With Apologies to the Schaghticokes
"With Apologies to the Schaghticokes"
By Dr. Paul Loatman, City Historian
Recent articles in the national press, an area school board decision, and a visit to a well known historic site reminded me of how little is known about local Indian history. The irony in this is that Mechanicville and its neighboring school systems Hoosick Valley, Stillwater, Shenendehowa, and Waterford - all have a history of using Indian mascots for their sports teams, While the New Lebanon district's recent decision to abandon the Indian motif drew little or no comment from the public, Onteora voters in the Catskills turned out in record numbers in May in electing a "save the Indian" slate of school board candidates by a narrow margin over those advocating change. That decision drew critical comment, including a letter to the New York Times, that it was "uncaring and racist" because the perpetuation of the Indian warrior image ignored the fact that "Indian culture puts high value on peace and views life as a spiritual journey." What leapt off the page to catch my eye as much as the message itself was that it was signed by Richard Velky, Chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation of Connecticut.
Having been researching local Indian history for the past year, I contacted the Tribal Nation as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington in order to compare notes on these Schaghticokes and the larger band of Mahicans who lived peacefully in our area before the arrival of the white man almost 400 years ago. Were we all talking about "our" Schaghticokes who lived at the convergence of the Hoosick and Hudson rivers? The lack of attention to our local Indians in books purporting to tell the history of tribes in the Northeast set me off on the research trail in the first place. While my research continues, the answer about "our" Schaghticokes' recent press notices is a qualified yes and no, and herein lies part of the story.
In the late 1600s, our area might have been compared to the modem day Golan Heights, the piece of land Syria and Israel have been contesting over for years. To oversimplify things a bit, the English claimed that New York's northern border was the St. Lawrence River, while the French said that Quebec province extended southward to the Mohawk. The area lying between the two rivers was populated by various bands of Indian hunters from Canada and New England, and of course, by the local Mahicans. Changes in the status quo, however, came about as a result of King Philip's War in 1676.
Small by modem standards, this was the most brutal war in American History, surpassing even the Civil War in terms of the percentage of the white male population killed at the time. For New England Indians, things were worse. When the "godly Puritans" decided to remove the "Indian menace" from their frontier, they waged a war of extermination against the tribal confederacy led by "King Philip" of Connecticut, an Indian who recognized that the natives were making a last stand against the white invaders in western New England. For a time, Philip and his comrades took refuge at Schaghticoke, but he returned to Connecticut where he was killed in an ambush in 1676. Now leaderless, his followers sought refuge to the west.
Welcomed by the authorities here, New England Indians benefited from a unique New York policy only then in its developing stages: local Indians were discouraged from emigrating while refugees were invited to settle in strategic areas where they could serve as a buffer against the French and enhance the beaver trade so sought-after by whites. In 1676, Governor Andros "planted a tree of welfare" to shelter Mahicans and other refugees at Schaghticoke, and within a year, hundreds flocked to the site. Although their previous tribal identities are uncertain, henceforth these natives were known as "Skaticook or River Indians." (The term is a corruption of the Indian work "Pisgachticok," meaning the confluence of two streams, and the difficulty of tracing the history of local Indians is compounded by the fact that "Schaghticoke" is spelled 21 different ways in the colonial documents.) The Schaghticokes provided a valuable service to the English as scouts and as buffers against the French, especially after Schenectady was sacked in 1690. Later, when the French threat along the Mohawk increased, the then Governor Bellomont asked the Schaghticokes to move to Halfmoon, but after a few years, they returned here. The closer proximity to Albany traders who plied them with rum discouraged them from staying at Halfmoon, and some talked of moving to northern Vermont where the hunting was better in 1699. But, after 1700, their numbers increased here to the point that newly appointed Governor Nanfan planted an additional "tree of welfare" near the original one. He and his successors also promised to build a permanent fort and station a Protestant minister at Schaghticoke, both to attract new Indian settlers and to "civilize" them upon their arrival. Neither promise was ever adequately fulfilled, however, and in coming years, Schaghticokes migrated to northern Vermont, attracted both by the more numerous beavers and by Jesuit missionaries in Quebec.
A pattern which would persist for the next fifty years now developed: the Schaghticokes would complain about local traders using rum to exploit them; the governor would tell his "children" to bring their complaints to the courts in Albany; the French would woo Indians to Quebec missions to join their already-converted relatives; and English colonial authorities would complain that the size of their buffer settlement here was dwindling. At times, local braves hunting in New England would be mistaken for "hostiles" by authorities there and wind up in jail until the New York government could intervene on their behalf. Differences in philosophies of life caused conflicts, also, most obviously in 1702 when local Sachem, Minichque, was mortally wounded by "four Negroes" (presumably slaves) in an incident that drew much attention at the time. When the Schaghticokes conveyed their chief's dying wish that his assailants' lives be spared, the Governor - in logic better understood by his fellow Christians than by his "heathen" Indian children - ruled that since "blood was shed, so [more] blood must be shed" and ordered the execution of Minichque's assailant immediately. He later reprieved the sentence of the other conspirators, reassuring his fellow Christians that he did so to placate his Indian allies, rather than out of some softhearted sense of mercy.
By the 1740s, "River Indians" were scattered between here and Kingston, their numbers dwindling as whites infringed on their hunting lands and dispossessed them of their corn fields which they had promised to leave alone. One of their numbers, the Pequot, Gideon Mauwehu, discovered an unsettled area in northwestern Connecticut at the junction of two rivers in 1745 and soon was drawing fellow Indians to a new "Schaghticoke" which was off the beaten path of white settlement. Meanwhile, the original settlement here was attacked by the French and "North Indians" in 1754, and all inhabitants were either kidnapped or went willingly to the St. Francis Indian mission outside of Montreal. Here, they joined relatives who had been converted to Catholicism over the previous 75 years. Many of their descendants live there today.
The southern branch of the Schaghticokes, in the meantime, has long been recognized by Connecticut authorities as a "tribal nation." However, when they felt that the federal government was dragging its feet by not granting them national recognition for the past six years, they drew attention to their concerns by threatening to close off a five-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail which crosses their reservation. Not surprisingly, the Department of the Interior promised to speed up the process in July if the tribe kept the trail open, and following the threatening confrontation, the two parties reached a tentative agreement keeping the famous trail open to hikers. On the other hand, ironically, Connecticut government officials are urging the federal government to slow down the tribal recognition process, fearful that their state will be inundated by Indian gambling casinos opened by tribes who will have earned exemption from federal wagering laws. For their part, Chief Velky denies that the Schaghticokes have any interest in opening a casino, and when the Connecticut Attorney General requested that all tribal spokesmen in the state meet with him to discuss the issue, Velky was the only Indian to respond positively to the request. There things stand, and local awareness of these facts and the history behind them is minimal. Whether New Lebanon's move to change its logo anticipates the establishment of a wider policy by the State Education Department to promote such a step throughout the state remains to be seen. Our area's Indian heritage may be dimly perceived, it is true, but it is likely to gain new prominence in the future.