadley residents at another anniversary moment thought about the native history of this place, and then sweep backward in time thousands of years, tracking the story of indigenous occupation from the retreat of Lake Hitchcock to the era of Quanquan and beyond. Along the way, they illuminate the role nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury pastkeepers have played in the preservation, and sometimes the destruction, of that history. They also trace the professionalization of archaeology as a discipline, and—like Ethan Carr’s essay elsewhere in this volume—have something to teach us about the present generation’s work as stewards of our cultural resources. Before Hadley Archaeology and Native History, 10,000 bc to 1700 ad Siobhan M. Hart, Elizabeth S. Chilton, and Christopher Donta Popular representations of Native Americans have played a central role in the commemorations of the founding of Hadley. A perusal of the volume commemorating Hadley’s 250th anniversary in August 1909, Old Hadley Quarter Millennial Celebration, offers several rich examples.1 In the many speeches given over the course of the four-day celebration, Native Americans are mentioned only in the context of land transfers and violence. In fact, there is no substantive mention of Native Americans until the evening of the third day, in a speech delivered by Judge Francis M. Thompson, which recounted the violent 43 encounters and wars among Native American groups and English settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.2 Thompson began by noting that “the history of the people whom our ancestors found occupying this broad and beautiful valley . . . the people who hunted in the primeval forest which then covered the waste places, with whom our ancestors lived, with whom they fought, and whom they finally blotted out—or drove, a scanty remnant, into the western wilds—is closely interwoven with our own.”3 Thompson’s narrative is one of English loss and courage in the face of Indian hostilities, but it also points to the deep history of Native peoples in the region. Photographs and descriptions of the floats that paraded up Middle Street, North Lane, West Street, and Russell Street on Wednesday, August 4, contrast with the record of the spoken word. They clearly show that Native Americans were crucial to the making and remaking of the identities of the town and its citizens taking place through these commemorative events. Clifton Johnson reported that this parade was the climax of the celebration, and he estimated that at least 25,000 people witnessed or participated in it.4 In his view the floats were “remarkably realistic presentations of the events and life which they were intended to portray.”5 Of the twenty-four floats in the parade, ten included representations of Native Americans or invoked them in some way; most of these consisted of what might be described as white Hadley residents playing Indian. One particularly evocative float called “Opposing Races: Red Man or White?” was the second in the parade. It juxtaposed a log cabin with two white settlers (woman seated and knitting; man standing with gun at the ready) with a wigwam and two Indians (no description given of what they were doing). Red and white bunting decorated the float and the horses that pulled it, further emphasizing the racial and cultural dichotomy . Representations of Native Americans appeared in other floats as well; one commemorated the signing of the 1659 land deed, another the famous Angel of Hadley story. The Northampton float called “Perils of Our Ancestors” depicted “Puritan men, women and children in a clearing and armed Indians skulking behind rocks and bushes at the edge of the woods.” Missing from these brief, ethnocentric glimpses of Native American presence is any acknowledgement of the deep history of Native peoples in the area, or any awareness that European colonialism did not erase or entirely sever Native Americans’ relationship to their homelands in the Connecticut River Valley. Ironically, while preparations for these festivities were under way, local residents , farmers, antiquarians, and archaeologists were amassing collections of Native American artifacts...

Share